' Thus insists Edward A. Ross, Professor of Sociology in the
University of Wisconsin; and he protests against the 'dwarfing of
women and the cheapening of men' as regards the restriction of the
birth rate as a 'movement at bottom salutary, and its evils minor,
transient and curable.' This is virile gospel, and particularly
significant coming from the teacher who invented the term 'race
suicide,' which many have erroneously attributed to Mr. Roosevelt."]
Wage-workers and salaried people have a vital interest in the size of
the families of those better situated in life. Large families among
the rich are immoral not only because they invade the natural right of
woman to the control of her own body, to self-development and to
self-expression, but because they are oppressive to the poorer elements of
society. If the upper and middle classes of society had kept pace with
the poorer elements of society in reproduction during the past fifty
years, the working class to-day would be forced down to the level of
the Chinese whose wage standard is said to be a few handfuls of rice a
day.
If these considerations are not enough to halt the masculine advocate
of large families who reminds us of the days of our mothers and
grandmothers, let it be remembered that bearing and rearing six or
eight children to-day is a far different matter from what it was in
the generations just preceding.
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