The clamour for an ever increasing birth-rate never ceases. It is believed that Providence alone is responsible for human ills. Poverty and disease are accepted as natural and unavoidable evils.
The fears expressed lest the human race fail to perpetuate itself would be pathetic were the reason for these fears less obvious. When we reflect that the labour market must be constantly supplied with cheap labour, and that millions of soldiers must be produced to protect the commercial and territorial interests of the ruling class the true inwardness of this insatiate cry for constantly increasing numbers is revealed.
Ecclesiasticism, the faithful ally of Plutocracy, mindful of the fact that its strength lies in an excess of numbers, has ever jealously guarded the injunction to increase and multiply. No doctrine of the so-called Christian church has been so fondly cherished and so faithfully preserved as has that of the subjection of women. Woman’s glorification under the Christian system has been exactly commensurate with her obedience to man. No offering from her to the Almighty is so acceptable as unrestrained reproductive energy.
The report of a declining birth-rate in any country of the globe is a signal for instant alarm, but although publicists and politicians have attempted to control the birth-rate not only by threats and promises but by legal enactments regulating marriage, still it is observed that in all countries of Europe, with the exception of Ireland, Bulgaria, and Roumania, the birth-rate during the last twenty-five years has steadily declined. Although numberless causes have been suggested to account for this phenomenon, and although various remedies have been proposed to lessen this “evil,” the actual cause underlying the declining birth-rate of our time remains unrecognized. Politicians, publicists, and ecclesiastics all refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that the increasing economic independence of women is alone responsible for this phenomenon.
Notwithstanding the fact that during the last twenty-five years marked progress is observed in the social and economic conditions of women, still the sexual position of the great mass of women has steadily declined. The fact that so far as her sex relations are concerned civilized woman occupies a lower position than that occupied by the female animal has already been noted in these pages. The traffic in women is carried on in every country on the earth.