The radical remedy in social science, or, Borning better babies through regulating reproduction by controlling conception : an earnest essay on pressing problems / by E.J. Foote, Jr.

  • Foote, Edward B. (Edward Bond), 1854-1912.
Date:
[1886], ©1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The radical remedy in social science, or, Borning better babies through regulating reproduction by controlling conception : an earnest essay on pressing problems / by E.J. Foote, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    *4> drink, of what commodities ho wants to make life enjoyable, so every one should be his own ] udge of how large a family ho desires, and should have power in the same degree to leave off when the requisite number is reached. What society needs is restriction of population, especially among the classes and at the points where it now increases most rapidly-—From Dynamic Sociology by Lester F. Ward ,- Vol. II, Page 4G3 to 4GC. To the patient and conscientious observer of social facts, the population question transcends all others, until it is solved all philanthropic movements, reforms and the like, are wont to deepen the very ills they were meant to remove ; or, at most, they end in transferring penalties and burdens from the shoulders of those who have incurred them to their less guilty neighbors. Sani- tary reform, education, temperance, in proportion, as they become general, merely intensify the struggle for existence, or, in other words, the internecine war between man and man.—From the Journal of Science, England. Every one has a right to live. We will suppose this granted. But no ono has a right to bring children into life to be supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last. If a man cannot support even himself unless others help him, those others are en- titled to say that they do not also undertake tho support of any off- spring which it is physically possible for him to summon into the world. It would be possible for tho State to guarantee employ- ment at ample wages to all that are born. But if it does this, it is bound in self-protection, and for the sake of every purposo for which government exists, to provide that no person shall be born without its consent. Poverty, like most social evils, exists because men follow their brute instincts without due consideration.— John Stuart Mill in Political Economy, Chapters XII. and XIII. If men's sympathies are left to work out naturally without legal instrumentality, I hold that the general result will be that the inferior will be sufficiently helped to moderate and alleviate their miseries, but will not be sufficiently helped to enable them to multiply; and that so the benefit will be achieved without the evil.—Herbert Spencer in a letter to M. charmes, the Reviewer of Vie Work by Spencer— The Man vs. The State. To refuse marriage to men altogether, or to require them to postpone it indefinitely after the maturity of their judgment has justified their choice, is to inflict an injury on the whole community by encouraging special forms of evil, perhaps even calling them into existence. At present, however, no one thinks of lifting a finger to assist his neighbor in the matter, and as long as such perfect indifference prevails, and an impenetrable veil of mystery is drawn over the whole subject, every man's secret will perish with him, and the advance of the human race in this all-important department of knowledge will, for want of the power of transmis- sion, be no more rapid than that of the brutes.—Mr. Montagu Cookson, Fortnightly Review, October, 1872. «4h