The universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves to-day possess the divine spark of regeneration.  It remains for the courageous and the enlightened to answer this demand, to kindle the spark, to direct a thorough education in sex hygiene based upon this intense interest.

Birth Control is thus the entering wedge for the educator.  In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use their interest as the foundation for education in prophylaxis, hygiene and infant welfare.  The potential mother can then be shown that maternity need not be slavery but may be the most effective avenue to self-development and self-realization.  Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race.

The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the “unfit” and the “fit,” admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes.  The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes.  On the contrary, the most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.  Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.

To effect the salvation of the generations of the future—­nay, of the generations of to-day—­our greatest need, first of all, is the ability to face the situation without flinching; to cooperate in the formation of a code of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and psychological understanding of human nature; and then to answer the questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and honesty at our command.  If we can summon the bravery to do this, we shall best be serving the pivotal interests of civilization.

To conclude this introduction:  my initiation, as I have confessed, was primarily an emotional one.  My interest in Birth Control was awakened by experience.  Research and investigation have followed.  Our effort has been to raise our program from the plane of the emotional to the plane of the scientific.  Any social progress, it is my belief, must purge itself of sentimentalism and pass through the crucible of science.  We are willing to submit Birth Control to this test.  It is part of the purpose of this book to appeal to the scientist for aid, to arouse that interest which will result in widespread research and investigation.  I believe that my personal experience with this idea must be that of the race at large.  We must temper our emotion and enthusiasm with the impersonal determination of science.  We must unite in the task of creating an instrument of steel, strong but supple, if we are to triumph finally in the war for human emancipation.