Over the course of a year in 1913-14, Caroline Nelson wrote three class-centered articles on birth control for the most significant revolutionary journal in the country. All are important, in their content and what they represent, in more fully understanding the history of the reproductive rights and working-class women’s movements in the U.S. The first article was published in October, 1913 and explained the ‘European’ concept of ‘neo-Malthusianism’, with Nelson sharply delineating the class differences in meaning. The two articles that followed, with Nelson responding to comments and expanding on her ideas, are below. Danish-born Nelson (1868–1952) was a San Francisco-based revolutionary Socialist, I.W.W.er, and syndicalist; a pioneering feminist and birth control advocate, she was a prolific writer for the wobbly and revolutionary Socialist Party press like International Socialist Review, as well as of books, short stories, and translations. She was married to fellow-revolutionary, iron worker and union activist Carl Rave, and was a leading woman’s voice of the Left Wing in the pre-war period. She would function as something of a conduit between European and U.S. syndicalism, reporting for the U.S. press from her trips to the continent and around Foster’s Syndicalist League for a time.

‘The Control of Child Bearing’ and ‘Neo-Malthusianism in America’ by Caroline Nelson from International Socialist Review. Vols. 14 & 15 Nos. 9 & 5. March & November, 1914.

‘The Control of Child Bearing’ by Caroline Nelson from International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 9. March, 1914.

MY article in the October Review on “Neo-Malthusianism” has evidently been misunderstood, judging from letters that I have received. A student from a university writes and tells me that he agrees with me and that he has found out from the medical profession about some preventive drugs. I wish to say that I do not want to be responsible for anybody losing their health and making fools of themselves. Neo-Malthusianism has nothing to do with drugs or abortion. Knut Wicksell, who has plowed the ground for the movement in Sweden, is a university professor, though he has always stood by the revolutionary proletarian, in opposition to his co-worker on the same line, Anton Nystrom, who is a state socialist of the reformistic type.

The preventive means are so simple that I could state them in one sentence, but the tyranny of the U.S. post office authorities silences me. In Europe books circulate openly that give the information, at least here in Denmark. In Sweden and France, where the work of the Neo-Malthusianists has been felt in the factories in the short supply of child slaves, laws have been instituted to prevent public information on that point. But in both Berlin and Paris the drug stores display the preventive means in their show windows, among other rubber contrivances. There is certainly no secret about it in that case. Nevertheless, the International Society for Humanitarian Child Bearing, in Stockholm, in a big, blackbordered space, on the outside of their paper, Ny Moral, tells the workers in cities and the country to apply to them, in confidence, for help. And the help has been so effective that a couple of months ago the capitalist press gave a yell of despair over the lowered birth rate.

As Neo-Malthusianists, we cannot go in the working class homes with. the absurd proposition that man and wife must each have their own room, and only come together sexually when they want a child. We must do the next best thing, and that 1s to acquaint them with a harmless preventive means so that their burdens shall not increase and be laid at innocent lives.

As for the young, the Neo-Malthusianists aim to give them education on sex matters, and by right education help them over the dangerous period, where passion is apt to take possession of the reasoning power, chiefly on account of the secrecy and hypocrisy and general absurdity that our civilization throws around sex life.

To be a revolutionist doesn’t simply mean to go and vote the Socialist ticket, or call for one big union; but it means make use of every means that we can lay our hands on to strengthen and inform the workers on all subjects that can help them in their daily, economic struggle. As fast as the workers become informed, so fast will the chains that bind them drop to pieces. The capitalist class have both the leisure and means to gather all the information that strengthens them and weakens the workers.

The workers on the different continents have yet a poor interchange of ideas. Toa great extent they know nothing about their own literature and the culture that a small minority is in possession of. This holds particularly good when it comes to sex matter and the control of child bearing.

It is a pleasure to go through Paris in the poor quarters, compared to New York and London. In the first place, one sees comparatively well cared for children, and not very many of them, while in the two latter the crowds of half-starved, ragged, miserable children sicken the heart of everyone. He feels despair and hopelessness, for he knows they will be turned to advantage for the capitalists. Berlin and Stockholm also present a much better child condition in the poor quarters than one would expect. The French working class is evidently raising a superior class, both physically and intellectually, than they are themselves. One can easily see that as he watches the workers’ little ones play in the numerous squares. These squares in Paris are not barred to the poor children like they are in the poor districts in East London, where there are signs at the entrances forbidding ragged and lousy individuals to enter.

If a man should raise pigs or cats or dogs to starve and suffer, the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals would soon interfere, but the parents that raise children to suffer and starve get the blessings of the church, and keep the society woman, who uses preventive means herself, busy playing the angel of mercy. It also gives occupations to left-over upper-class women to start the numerous charity institutes—homes for children—where stupidities and hypocrisies are carefully drummed into the heads of the unfortunates to make them good slaves. And these good slaves go out in the work thinking of nothing but how to ape the fine ladies that constantly waltz before them, and they become scabs and fools.

“Think before you set life in the world!” is the Neo-Malthusian motto. And thinking people do not ruin themselves in debauchery, or with poisonous drugs, or use any other doubtful methods. But in this case, as in all other cases, a small minority will have to dig and toil to bring the right information to the majority.

That is not very easy. Women have been sex slaves for centuries. Many believe the number of children that they shall bear (in the married state) is something regulated by God. A woman gravely told me that the other day. In London’s poor district, where those miserable, poor workers have families of from five to a dozen, I told a charity nurse what I thought about it, and I began to give her a piece of my mind one day for not informing the workers of the preventive means. She said:

“My dear, I cannot get the women to listen to me.’ They think that it is a sin against God.”

Many Socialist families are just as ignorant, and bring up their children just as ignorantly. Many others have learned of preventive means and refuse to inform others, while they laugh at the woman who is always a “sight,” and the man that takes refuge in the cheap ale-house to escape the misery at home of squalling children and a scolding mother.

This must stop, comrades! Out in the light of the day, humanitarian child bearing must be fostered! Children must have a right to be born, healthy and under proper conditions, or they shall not be born at all. Every woman who feels the mother instinct in her heart must plant her foot squarely on that proposition.

There are thousands of men and women in America who are anxious to help the working class, and sometimes do it badly because they are not sure just what to do. They set down to evolve all sorts of vague and confusing theories. Here, at least, the matter is plain. Form societies to help the workers raise few and healthy, intelligent children, just as they are doing here in Europe.

This is not so very new. In the late 80’s Mrs. Annie Besant published a book in London on how to prevent conception. Mrs. Besant was one of the most brilliant women in England. She was rewarded for her trouble by being called a “she-devil.” Some years later Annie got religion, promptly recalled her book, and as promptly became respectable.

***

‘Neo-Malthusianism in America’ by Caroline Nelson from International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 5. November, 1914.

DOZENS of letters have come to me since I wrote the letter in the March number of the REVIEW inquiring about the preventives. When I wrote the letter I was in Europe and unfamiliar with Uncle Sam’s laws on that subject. So I waited until I arrived in the United States in answering any of the letters. On reaching New York I found that a Dr. Elliot was in the penitentiary for answering two decoy letters on the very same subject. He got ten years, and a heavy fine for his goodness in answering a supposed poor woman that begged helplessly for the information. I had no means of knowing how many decoy letters were among my letters. I picked out a few of those that addressed me as “Comrade” and asked them to identify themselves either by their red cards or some other way, but none of them did so. I suspect that a great many detectives used the name “comrade” to catch me, which the real comrades had to suffer for, as they did not get an answer. I had no desire to go to the “pen” to give a few people the information.

In the mean time Margaret Sanger of New York was in Europe at the same time, being a good rebel she looked up everything of interest to the workers, including Neo-Malthusianism. She hurried back to her native country, bound to inform the workers on this subject, and accordingly started the Woman Rebel, through which she began to educate the women. She hoped to get up a strong sentiment in the favor of birth control among the workers throughout the nation, so that this foolish law, which no other civilized country has, would become obsolete, to enable the circulation of this knowledge.

But the state and federal officers, while they are careless on many other lines about the enforcing of the laws, and often stand by the rich law-breakers to smite the workers, they are ever watchful when it comes to the real interest of the ruling class. And it is certainly of vital importance for the employing class to have plenty of workers— plenty to stand outside the factory door to beg for jobs. This is the most efficient club to keep down the workers that work and to keep them from organizing. Hence, here the state and federal laws must be rigidly enforced, while they don’t care what happens to them in Colorado in the mines, where the Rockefeller interests can violate the laws every day. And the state and federal forces protect them, while they are doing it, when the miners strike to have the laws enforced that are passed in their interest. It all sect on who is who in the eye of the law.

The United States could hardly show its class favoritism any stronger than in this law passed for the suppression of this information, about eight years ago. The upper class women in the United States are notorious race-suiciders, and have been for years. But when the upper class heard that the French working class had become as well informed on the subject, as the upper classes, and that France suffered correspondingly for lack of child-workers and women workers in the factories, the American governmental machinery was immediately set in motion to come forth with laws that were rushed through by the vested tools that sit in congress.

And the ever faithful and virtuous Roosevelt sailed out as an anti-race suicider. It suddenly became honorable to have large families, while the upper classes had openly jeered and pointed to the workers with large families as people—that breed like animals. Useless to say that the upper classes have refused the honor of bringing large families into the world. They are still race-suiciders, and get the information on preventive means through their doctors, nurses and druggists. Secretly they laugh at the law and the foolish workers, while the abortionists by hundreds ply their trade throughout the land, and incidentally fill the hospitals with their victims.

All this while detectives followed Margaret Sanger about in New York and the court indicted her on three counts for the crime of trying to inform people about the danger of abortion, and the crime of large families among the workers, etc. Now, Mrs. Sanger, who by the way has three lusty children of her own, is apt to get a year’s sentence on each count. What have the workers to say to this? They ought to show their interest at least by subscribing for Mrs. Sanger’s paper–The Woman Rebel, $1.00 per year, and by getting up Neo-Malthusian clubs and lectures. Margaret Sanger is a pioneer in a great cause. Address No. 34 Post ave., New York City.

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/v14n09-mar-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf

PDF of full issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n05-nov-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf