Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population QuestionOwen, Robert Dale
Philosophy
Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question
Owen, Robert Dale
Birth control; Malthusianism
It is a great truth, often told, and never denied, that when there are
too many working people in any trade or manufacture, they are worse paid
than they ought to be paid, and are compelled to work more hours than
they ought to work.
When the number of working people in any trade or manufacture, has for
some years been too great, wages are reduced very low, and the working
people become little better than slaves.
When wages have been thus reduced to a very small sum, working people
can no longer maintain their children as all good and respectable people
wish to maintain their children, but are compelled to neglect them;—to
send them to different employments;—to mills and manufactories, at a
very early age.
The misery of these poor children cannot be described, and need not be
described, to you who witness them and deplore them every day of your
lives.
Many indeed among you are compelled for a bare subsistence to labor
incessantly, from the moment you rise in the morning, to the moment you
lie down at night, without even the hope of ever being better off.
The sickness of yourselves and your children, the privation and pain and
premature death of those you love, but cannot cherish as you wish, need
only be alluded to. You know all these evils too well.
And, what, you will ask, is the remedy?
How are we to avoid these miseries?
The answer is short and plain; the means are easy. You have but to use
the_ Electro-Galvania_ as directed and previously explained; it will
prevent conception, and thus, without diminishing the pleasures of
married life, or doing the least injury to the health of the most
delicate woman, both the woman and her husband will be saved from all
the miseries which having too many children produces.
By limiting the number of children, the wages both of children and of
grown up persons will rise; the hours of working will be no more than
they ought to be; you will have some time for recreation, some means of
enjoying yourselves rationally, some means as well as some time for your
own and your children’s moral and religious instruction.
At present, every respectable mother trembles for the fate of her
daughters as they grow up. Debauchery is always feared. This fear makes
many good mothers unhappy. The evil when it comes make them miserable.
And why is there so much debauchery? Why such sad consequences?
Why? But because many young men, who fear the consequences which a large
family produces, turn to debauchery and destroy their own happiness as
well as the happiness of the unfortunate girls with whom they connect
themselves.
Other young men, whose moral and religious feelings deter then from this
vicious course, marry early and produce large families, which they are
utterly unable to maintain. These are the causes of the wretchedness
which afflicts you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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