The Malthusian League existed from 1877 to 1927. They attributed poverty not to class conflict but to overpopulation, and therefore advocated not socialism but birth control. “Overpopulation is the most fruitful source of pauperism, ignorance, crime and disease … the full and open discussion of the population question in all its necessary aspects is a matter of vital moment in society.” They encouraged “the elimination of unfitness […] not by restriction of marriage, segregation, or by sterilisation (which should be resorted to only in the case of those obviously incapable of self-control, such as lunatics and criminals), but by the inculcation of the great responsibility of parenthood and of the effects of such hereditary transmission, combined with a general knowledge of the most hygenic means of limiting families.” The reader will have to make an individual choice as to this being “family planning” or “eugenics.” What subject would you see banned were you an ecclesiastical adviser?

The leader of The Malthusian League in 1912 was Dr. Alice Vickery. Dr. Vickery was an advocate of birth control at a time when even public discussion of birth control was illegal. She also advocated a reduction in the stigma associated with illegitimacy, and in that she shared a symbolic stage with Leighton Pagan, author of For Love and Money.

The following appeared in The Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Malthusian League (London: William Bell 1912).

– Trevor Blake

An event of considerable importance during the year has been the advent of the new feminist newspaper: The Freewoman, under the leadership of Miss Dora Marsden and Miss Mary Gawthorpe, ably seconded by Miss Grace Jardine. This paper made its first appearance on November 23rd, 1911, and it has throughout been characterized by the most remarkable openness of mind and expression, no subject whatever seeming to have been banned. A series of articles on the population question from the feminist and economic standpoints were contributed by Dr. Drysdale [Vol. 1, No. 2 November 30, 1911], and produced the most animated discussion, in which a fair measure of agreement was shown with neo-Malthusian doctrines. Among the opponents it was interesting to note that some granted the laws of Malthus but objected to preventive means, while others advocated prevention for individual reasons and strongly challenged the population doctrine. It is greatly to be regretted that many Socialists still seem determined to heap ridicule and abuse upon the Malthusian doctrine, and their controversial methods make it impossible for any self-respecting person to argue with them. It is their refusal to recognize this doctrine which has hampered their own efforts, and the new Syndicalist movement appears to show that State Socialism is breaking down just as it appeared to be winning.

Mr. Fliigel [?] contributed two interesting letters to the discussion, upholding the neo-Malthusian side; and an interesting feature was the declaration by Mr. Upton Sinclair [Vol. 1, No. 9 January 18. 1912], in the issue of January 18, in which he warmly advocated family limitation and said, inter alia: “This new discovery of science gives us the means of putting an end to the horrible social disease of prostitution. The meaning of it is that the man can marry young, the woman can remain self-supporting, and they can have their children later on in life when they are in a position to support them. This is the way, and the only way conceivable, where prostitution can be ended. And yet, to think that our ecclesiastical advisers have caused the passing of laws against the spread of information about it!”

It is to be hoped that The Freewoman will long continue to do its remarkable work in introducing people, and especially women, to express themselves openly on vital questions.

As a result of the above discussion, several new members that join the league, and many inquiries for advice have been received.

The second decade of the 2000s marks a near century of near-universal woman suffrage. But there was a time when woman suffrage was not universal, or universally desired. Some opposed woman suffrage because it went too far, others because it didn’t go far enough. Ellen Key and A. J. George were among the former, Dora Marsden among the latter.

Ellen Key (1849 – 1926) “[was never] opposed to woman suffrage, but only to the suffragists’ method of twisting it to fresh oppression of individual women and of woman’s own nature” according to Ellen Key: Her Life and Her Work by Louise Hamilton Nyström (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons 1913). In Love and Ethics (New York: B. W. Huebsch 1911) Key wrote…

[It] must still be insisted that the gains to society is nothing if millions of women do the work that men could do better, and evade or fulfill but poorly the greater tasks of life and happiness, the creation of men and the creation of souls. To fulfill these tasks properly women require the same rights as men, and until they have obtained these rights “feminism” has still all its work before it. But in proportion as woman acquire the right of suffrage, using this word not merely in its narrow political sense, but in all senses, the right of choice or selection in general – in proportion as they acquire this right they must learn to use it in the field of life. They must learn to know that their power is greatest in those provinces in which “imponderable” values are created, values which cannot be reduced to figures and yet are the solve values capable of transforming humanity.

Mrs. Andrew J. George of Brookline, Massachusetts addressed the United States Senate in opposition to woman suffrage on April 19, 1913. She also wrote several anti-suffrage pamphlets.

The quote from Dora in the second set of articles below comes from The Freewoman for November 23 1911 (Volume 1, Issue 1). The essay was called “The Bondwoman,” which I take to mean the opposite of ‘the freewoman’ (which in turn was not at all the same as being a suffragist, a suffragette or a feminist).

Anti-suffrage in the news a century ago…

Wrath of Antis is Stirred by Charges that They Use Questionable Tactics. Suffrage Foes to Keep Up Vitriolic Attacks

Cincinnati Enquirer of June 1 1914

Because the New England women’s suffrage Association and it’s forty-seventh annual meeting accused of the anti-suffragist of “the tactics of the polecat went badly frightened,” the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is up in arms.

The end his report to the New England suffer just passed a resolution at their meetings, saying: “these are questionable tactics.”

The antis reported that the New England suffragists passed a resolution at their meeting, saying: “We denounce as a gross slander the charge of the anti-suffragist that equal suffrage means loose morals; and we protest especially against their attributes into prominent women’s statements which those women have been physically disclaimed.”

In commenting on this, Mrs. George, the leading platform speaker among the antis, says: “This is perhaps the most extraordinary resolution ever adopted by a public assemblage. Is this ‘woodsy’ metaphor a foretaste of the amenities in which political women will deal? These suffragists should not condemn their opponents, but should hasten to withdraw from the suffrage platform those who are preaching feminism. The resolution resolutions [sic?] should be aimed at the suffragist-feminists who are giving daily evidence of the tendency of the younger suffragists to work for ‘the social revolution’ promised by Mrs. Harper Cooley. A New York daily under date of May 26 quotes the Secretary of the National Suffrage Association as defining feminism as the rebellion against being ticketed and treated as somebody’s female relative. If this rebellion does not involve a social revolution what does it promise?

“Ellen Key and Dora Marsden are not antisuffragists in the sense that they oppose woman suffrage. They look upon woman suffrage as a part of this social revolution. Ellen Key pleads for the woman only as the mother of the child. Dora Marsden says, ‘The cult of the suffragists takes its stand upon the weakness and dejectedness of the conditions of women. The free woman’s concern is to see to it that she shall be in a position to bear children if she wants them, without soliciting assistance from any man, wherever he may be.’

“The feminists are the logical suffragists, who have the intellectual honesty to declare that you cannot change everything and leave everything unchanged, who seek the ‘social revolution’ and acknowledge the means by which they will bring it about, and these means include, although they may stop at such woman suffrage.”

And from the Atlanta Constitution of May 31 1914 (the Houston Post of July 18 1914 repeats the second paragraph):

There is a danger that, in the minds of the few people, there may exist to some confusion as to the relation between the so-called “feminist movement” and equal suffrage. The latter has always repudiated any connection therewith. As one of the distinguished leaders in national suffrage works said: “I do not know what this feminist movement is and I do not believe anyone else does.”

Ellen Key and Dora Marsden are two of the most conspicuous feminists of the world. Both are anti-suffragists. Ellen Key has never announced yourself the suffragist. Dora Marsden was, however, an active member of Mrs. Pankhurst association, the Women’s Social and Political Union. When she left the organization she wrote a frank article in The Freewoman – a magazine of which she was one of the editors – on the futility of the women’s suffrage movement. Since then, she has become an anarchist. These facts would seem to disprove the contention of certain anti-suffragists that suffragist and feminist are synonymous terms.