For the result has
been that while the more enlightened and educated have exercised a
control over the size of their families, the poorer and more
ignorant--who should have been offered every facility and encouragement
to follow in the same path--have been left, through a conspiracy of
secrecy, to carry on helplessly the bad customs of their forefathers.
This social neglect has had the result that the superior family stocks
have been hampered by the recklessness of the inferior stocks.
We may see these two moralities in conflict to-day in America. Up till
recently America had meekly accepted at Old Europe's hands the
traditional prescription of our Mediterranean book of Genesis, with its
fascinating old-world fragrance of Mount Ararat. On the surface, the
ancient morality had been complacently, almost unquestionably, accepted
in America, even to the extent of permitting a vast extension of
abortion--a criminal practice which ever flourishes where birth-control
is neglected. But to-day we suddenly see a new movement in the United
States. In a flash, America has awakened to the true significance of
the issue. With that direct vision of hers, that swift practicality of
action, and, above all, that sense of the democratic nature of all
social progress, we see her resolutely beginning to face this great
problem. In her own vigorous native tongue we hear her demanding: "What
in the thunder is all the secrecy about, anyhow?" And we cannot doubt
that America's own answer to that demand will be of immense
significance to the whole world.
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