unless he would destroy the fountains of energy that maintain civilization and make life worth living and the world worth beautifying....  We do not have a problem that is to be solved by making repressive laws and executing them.  Nothing will be more disastrous.  Society must make life worth the living and the refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek the love-object in a manner that reflects a constructive effect upon his fellow-men and by giving him suitable opportunities.  The virility of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness.  The noblest and most difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds."(8)

(1) It may be well to note, in this connection, that the decline in the birth rate among the more intelligent classes of British labor followed upon the famous Bradlaugh-Besant trial of 1878, the outcome of the attempt of these two courageous Birth Control pioneers to circulate among the workers the work of an American physician, Dr. Knowlton’s “The Fruits of Philosophy,” advocating Birth Control, and the widespread publicity resulting from his trial.

     (2) Cf.  The Creative Impulse in Industry, by Helen Marot. 
     The Instinct of Workmanship, by Thorstein Veblen.

     (3) Social Decay and Regeneration.  By R. Austin Freeman. 
     London 1921.

     (4) Carlton H. Parker:  The Casual Laborer and other
     essays:  p. 30.

     (5) R. H. Tawney.  The Acquisitive Society, p. 184.

     (6) Medical Review of Reviews:  Vol.  XXVI, p. 116.

     (7) The Elements of Social Science:  London, 1854.

     (8) Proceedings of the International Conference of Women
     Physicians.  Vol.  IV, pp. 66-67.  New York, 1920.

CHAPTER VII:  Is Revolution the Remedy?

Marxian Socialism, which seeks to solve the complex problem of human misery by economic and proletarian revolution, has manifested a new vitality.  Every shade of Socialistic thought and philosophy acknowledges its indebtedness to the vision of Karl Marx and his conception of the class struggle.  Yet the relation of Marxian Socialism to the philosophy of Birth Control, especially in the minds of most Socialists, remains hazy and confused.  No thorough understanding of Birth Control, its aims and purposes, is possible until this confusion has been cleared away, and we come to a realization that Birth Control is not merely independent of, but even antagonistic to the Marxian dogma.  In recent years many Socialists have embraced the doctrine of Birth Control, and have generously promised us that “under Socialism” voluntary motherhood will be adopted and popularized as part of a general educational system.  We might more logically reply that no Socialism will ever be possible until the problem of responsible parenthood has been solved.