It is not necessary to enquire closely into the various causes for this unparalleled situation. The falling birth-rate in itself is not the prime cause. Even admitting that there are enough babies born, too many of them are born only to die in infancy. We need no further proof of the urgent need for conscientious inquiry, call it by what name you please. The science of common sense is all-sufficient. The seemingly intelligent individual who can only find material for ribaldry in this connection is a more serious buffoon than he imagines. It is apparent that our methods are wrong. Any constructive effort to correct them is commendable. When it is stated that 20 per cent. of the American women are unable to bear children, and that 25 per cent. of all the others are unwilling to assume the burden and responsibility of motherhood, we partly realize the gravity of the case. On the other hand, statistics show that the majority of men have acquired disease before they marry, and that a very large percentage of these men convey contagion to their wives. This condition, to a very large extent, accounts for the inefficiency of women as mothers. It is responsible for at least 75 per cent. of the sterility that exists. The effect of this deplorable condition is directly responsible, also, for the ill health that afflicts women and that renders necessary the daily operations of a serious nature that are conducted in every hospital in every city in the civilized world. As a result of the dissemination of this poison, children are born blind, or are born to die, or, if they live, they are compelled to carry all through their helpless lives the stigma of disease and degeneration. It would surely seem that the individual to whom God has given intelligence and a conscience cannot think of these, the saddest facts in human experience, without resentment and humility. _Surely the time has arrived when every boy should know, from his earliest youth, that there is here on earth an actual punishment for vicious living as frightful as any that the mind of man can conceive._ [Page xxv]