"Public opinion is stronger than any laws, and in time people would be as much ashamed of having children whom they could not bring up properly in every sense of the word, as they are now ashamed of having their children turn out criminals. Now, no disgrace can attach to any poor family, no matter how many children they have, because they have not got the knowledge, because society prevents them from having the knowledge of how to limit the number of children. But if that knowledge became easily accessible, and people still refused to avail themselves of it, then they would properly be considered as anti-social, as criminal members of society. As far as couples are concerned who are well-to-do, who love children, and who are well capable of taking care of a large number, we, that is, we American limitationists, would put no limit. On the contrary, we would say: 'God bless you, have as many children as you want to; there is plenty of room yet for all of you.'" Another writer, a celebrated English thinker along these lines, has said of the general argument in favor of Birth Control: "It used to be thought that small families were immoral. We now begin to see that it was the large families of old which were immoral. The excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly stimulated by selfishness. There were no laws against child-labor; children were produced that they might be sent out, when little more than babies, to the factories and the mines to increase their parents' incomes. The diminished birth-rate has accomplished higher moral transformation. It has introduced a finer economy into life, diminished death, disease, and misery. It is indirectly, and even directly, improving the quality of the race. The very fact that children are born at longer intervals is not only beneficial to the mother's health, and therefore to the children's general welfare, but it has been proved to have a marked and prolonged influence on the physical development of children. "Social progress, and a higher civilization, we thus see, involve A REDUCED BIRTH-RATE AND A REDUCED DEATH-RATE. The fewer the children born, the fewer the risks of death, disease, and misery to the children that are born. The fact that civilization involves small families is clearly shown by the tendency of the educated and upper social classes to have small families. As the proletariat class becomes educated and elevated, disciplined to refinement and to foresight--as it were aristocratised--it also has small families. Civilizational progress is here on a line with biological progress. The lower organisms spawn their progeny in thousands, the higher mammals produce but one or two at a time. The higher the race, the fewer the offspring.