The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective
Table of Contents
To give an idea of the wealth of material in The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective, here is its table of contents with a short description of the author (or central subject) of that chapter, when it was first published and an illustrative quote. Notice that the book is broken into two sections. The first is the "Historical Perspective," which includes 31 chapters by numerous authors. That's what makes this edition of Sanger's work unique. The second section is the full text of Sanger's 1922 bestseller, The Pivot of Civilization. This book costs no more than other reprints of that book and yet it includes far more material. With this added material you can understand what Sanger was actually telling her readers. That's particularly important when you want to understand what she believed about immigrants, the poor and racial minorities.
Historical Perspective (1872-1925)
Preface — Michael W. Perry, 2001
Then there is the much more serious matter of abortion.
Alas, in its endless pursuit of fashion, upper-Manhattan
style, Time misplaced a pair of quotation marks.
They were put around “murdering” rather than
“unborn children.” The pretense that what
lives in the womb was of an uncertain nature was not yet
dogma. Sanger’s conservative religious critics got
it wrong, Time told us, when they claimed that
Sanger wanted abortion legalized. Birth control, everyone
who was anyone then knew, was intended to prevent what
many 1960s liberals were still calling the “evil of
abortion.” As propaganda, it was clever. At the
time of Sanger’s death, federally funded family
planning was promoted as a counter to abortion rather
than its prelude. — Mike Perry
I. “The Martyrdom of Man” — Winwood Reade, British writer, 1872
Our religion therefore is Virtue, our Hope is placed in
the happiness of our posterity; our Faith in the
Perfectibility of Man. A day will come when the European
God of the nineteenth century will be classed with the
gods of Olympus and the Nile; when surplices and
sacramental plate will be exhibited in museums; when
nurses will relate to children the legends of the
Christian mythology as they now tell them fairy tales.
— Winwood Reade
II. “Malthusianism, Darwinism, and Pessimism” — Francis Bowen, Harvard professor, 1879
In the struggle for existence between different classes
of human beings, it is the lower classes which survive,
because they are more prolific than those above them;
while the upper classes, just in proportion to the degree
of their elevation, either increase slowly, or tend to
die out altogether. And this victory of the lower classes
in the battle for life is a survival, not of the fittest,
but of the unfittest, so that it constantly tends to a
deterioration of the race instead of contributing to its
improvement. — Francis Bowen
III. “Immigration and Degradation” — Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of the Census, 1891
So broad and straight now is the channel by which this
immigration is being conducted to our shores, that there
is no reason why every stagnant pool of European
population, representing the utterest failures of
civilization, the worst defeats in the struggle for
existence, the lowest degradation of human nature, should
not be completely drained off into the United States. So
long as any difference of economic conditions remains in
our favor, so long as the least reason appears for the
miserable, the broken, the corrupt, the abject to think
that they might be better off here than there, if not in
the workshop, then in the workhouse, these Huns, and
Poles, and Bohemians, and Russian Jews, and South
Italians will continue to come, and to come by millions.
— Francis Walker
IV. “The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit” — Victoria C. Woodhull Martin, radical feminist, 1891–1927
The best minds of to-day have accepted the fact that if
superior people are desired, they must be bred; and if
imbeciles, criminals, paupers, and otherwise unfit are
undesirable citizens they must not be bred. -Victoria
Woodhull Martin
V. “Anticipations” — H. G. Wells, science fiction writer, 1901–1905
To the multiplying rejected of the white and yellow
civilisations there will have been added a vast
proportion of the black and brown races, and collectively
those masses will propound the general question,
“What will you do with us, we hundreds of millions
who cannot keep pace with you?” — H. G. Wells
VI. “Man and Superman” — Sidney & Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw, 1901
It is fortunate when one happens to believe in
one’s own arguments: one always does so in a
fashion, the most one does is to suppress the
qualification. . . . As a matter of fact, with regard to
administration work, we plunge without hesitation on to
the position of an advocate pledged only to display the
arguments which tell in favour of the cause we believe
in. — Beatrice Webb
VII. “The Causes of Race Superiority” — Dr. Edward A. Ross, prominent sociologist, 1901
For a case like this I can find no words so apt as
“race suicide.” There is no bloodshed, no
violence, no assault of the race that waxes upon the race
that wanes. The higher race quietly and unmurmuringly
eliminates itself rather than endure individually the
bitter competition it has failed to ward off from itself
by collective action. — Dr. Edward Ross
VIII. “Alarmed about the Future” — Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President, 1895–1919
To increase greatly a race must be prolific, and there is
no curse so great as the curse of barrenness, whether for
a nation or an individual. When a people gets to the
position even now occupied by the mass of the French and
by sections of the New Englanders, where the death rate
surpasses the birth rate, then that race is not only
fated for extinction but it deserves extinction. When the
capacity and desire for fatherhood and motherhood is lost
the race goes down, and should go down; and we need to
have the plainest kind of speaking addressed to those
individuals who fear to bring children into the world.
— Theodore Roosevelt
IX. “’Race Suicide’ and Common Sense” — 'Paterfamilias,] well-to-do father of four, 1903
The young couple who get married in the city or the small
village at this day have become accustomed to many things
with which they are not willing to part. They have
learned to dress well, to have expensive pleasures, the
theatre, concerts. visits, and the like, which have been
inspirations in their lives. They do not look forward to
a life of self-sacrifice. . . . If one or two children
are born, it is considered enough among those who are
intelligent and even tolerably educated. —
Paterfamilias
X. “The Century of the Child” — Ellen Key, prominent Swedish feminist, 1909–1913
While earlier days regarded man as a fixed phenomenon, in
his physical and psychical relations, with qualities that
might be perfected but could not be transformed, it is
now known that he can re-create himself. Instead of a
fallen man, we see an incomplete man, out of whom, by
infinite modifications in an infinite space of time, a
new being can come into existence. — Ellen Key
XI. “The Heredity of Richard Roe” — David Starr Jordan, President of Stanford University, 1911
If Richard Roe by chance is a defective, unable by
heredity to rise to the level of helpfulness and
happiness, it is not a wholesome act to help him to the
responsibilities of parenthood. It is a wise charity to
make him as comfortable as may be with the assurance that
he shall be the last of his line. — David Jordan
XII. “How Bright a Torch” — New York Times,1912
Eugenics say, in short, that so far as feeble mindedness
goes, it could all be stamped out very easily. Normal
persons practically never have feebleminded children,
while two feebleminded persons invariably will have
abnormal children and between the two are the many who
have a hereditary taint but who tend, through marriage
with the sound, to have perfect children. . . . —
New York Times
XIII. “Kallikak Family” — Henry H. Goddard, psychologist, 1912
The surprise and horror of it all was that no matter
where we traced them, whether in the prosperous rural
district, in the city slums to which some had drifted, or
in the more remote mountain regions, or whether it was a
question of the second or the sixth generation, an
appalling amount of defectiveness was everywhere found.
— Henry Goddard
XIV. “The Village of a Thousand Souls” — Arnold L. Gesell, child psychologist, 1913
The banks of the racial river of life should be
beautified and ennobled by all that the willing hands of
man can rear and contrive; but those benefactors who
labor now through science and wise legislation to purify
the very springs of the dying and living stream will be
thrice blessed by the generations unborn. — Arnold
Gesell
XV. “Education and Race Suicide” — Robert J. Sprague, economics and sociology professor, 1915
If we have forces which are drawing off the best blood of
the American stock and sinking it in a dry desert of
sterile intellectuality and paralytic culture, let us
know the facts, and let these magnificent colleges face
them and the race responsibilities involved, because
without any doubt, all of our great
educational institutions can and will become powerful agencies for race survival rather than race suicide when their wealth and influence become applied along the right lines. — Robert Sprague
educational institutions can and will become powerful agencies for race survival rather than race suicide when their wealth and influence become applied along the right lines. — Robert Sprague
XVI. “Wellesley’s Birth-Rate” — Roswell H. Johnson, professor and eugenist, 1915
Now, these select women, who should be having at least
the 3.7 children each . . . are only giving to the race
.83 of a child each. Their reproductivity is only 22 1/4%
of being adequate merely for replacement. — Roswell
Johnson
XVII. “Birth-Rate in Harvard and Yale Graduates” — John C. Phillips, 1916
In his Report for 1901–02, President Eliot
summarized the classes 1872-77 as to their surviving
children, and found that the birth-rate of Harvard
graduates was extremely low. He stated that these sample
classes had failed to reproduce themselves by 28 per
cent, and that obviously the entering classes of Harvard
can be recruited from the sons of Harvard graduates in
only a small degree. — John Phillips
XVIII. “Eugenics and Other Evils” — G. K. Chesterton, British Catholic writer, 1922
So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree
subconsciously, to the man who had wagered all his wealth
on the usefulness of the poor to the rich and the
dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came at last
when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below
ceased to be a supply, and began to be something like a
wastage; ceased to be something like keeping foxhounds,
and began alarmingly to resemble a necessity of shooting
foxes. — G. K. Chesterton
XIX. “Eugenics, Birth-Control, and Socialism” — Eden Paul, Marxist writer and editor, 1917
Unless the socialist is a eugenist as well, the socialist
state will speedily perish from racial degradation.
— Eden Paul
XX. “Who Are The Unfit?” — William J. Robinson, radical New York City physician, 1917
And I will say here, in passing, that personally I would
be in favor of the sterilization, preferably by
castration, of all brutal criminals, such as pimps,
burglars, gunmen, etc., and this entirely independently
of the question whether their criminality is
transmissible to their offspring or not. — William
Robinson
XXI. “Fill the World with Horror” — New Republic, liberal political journal, 1915–1916
If the quality of human births and the nurture of
children is the supreme concern of the race, then a
refusal to discuss the question of a controlled family is
equivalent to asserting that intelligence should not
govern the central issues of life. — New
Republic
XXII. “From Herland to Ourland” — Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist intellectual, 1890–1932
We are mortified at our moronic average, alarmed at the
increasing numbers of those far below it. Further, we
find that the unfitter they are, the more lavishly they
fulfil what some religionists assure us is the divine
commandment—to increase and multiply and replenish
the earth. — Charlotte Gilman
XXIII. “The Religious Are Astir” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Supreme Court Justice, 1913–1927
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to
execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them
starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those
who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The
principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad
enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.-Oliver
Wendel Holmes
XXIV. “Japanese ‘Picture Brides’ Become Frights” — Literary Digest, a magazine for the well-to-do, 1919
We are threatened with an overproduction of Japanese
children. First come the men, then the picture brides,
then the families. If California is to be preserved for
the next generation as a “white man’s
country” there must be some movement started that
will restrict the Japanese birth-rate in California.
— Literary Digest
XXV. “Birth Control From the Positive Side” — Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President, 1917
But if, in a community of a thousand men and a thousand
women, a large proportion of them remain unmarried, and
if of the marriages so many are sterile or with only one
or two children, that the population is decreasing, then
there is something radically wrong with the people of
that community as a whole. — Theodore Roosevelt
XXVI. “An Answer to Mr. Roosevelt” — Margaret Sanger, birth control leader, 1917
The best thing that the modern American college does for
young men or young women is to make of them highly
sensitized individuals, keenly aware of their
responsibility to society. They quickly perceive that
they have other duties toward the State than procreation
of the kind blindly practised by the immigrant from
Europe. They cannot be deluded into thinking quantity
superior to quality. — Margaret Sanger
XXVII. “Revolt Against Civilization” — Lothrop Stoddard, scientific humanist, 1922
Unfortunately for the race, it was the latter alternative
which prevailed. Instead of spreading contraceptive
knowledge among the masses and thus mitigating as far as
possible the evils of a racially destructive differential
birth-rate, society succeeded in keeping the masses in
ignorance and high fecundity, whereas it emphatically did
not succeed in keeping contraceptive knowledge from the
more intelligent, who increasingly practised birth
control and diminished their contributions to the
population. — Lothrop Stoddard
XXVIII. “Little Angels in the Flesh” — Archbishop Patrick Hayes v. Margaret Sanger, 1921
The Christ-Child did not stay His own entrance into this
mortal life because His mother was poor, roofless and
without provision for the morrow. He knew that the
Heavenly Father who cared for the lilies of the fields
and the birds of the air loved the children of men more
than these. — Patrick Hayes
XXIX. “The Pivot of Civilization Reviewed” — Samuel J. Holmes, Professor, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 1923
Mrs. Sanger makes no plea for an increased birthrate
among the better stocks, although there is much evidence
to show that these are in serious danger of extinction.
She is so obsessed by the notion of birth control as a
remedy for racial and social ills that the idea that any
class should have more children is apparently not
entertained. -Samuel Holmes
XXX. “Has America Too Many Children?” — Louis J. Dublin, statistician, 1925
What is the usual effect on the spiritual life of those
who through continued control keep their families down to
next to nothing? This is probably the most serious single
consequence of the current fashion, for the sterility of
the body often leads to the even more serious sterility
of the soul. A family without children to live for and to
work for is tragic. This misfortune is courted by those
who practice birth control.-Louis Dublin
XXXI. “Is Race Suicide Probable?” — Margaret Sanger, birth control leader, 1925
We have not chosen this Sisyphean task; it has been
forced on us because we have left the production of
American children to chance, instead of bringing this
most important of all human functions within the sphere
of choice. — Margaret Sanger
The Pivot of Civilization (1922) by Margaret Sanger
“Introduction” by H. G. Wells
The New Civilization is saying to the Old now: “We
cannot go on making power for you to spend upon
international conflict. You must stop waving flags and
bandying insults. You must organize the Peace of the
World; you must subdue yourselves to the Federation of
all mankind. And we cannot go on giving you health,
freedom, enlargement, limitless wealth, if all our gifts
to you are to be swamped by an indiscriminate torrent of
progeny. We want fewer and better children who can be
reared up to their full possibilities in unencumbered
homes, and we cannot make the social life and the
world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred,
ill-trained swarms6 of inferior citizens that you inflict
upon us.” And there at the passionate and crucial
question, this essential and fundamental question,
whether procreation is still to be a superstitious and
often disastrous mystery, undertaken in fear and
ignorance, reluctantly and under the sway of blind
desires, or whether it is to become a deliberate creative
act, the two civilizations join issue now. It is a
conflict from which it is almost impossible to abstain.
Our acts, our way of living, our social tolerance, our
very silences will count in this crucial decision between
the old and the new. — H.G. Wells
1. “A New Truth Emerges”
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. — Margaret Sanger
2. “Conscripted Motherhood”
One searches in vain for some picture of sacred
motherhood, as depicted in popular plays and motion
pictures, something more normal and encouraging. Then one
comes to the bitter realization that these, in very
truth, are the "normal" cases, not the exceptions. The
exceptions are apt to indicate, instead, the close
relationship of this irresponsible and chance parenthood
to the great social problems of feeble-mindedness, crime
and syphilis. — Margaret Sanger
3. “Children Troop Down From Heaven”
Character, ability, and reasoning power are not to be
developed in this fashion. Indeed, it is to be doubted
whether even a completely successful educational system
could offset the evils of indiscriminate breeding and
compensate for the misfortune of being a superfluous
child. In recognizing the great need of education, we
have failed to recognize the greater need of inborn
health and character. — Margaret Sanger
4. “The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded”
In such a reckless and thoughtless differentiation
between the "bad" and the "good" feeble-minded, we find
new evidence of the conventional middle-class bias that
also finds expression among some of the eugenists. We do
not object to feeble-mindedness simply because it leads
to immorality and criminality; nor can we approve of it
when it expresses itself in docility, submissiveness and
obedience. We object because both are burdens and dangers
to the intelligence of the community. As a matter of
fact, there is sufficient evidence to lead us to believe
that the so-called “borderline cases” are a
greater menace than the out-and-out “defective
delinquents” who can be supervised, controlled and
prevented from procreating their kind. — Margaret
Sanger
5. “The Cruelty of Charity”
But there is a special type of philanthropy or
benevolence, now widely advertised and advocated, both as
a federal program and as worthy of private endowment,
which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than
any other. This concerns itself directly with the
function of maternity, and aims to supply gratis medical
and nursing facilities to slum mothers. — Margaret
Sanger
6. “Neglected Factors of the World Problem”
While the gravest attention is paid to the problem of
hunger and food, that of sex is neglected. Politicians
and scientists are ready and willing to speak of such
things as a "high birth rate," infant mortality, the
dangers of immigration or overpopulation. But with few
exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of Birth
Control. Until they shall have broken through the
traditional inhibitions concerning the discussion of
sexual matters, until they recognize the force of the
sexual instinct, and until they recognize Birth Control
as the pivotal factor in the problem confronting the
world to-day, our statesmen must continue to work in the
dark. Political palliatives will be mocked by actuality.
Economic nostrums are blown willy-nilly in the unending
battle of human instincts. — Margaret Sanger
7. “Is Revolution the Remedy?”
On the other hand, we should not minimize the importance
of the Socialist movement in so valiantly and so
courageously battling against the stagnating complacency
of our conservatives and reactionaries, under whose
benign imbecility the defective and diseased elements of
humanity are encouraged "full speed ahead" in their
reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning. —
Margaret Sanger
8. “Dangers of Cradle Competition”
But the scientific Eugenists fail to recognize that this
restraint of fecundity is due to a deliberate foresight
and is a conscious effort to elevate standards of living
for the family and the children of the
responsible—and possibly more
selfish—sections of the community. The appeal to
enter again into competitive child-bearing, for the
benefit of the nation or the race, or any other
abstraction, will fall on deaf ears.
— Margaret Sanger
— Margaret Sanger
9. “A Moral Necessity”
Orthodox opposition to Birth Control is formulated in the
official protest of the National Council of Catholic
Women against the resolution passed by the New York State
Federation of Women’s Clubs which favored the
removal of all obstacles to the spread of information
regarding practical methods of Birth Control.The Catholic
statement completely embodies traditional opposition to
Birth Control. It affords a striking contrast by which we
may clarify and justify the ethical necessity for this
new instrument of civilization as the most effective
basis for practical and scientific morality. —
Margaret Sanger
10. “Science the Ally”
One of the principal aims of the American Birth Control
League has been to awaken the interest of scientific
investigators and to point out the rich field for
original research opened up by this problem. The
correlation of reckless breeding with defective and
delinquent strains has not, strangely enough, been
subjected to close scientific scrutiny, nor has the
present biological unbalance been traced to its root.
This is a crying necessity of our day, and it cannot be
accomplished without the aid of science — Margaret
Sanger
11. “Education and Expression”
Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that
surround sex; but we are breaking them down out of sheer
necessity. The codes that have surrounded sexual behavior
in the so-called Christian communities, the teachings of
the churches concerning chastity and sexual purity, the
prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical
conventions of society, have all demonstrated their
failure as safeguards against the chaos produced and the
havoc wrought by the failure to recognize sex as a
driving force in human nature—as great as, if
indeed not greater than, hunger. — Margaret Sanger
12. “Woman and the Future”
Our great problem is not merely to perfect machinery, to
produce
superb ships, motor cars or great buildings, but to remodel the race so that
it may equal the amazing progress we see now making in the externals of life. — Margaret Sanger
superb ships, motor cars or great buildings, but to remodel the race so that
it may equal the amazing progress we see now making in the externals of life. — Margaret Sanger
A. “Principles and Aims of the American Birth Control League”
Sterilization: of the insane and feebleminded and the
encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with
inherited or transmissible diseases, with the
understanding that sterilization does not deprive the
individual of his or her sex expression, but merely
renders him incapable of producing children. — Aims
of the American Birth Control League
Index
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