Public School Education. Michael Müller
the ways and means of destroying the legitimate results of matrimony. And among married persons so extensive has this practice become, that people of high repute not only commit this crime, but do not even blush to speak boastingly among their intimates of the deed, and the means of accomplishing it.
Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass., at a meeting of the Social Science Association, Boston, entitled "Wanted—More Mothers," remarked "that the increase of population for twenty-five years has been mainly in cities and towns, and it will be found to be largely made up of foreign element; and in the smaller villages, chiefly American, the stock has hardly increased at all.
"We find there are absolutely more deaths than births among the strictly American children; so that, aside from immigration, and births of children of foreign parentage, the population of Massachusetts is really decreasing.
"Another fact developed by report is, that whereas, in 1765, nearly one-half of the population of Massachusetts was under fifteen years of age, it is believed that, at the present time, not more than one-fifth of the purely American population is under that age. In an equal number of American and foreign families, the births will be nearly three times as many in the latter as in the former. In some of the old towns, the records of a hundred years do not show a single instance of a married couple without children. The New York census of 1865 shows that, out of nine hundred and ninety-three thousand two hundred and thirty-six married women, one hundred and thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and forty-five had no children, and three hundred and thirty-three thousand only had one or two.
"In the small town of Billerica, there are ninety families with ten or more children; five of these had fourteen, and one twenty-one: the total in the ninety families is ten hundred and ninety-three. The birth-rates show that American families do not increase at all, and the inspection of the registration in other States shows that the same remark applies to all."
Many parts of Vermont are undergoing a gradual depopulation. Sandgate had a population of 1,187 in 1810, and 805 in 1860.
The town of Rupert had a population of 1,848 in 1800, which had diminished to 1,103 in 1860.
The town of Arlington was settled in the year 1762. In the year 1800 all the arable and pasturage land was occupied, and the inhabitants numbered 1,569. In 1830 the number had decreased to 1,207, and in 1860 to 1,146.
Mrs. A. B. Boone says, in her book "The Increase of Crime," "I have frequently heard women say 'I don't mind having one or two children, but no more for me.' When I first heard these expressions I thought it merely a joke, but eventually I found out they meant what they said, and I was amazed. And when these women do condescend to have one or two children, what sort of a lifelong inheritance are they giving their offspring? ill-health even unto death. Frequently I come in contact with women of thirty, and even twenty-five, so debilitated that they are far more fit for hospitals than to fill the sacred office of either wife or mother.
"I am sorry to add that the crime of child-murder is carried on to the greatest extent among the wealthy. In Cambridgeport, a medical lady informed me that she was continually applied to for this purpose, and always refused in the most decided manner; but, to her knowledge, one woman performed, on an average, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases in a week. And yet churches abound in this place.
"The Rev. Dr. Todd has written two most truthful lectures, one entitled 'Fashionable Murders,' and the other 'A Cloud with a Dark Lining.' His revelations with regard to the determination that the Americans evince not to have children, is fearfully true, more especially among the women.
"Speaking of having children, reminds me of a circumstance that happened some fifteen years ago. I had a letter of introduction to a lady who wished to engage my children to read at a party she was about to give. She received me with an air of melancholy politeness, at the same time informing me that the gathering was postponed, as dear little Fanny was 'real sick.' I saw a wine-glass and teaspoon on the table by the side of the sofa, which had a small blanket on it bound with sky-blue ribbon, covering up something that I supposed to be a sick child. I approached, and gently drew aside the blanket. I jumped back—it was a poodle-dog, whose black eyes winked at me as if about to cry: a sort of appeal for sympathy shone in its glowing orbs. I was almost convulsed with laughter, it was so unexpected. When able to speak, I said, 'Pardon me, madam, for laughing; but I thought it was a baby.' She replied indignantly, 'Oh, dear, no! I never had a baby; nor I don't want one either!' And it would be a blessing, I say, if such women as these never became mothers. When I was a young girl, and heard people say they hated children, and saw them fondling dogs, and feeding kittens with a spoon because the old cat was too weak to attend to so many, and knew, at the same time, that poor human mothers were compelled (just as slaves once were) to separate from their husbands and children when poverty demanded that they should go into the 'Union,' or, rather, Disunion—I say, when I pondered on these things, thoughts would flit through my mind, whether, when death severed the body from the souls of these people, that their spirits were not instantly infused into cats and dogs, and that they came back in those shapes as a penance for their brutality to mankind, and their loving-kindness to brutes. However, we never went to the party. The woman remarked to a friend that she thought me devoid of all feeling, to laugh at a little, sick, innocent dog!
"Three doors from the rooms I lived in is the stylish house of Dr. and Mrs. Grindle, where there are hundreds of 'fashionable murders' committed yearly. And twice the papers have teemed with accounts of the unhappy mothers dying, and on the last occasion the child was not to be found, although born alive—and nothing done to either the doctor or his lady!"
A gentleman of one of the smaller towns of Connecticut writes to the Independent as follows: "I have just read, with great interest, your editorial on the 'Murder of Helplessness.' The paper will go into hundreds of families where the crime is practised, to bear witness against it; for, thank God, it is fashionable to take the Independent. For more than a year it has been on my mind to write to you upon this question. You will have the thanks of every well-wisher of the human race. But you make a great mistake when you speak of the crime of fœticide as being confined to the large cities. It prevails all over the country. I dare not tell you what I know—and the information has been given me unsolicited—in reference to this horrid practice in the land. I do not believe there is a village in the New England States but this crime is practised more or less. There are men who make it their business, with medicine and instruments, to carry on this slaughter. And even M.D.'s (physicians) in good and regular standing in the church have practised it. Men are making here, in this highly moral State, $3,000 and $4,000 a year in the small towns alone, at this business. Their patients are from the highly religious and fashionable to the low and vicious. Their scale of charges is according to the cupidity and size of purse of the victims. Delicate females go, in the dead of night, dressed in masculine attire, to avoid detection, to obtain the means to hide their shame. The cause of the evil lies in 'lust, which is as near to the murder as fire to smoke.' The demoralization of the people at large, in the practice of licentiousness, furnishes a topic of the greatest anxiety to the philanthropist. When American women lose their shame, the race is lost—church-membership is no bar. The continence of man and the chastity of woman is the only hope."
Trustworthy physicians assure us there are not less than sixty ghouls (gules) in New York City, who grow rich by killing infants. We have seen the number stated at six times sixty. Those who have passed through Fifth Avenue, New York, must have noticed a magnificent dwelling, or rather palace, in the neighborhood of the Central Park. It was built by a certain doctress who has acquired her wealth by the murder of helpless innocents.
The unhappy victims of these ghouls are not generally of the low and debased sort. Most of these illegitimate mothers are of the educated classes, many of them, shocking to say, under the age of fifteen; many of them delicate, sensitive females, who make use of these unhallowed means to hide their shame from the eyes of their friends and relatives.
The number of marriages (outside the Catholic Church) has largely decreased within the past few years. The crime of infanticide is largely increasing. A certain species of it is practised in the first families, and the drugs and implements for