We must set motherhood free. We must give the foreign and submerged
mother knowledge that will enable her to prevent bringing to birth
children she does not want. We know that in each of these submerged
and semisubmerged elements of the population there are rich factors of
racial culture. Motherhood is the channel through which these cultures
flow. Motherhood, when free to choose the father, free to choose the
time and the number of children who shall result from the union,
automatically works in wondrous ways. It refuses to bring forth
weaklings; refuses to bring forth slaves; refuses to bear children who
must live under the conditions described. It withholds the unfit,
brings forth the fit; brings few children into homes where there is
not sufficient to provide for them. Instinctively it avoids all those
things which multiply racial handicaps. Under such circumstances we
can hope that the "melting pot" will refine. We shall see that it will
save the precious metals of racial culture, fused into an amalgam of
physical perfection, mental strength and spiritual progress. Such an
American race, containing the best of all racial elements, could give
to the world a vision and a leadership beyond our present imagination.
CHAPTER IV
TWO CLASSES OF WOMEN
Thus far we have been discussing mainly one class in America--the
workers. Most women who belong to the workers' families have no
accurate or reliable knowledge of contraceptives, and are, therefore,
bringing children into the world so rapidly that they, their families
and their class are overwhelmed with numbers. Out of these numbers, as
has been shown, have grown many of the burdens with which society in
general is weighted; out of them have come, also, the want, disease,
hard living conditions and general misery of the workers.
The women of this class are the greatest sufferers of all. Not only do
they bear the material hardships and deprivations in common with the
rest of the family, but in the case of the mother, these are
intensified. It is the man and the child who have first call upon the
insufficient amount of food. It is the man and the child who get the
recreation, if there is any to be had, for the man's hours of labor
are usually limited by law or by his labor union.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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