The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of FactsSanger, Margaret
Science
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control; Eugenics
As to prices, it is not easy to come to a definite conclusion, as some
articles have risen and some fallen in price; but there seems good
ground for believing that the cost of living has risen comparatively
little in Holland, and that real wages have therefore risen very
materially during the period when they have been declining in this and
other countries. It is certainly difficult in any case to see how the
undoubtedly great advance in health and physique experienced by the
Dutch population could have taken place without a great increase in real
wages.
According to a diagram given in the Manchester Guardian of August 16th
last the cost of living in Holland had gone up by 23 per cent. in 1912.
An examination of detailed prices, however, showed a relatively small
rise up to 1909.
These facts, together with many others which could be adduced, make it
clear that in Holland, the only country in which the population problem
has been realised and facilities for family limitation been extended to
the poor, the expectations of the Neo-Malthusians have been completely
justified, and their doctrines have received the confirmation of
experience. Amsterdam, in which the first lady doctor in Holland opened
a gratuitous clinic for the instruction of poor women in preventive
methods, has now the lowest deathrate and infantile mortality of any
European capital. And this is in no way attributable to any extension of
State help either of a socialistic type, or of that familiar to us in
this country, as Holland has been distinguished for its adherence to
individualism, and has apparently adopted hardly any measure of State
assistance.
_DR. S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF IN THE SURVEY, quoting Dr. J. Rutgers,
Honorable Secretary to Neo-Malthusian League of Holland._
“All children you now see are suitably dressed, they look now as neat as
formerly only the children of the village clergyman did. In the families
of the laborers there is now a better personal and general hygiene, a
finer moral and intellectual development. All this has become possible
by limitation in the number of children in these families. It may be
that now and then this preventive teaching has caused illicit
intercourse, but on the whole morality is now on a much higher level,
and mercenary prostitution with its demoralizing consequences and
propagation of contagious diseases is on the decline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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