"It is my sincerest and deepest conviction that we could accomplish incomparably more if only a small part of the energy and money now spent on philanthropic efforts were expended in teaching the women, the married women of the poor, how to limit the number of their children; in other words, how to prevent conception. It would work a wonderful reform in the lives of the poor, and our slums would be metamorphosed in ten years. * * * It is we who are to blame now for the large families of the poor, and for this reason we are morally obligated to give them the financial and medical aid that they demand. But when effectual means are put into their hands for limiting the number of their offspring, then they, and not we, will be to blame if they do not make use of them. * * * * "The rich and the upper-middle classes, those to whom several children would be the least burden, are quite familiar with the various means of prevention. The poorer middle classes use preventives recommended by their friends; these preventives sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, and sometimes ruin the woman's health. While the very poor, the wage-earners, those who can least afford to have unlimited progeny, knowing no means of prevention, go on breeding to their own and to the community's detriment. The result, as you can plainly see, is a general lowering of the physical and mental stamina of the race. For if the cultured and the well-to-do do not breed, or have only a few children, while the poor and the ignorant go on having a numerous progeny for which they cannot well provide, and which they cannot afford to educate properly, it stands to reason that the percentage of the uneducated, the unfit and the criminal, must go on constantly increasing. And this is something that no lover of humanity can look upon with equanimity." Surely the above recited special points of argument in favor of Birth Control seem to be statements of self-evident facts to the unprejudiced mind, do they not? And the person of this kind who considers them carefully for the first time usually finds himself wondering what rational argument can be fairly urged on the other side of this important question. And, when he acquaints himself with the arguments of "the other side" he usually finds himself even more established in the belief that scientific Birth Control is advisable, sane, and along the lines of the mental evolution of the race. At any rate, it is difficult to escape the conviction that the burden of proof needed to controvert a proposition so nearly self-evident as intelligent and scientific Birth Control, must be placed squarely upon the shoulders of those opposing the proposition. LESSON XIII THE ARGUMENT AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL