The Pivot of Civilization

Like or dislike Margaret Sanger, her book in her own words will change what you think of her. Her association with eugenics (hereditary improvement of race or breed in humans) has caused Sanger to lose some luster these days. It would be fair to describe her eugenics as "soft," or "passive," as the text of her book does not actively state a desire for forced sterilization. The reader will find in the appendix, however, that forced sterilization was one of the tenets of the American Birth Control League, of which she was a founder. Throughout "Pivot" one will not find the word "race" defined by Sanger as we might today - skin color, or some ethnicity. Rather, one sees that she talks about humankind as a whole - the "human race." One more readily understands where much of her supposed racism stems from, as she speaks movingly and often about the plight of the poor family, especially the woman, and how simple knowledge/education would cure most of this problem. She illustrates the depth of her knowledge herself, perhaps from her travels and contacts, about how more enlightened parts of the world were handling their own population difficulties. Margaret Sanger very clearly shows her skill as superb essayist. The whole book can be taken as one long essay, but was probably a work of many Sanger essays drawn together. The resulting compendium would please your high school English teacher. Whether the reader will like the author's trains of logic, those trains do get built up from premise to premise, a technique which must have irritated many a condescending male critic of the day! It would be good to remember, too, that many, many famous persons in the early 20th century were staunch advocates of eugenics: Theodore Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Havelock Ellis, and most socialists (excepting, perhaps, Norman Thomas). Sanger punctures Karl Marx's theoretical social engineering quickly, but thoroughly, midway through the book a couple times. She did not touch his signature theory of capital creation, rather, she showed why real people would not let such a social system as his get off the ground. This little snippet will be a worthwhile bunch of paragraphs to many readers. Many times the author opines about the benefits of living in the U.S. It is true that Sanger churns out piles a bad-news statistics about the U.S., but clearly this happens because that was where most of the reliable numbers existed.

Michael Perry has edited a fascinating collection of rare and hard to find materials relating to Margaret Sanger and the early birth control movement. Although a major part of the book is devoted to Sanger's Pivot of Civilization, the nearly three dozen selections from a variety of other writers (including Theodore Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, Victoria Woodhull Martin, and David Starr Jordan) are probably the best part of the book. Many of these essays cannot be located easily and have been long unavailable except at major research libraries. Perry does a superb job in letting the individual writers speak for themselves. The fact that some of the writers included say outrageous things is not Perry's fault. As someone who has read widely from the primary source materials of the era represented here, I can say that Perry's collection is a fair-minded sampling of the range of views that existed.

...Whether Sanger was a "racist" or not depends on the meaning you attach to the word. As I note in the book, a better description of her is that she was an elitist--a characteristic she shares with many in today's political left.The book gives every single word of Sanger's most intellectual book, The Pivot of Civilization. It also includes 31 chapters with other articles from the period, mostly lengthy quotes from those who supported Sanger. They make it clear that liberals, socialists, feminists, progressives and media outlets such as the New York Times were strong supporters of measures to reduce the birthrates of those they deemed "unfit" and "feebleminded"--typically by forced sterilization or incarcation in uni-sex institutions. They not only believed that, they were as proud of those beliefs as they are today about their support for abortion.I quote those sources at great length to allow them to explain why as liberals, feminists, and socialists, they believed that. (The roots lie in a blend of Darwinism and pessimism.) I also let them point out that the primary opponent to their coercive agenda was the religious right--Catholics, fundamentalists and Orthodox Jews.--exactly the situation as it stands today. I illustrate in numerous ways that when Sanger and others refer to the "feebleminded" they're using coded language that means recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Catholics from Italy, and poor native-born whites. That's better termed elitism than racism.Readers are welcome to read the book and evaluate it for themselves. I put nothing in their mouths. Roughly 80% of the book consists of lengthy quotes from Sanger and her supporters. The book also sheds light on our present debate over legalized abortion and the zeal liberals and feminists display for providing poor black and Hispanic mothers with abortion. All that has changed is the population they target with their birth limiting measures...