Georgia Kotsch draws a hard line between bourgeois eugenicism and proletarian child planning.

‘Birth Control’ by Georgia Kotsch from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 5. November, 1915.

A FEW weeks ago the glad word was heralded abroad that Mrs. Harriman and some club ladies had found social salvation regardless of the Lord in a plan to sterilize a goodly portion of the population. On the heels of this comes the news that William Sanger has been given thirty days in jail for giving out one of his wife’s leaflets on birth control.

At first glance the unsophisticated will wonder at the seeming contradiction in the tactics of the Managers of Society. Will they prevent people from breeding and jail a man for teaching them to prevent it themselves?

Even so. Deep and mysterious is the wisdom of the Managers of Society.

When man became the ruler of the earth and the sea and all that in them is, it became a sin against the Lord for a woman to do anything which would limit her fertility. She was taught by the men in that crude day, that she would be punished in a future life if she did. and knowing as little about a future life as man himself did and being subject to him, she pretended to believe the story until it became a habit of mind with her to choose her punishment in this life. And she got it.

If she was married she was used up with child-bearing and rearing, never having any life of her own. Self-sacrifice as its own reward was generously alloted to the female portion of the race. If she was unmarried and had children, the redhot pincers of public scorn tore her for obeying the man-made dictum of the Lord.

When some men and women became rulers of other men and women, the old belief and practice of the subject woman were just simply made to order for the new regime. Many children among the profit-makers were very profitable to the profit-takers. Of course, the women who were elevated to seats among the mighty quickly acquired wisdom as to this joy-of-self-sacrifice .craftiness and conducted themselves accordingly.

No earthly regime, alas, is perfect. Nature—or the Lord, just as you like—has a way of promoting fecundity whether or not there is nourishment to support it. Credulity is a strong characteristic of subject people, and both men and women of the poor, working population have gone on believing that any interference with their fertility would be flying in the face of the Lord, and so it has come about that the Lord has sort of overdone the child-production business. Or, at least he has not been discriminating. The rabbit hutches of the poor have turned out some waste material, and this is the day of efficiency.

However, this can be said for the Lord. He has never been known to get into an argument with the Managers of Society over looking out for their own interest. This, bold project for curbing the birthrate of certain classes is to be done, of course, in the name of social regeneration. Your club woman is your true optimist. She seizes confidently upon every social patent medicine manufactured by her own class, from a tax upon bachelors to dog meat (for other people), as an antidote for the high cost of living. When society down at the bottom is just as sick as ever after having the nostrums poured down its reluctant throat, she just as buoyantly spoons out the next social peruna.

The social stomach having become about immune to bitters, now she is taking to surgery. One can see the possibilities this new departure opens up are provocative of the greatest enthusiasm. A scientific weeding out of the unprofitable just like you weed out the corn-consuming roosters and the non-productive hens in your flock, leaving a residuum of super-profit makers. Beside the poor simps who are useless in any factory except a bat factory, there are numbers of normal persons, physically and mentally, who are victims of perversity, to use no stronger terms, and who are consequently defectives from a profit making point of view. It is fascinating to speculate upon a future, in which the hop raisers have ceased from trouble and country constables are at rest and the I.W.W. is transformed into an army of tame and faithful eunuchs, whose greatest ambition is to work longer and harder than a scissorbill.

Birth control by the Society Manager Plan and birth control by educating the people to exercise judgment in bringing children into the world are as far apart as are you and the dollar you spent last week, for there is just one thing that the Managers of Society cannot tolerate at all, and that is for the poor and the workers to develop gumption enough and have money enough to manage their own affairs. How in the world would the M. of S. amuse themselves if this should happen?

But is it not possible for efficiency to overshoot its aim? Shall we not heed the warning of the story of the goose that laid the golden egg? The will of the Lord in regard to much breeding, has been carefully instilled into the people with very excellent results. Shall we jeopardize these by tampering with the foundations of faith and obedience because of the flaw of a few defectives? It is well to go carefully in these days of pernicious agitators, who watch you every step, and take an unholy joy in exhibiting the banana skin upon which you slipped. William Sanger is only thirty days behind the bars. Little Margaret is wholly elusive of the arm of the law. St. Anthony is gone to the long monotony of a viceless heaven, his last days rendered ineffective because of Sangeritis. Mr. Roosevelt is evidently stricken dumb by these assaults upon race production. All that we really have left as a bulwark for ignorant breeding is dear old Morality.

By the way, isn’t it highly suspicious that the members of the upper classes, who understand and practice birth control are sure that the spread of the knowledge means a spread of immorality? What a spectacle personal introspection must reveal to those people who believe that everyone will do wrong if they can do it safely.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n05-nov-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf