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49 - Margaret Sanger; an autobiography by Margaret Sanger · Margaret Sanger; an autobiography

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty nine of Margaret Sanger by Margaret Sanger. This
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter thirty nine
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  Speaker 1: Slow Grows the splendid pattern. Quote there is no force
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  Speaker 1: in the world so great as that of an idea
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  Speaker 1: when its hour has struck end quote Victor Hugo. Looking
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  Speaker 1: back at the past is like peering from some promontory
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  Speaker 1: upon a varied landscape. The years run through it, like
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  Speaker 1: a road winding through a valley. With the passage of time,
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  Speaker 1: you get a far sweeping view, and the small details
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  Speaker 1: become blurred and difficult to recall. I wonder whether there
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  Speaker 1: should not be a school course to emphasize the importance
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  Speaker 1: of keeping diaries so that you would know the really
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  Speaker 1: momentous happenings to put down. Mostly you scribble notes intended
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  Speaker 1: to call up a picture, rather than an actual account
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  Speaker 1: of what has happened, memoranda of dates, engagements, and events,
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  Speaker 1: leaving the results to recollection. Some inequality in this chronicle
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  Speaker 1: as to what is significant and what is not. Some
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  Speaker 1: gaps in my remembrance of events may have been the result.
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  Speaker 1: It is strange what tricks the mind can play. My father,
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  Speaker 1: the person who had done most in shaping my growth.
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  Speaker 1: Died in nineteen twenty six at the age of eighty.
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  Speaker 1: The day he was buried in Corning, I was passing
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  Speaker 1: the bank on the corner of the town square with
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  Speaker 1: my brothers Dick and Bob, and we chanced to glance
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  Speaker 1: simultaneously at the clock tower. Faintly startled, we gazed at
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  Speaker 1: each other, and Dick exclaimed, look at that little, tiny thing.
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  Speaker 1: I've always thought it was as big as the Eiffel Tower.
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  Speaker 1: In all of our travels, each of us had been
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  Speaker 1: convinced that nothing ever was so tall as that tower.
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  Speaker 1: That can happen to so many youthful memories, Months and
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  Speaker 1: miles that seemed so long then are so short. Later,
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  Speaker 1: the same year that took my father, summoned also my
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  Speaker 1: sister Mary, whose cruel immolation at the shrine of family
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  Speaker 1: duty had obliged her to forego marriage. Even though I
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  Speaker 1: had seen her but seldom, she too had had an
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  Speaker 1: important influence over me, and remained a dear presence whose
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  Speaker 1: loss I felt deeply. Out of a seven children, seven
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  Speaker 1: are still living. Families have a separate and distinct role
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  Speaker 1: in your existence. They are closer, yet more apart than friends.
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  Speaker 1: But often you discover that you have nothing save the
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  Speaker 1: ties of childhood to keep you together. What I have
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  Speaker 1: been able to contribute to the birth control movement has
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  Speaker 1: been the result of forces which set a clear design
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  Speaker 1: almost from infancy, each succeeding circumstance tracing the lines more sharply,
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  Speaker 1: my being born into a family so large as to
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  Speaker 1: be in part responsible for my mother's premature death, My
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  Speaker 1: preparation as a nurse, which awoke me to the sorrows
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  Speaker 1: of women, the inspiration of having come into contact with
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  Speaker 1: great minds, and having claimed many as friends. It may
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  Speaker 1: may have been destiny, as some have said, I do
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  Speaker 1: not know. To have helped carry the cause thus far
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  Speaker 1: has been at times strenuous, but I have never considered
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  Speaker 1: it a sacrifice. Every conscious hour, night and day, in
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  Speaker 1: any city, in any country has brought its compensations. My
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  Speaker 1: life has been joyous and exulting and full because it
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  Speaker 1: has touched profoundly millions of other lives. It is ever
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  Speaker 1: a privilege to be a part of something unquestionably proved
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  Speaker 1: of value, something so fundamentally right. From time to time
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  Speaker 1: wonder is expressed that so much has been accomplished in
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  Speaker 1: so short a period. The fact remains that in an
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  Speaker 1: era when huge fortunes have been spent in alleviating human misery,
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  Speaker 1: progress has been painfully slow. Countless women still die before
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  Speaker 1: their time because the bit of knowledge essential to every
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  Speaker 1: life is still not theirs. Birth control must seep down
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  Speaker 1: until it reaches the strata where the need is greatest.
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  Speaker 1: Until it has been democratized, there can be no rest.
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  Speaker 1: It is true that great advances have been made in
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  Speaker 1: the realm of theory. You can almost tell people's age
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  Speaker 1: now by their attitude towards birth control. To the young,
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  Speaker 1: it is merely one of the accepted facts. If questioned,
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  Speaker 1: they assume the whole matter must have been settled long ago.
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  Speaker 1: Over and over again in the past, a new epoch
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  Speaker 1: has adopted a concept censured by the preceding one, and
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  Speaker 1: has wondered derisively how its forefathers could have been so
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  Speaker 1: blind to anything so obvious. The use of anesthetics for
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  Speaker 1: mothers in childbirth was once condemned as an unholy attempt
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  Speaker 1: to escape the biblical curse pronounced against all women, and
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  Speaker 1: similarly evolution as striking at the roots of Christianity. Battles
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  Speaker 1: over impiety, heresy blasphemy, obscenity have been fought, temporarily lost,
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  Speaker 1: and finally won. Science whittles away such obstructions. Little by little,
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  Speaker 1: the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. In
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  Speaker 1: January nineteen thirty seven, in that same town hall where
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  Speaker 1: fifteen years before I had been forbidden to speak, and
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  Speaker 1: whence I had been hailed into court, I was honored
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  Speaker 1: with a medal pearl. Buck said on one occasion, quote
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  Speaker 1: the cause conquers because youth is for you. I have
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  Speaker 1: lived in China so long and know what it is
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  Speaker 1: to wait until the old ones die and the young
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  Speaker 1: can do what is necessary to be done. I am
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  Speaker 1: glad both my sons are doctors with a background of
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  Speaker 1: human interest, to which has been added a scientific quality
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  Speaker 1: of mind that can aid in pushing the horizon of
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  Speaker 1: service further into the future. I am often asked, aren't
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  Speaker 1: you happy now that the struggle is over? But I
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  Speaker 1: cannot agree that it is. Though many disputed barricades have
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  Speaker 1: been leaped, you can never sit back smugly content believing
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  Speaker 1: that victory is forever year. There is always the threat
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  Speaker 1: of its being snatched from you. All freedom must be
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  Speaker 1: safeguarded and held jubilation is unwarranted while the world is
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  Speaker 1: in warring turmoil, each political unit trying to hold on
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  Speaker 1: to what it has, some threatening to take it away,
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  Speaker 1: and others looking covetously towards outlets and countries not yet
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  Speaker 1: completely filled. The application of the movement to nations, which should,
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  Speaker 1: in the interests of peace, control their populations, must endure.
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  Speaker 1: Before nineteen fourteen, the world trend was towards unity and peace.
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  Speaker 1: But a typhoon then caught us and turned us upside down.
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  Speaker 1: We began to whirl violently in one direction, that of
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  Speaker 1: individual and national emancipation, until at last the great wind
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  Speaker 1: blew crowns from the heads of tsars and kaisers, sweeping
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  Speaker 1: power into the hands of the populace. When that war
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  Speaker 1: had first burst upon a shocked world, people everywhere stood
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  Speaker 1: aghast and wept for the slaughter of men they did
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  Speaker 1: not know. But after four years in self defense, they
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  Speaker 1: armored themselves against the emotion which should be aroused by
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  Speaker 1: any cruelty, and became calloused and hardened, until the deaths
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  Speaker 1: of thousands left nations unmoved. Then came the vortex, the
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  Speaker 1: center of the storm, and we awaited breathless the approach
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  Speaker 1: of the opposite edge. Everything had been lashed down in readiness,
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  Speaker 1: the life lines had been strengthened. Finally, all we had
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  Speaker 1: considered constant in rational thought, morals, ethics started to go
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  Speaker 1: with equal violence in the other direction, towards dictatorship and
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  Speaker 1: nationalism and race prejudice, a giving over of individual freedom.
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  Speaker 1: The immediacy of the deaths of women and childbirth seemed
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  Speaker 1: so small in comparison, of so little consequence. No longer
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  Speaker 1: were felt the pains of problems which used to be
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  Speaker 1: of such deep concern. Over and over again, I hear,
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  Speaker 1: how do you fit birth control into a world in
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  Speaker 1: which dictators are clamoring for more and yet more people.
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  Speaker 1: I can only answer that momentum must now derive its
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  Speaker 1: power from some other source than arousing sympathy. The present
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  Speaker 1: insensitivity is due to a horror of hover. During peril,
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  Speaker 1: many will be swept away and destroyed. But when the
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  Speaker 1: battered hulls of the various ships of state emerge into calmercies,
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  Speaker 1: a lesson may have been learned, perhaps whereby these vessels
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  Speaker 1: may be made more seaworthy. The Greeks, with their innate
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  Speaker 1: genius for dramatizing basic truths in images of telling beauty
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  Speaker 1: established of old the relay torch race or Lamadiphoria, in
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  Speaker 1: honor of the Titan Prometheus, who had bestowed the divine
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  Speaker 1: gift of fire upon humanity. The contest was held at night,
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  Speaker 1: the great flambeaux being appropriately kindled at the altar of Eros.
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  Speaker 1: Participation was not a distinction, indiscriminately, conferred those elect were
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  Speaker 1: fitted by discipline to hand on the vital flame, just
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  Speaker 1: as parents need training before becoming eligible for their grave responsibilities.
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  Speaker 1: The figures speeding around the course symbolize the passing on
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  Speaker 1: of the spark of life from generation to generation. Each
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  Speaker 1: runner must deliver his torch undimmed to his successor build
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  Speaker 1: thou beyond thyself, said Nietzsche. And this the birth control
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  Speaker 1: movement is doing. All people's will in the future have
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  Speaker 1: greater regard for the quality of the bodies and brains
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  Speaker 1: which must be equipped for the task of building the
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  Speaker 1: future civilization. Birth control will be the corner stone of
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  Speaker 1: that great structure. End of Chapter thirty nine, recording by
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  Speaker 1: Phyllis Vincelli. End of Margaret Sanger, an autobiography by Margaret
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  Speaker 1: Sanger