want to make the coming of children to them an affair
of _deliberate_ arrangement, and not of _chance_.

This is not only as it should be, but is really the only right way
that children should be begotten and born. Which statement calls for
a few special words on the right of parents to regulate the production
of progeny.

There is much talk, in some quarters, about "race suicide," and
the wickedness of deliberately limiting the number of children in a
family. Such talking and writing arouse anxious questionings in the
minds of conscientious young married men and women who are desiring to
do the right thing in the premises, but are uncertain as to what the
right thing is, and for such are the following words:

Many years ago, an English philosopher and statesman, Malthus by name,
discovered and announced the fact that the rate of natural increase
in the human race was several times greater than that of the possible
rate of production of food supply for their support. Scientifically
phrased, his statement was that "the rate of increase in humanity
is in geometrical ratio, while the rate of increase of possible food
supply is in arithmetical ratio." And from this basis, he reasoned
that, unless the surplus of human production was in some way cut off
and destroyed, the whole human race would ultimately demand more food
supply than could possibly be produced; and so, in due course of time,
the whole race would perish from starvation!

Then he proceeded to reason that the purpose of disease, plague,
pestilence, famine, poverty and warfare was to cut off and destroy
the _surplus_ of humanity, and hence all these alleged evils were
in reality blessings in disguise, and that _it would be wrong to
interfere_ with their really beneficent workings! Volumes could be
written, and they could not tell the half of the misery and evil that
the promulgation of this doctrine has done for the civilized world,
but there is no space here for giving any such details; nor need this
be done, though the statement of the doctrine had to be made to make
ready for what is to follow.

Now, is it not far more reasonable to suppose that, _since the
possibility of determining the number of off-spring a husband and wife
may produce has been given them_; that since such result can be, for
them, made a matter of _choice_, of an _exercise of the will_, and
not of _blind instinct_--under these circumstances, all of which
undoubtedly exist, is it not