CHAPTER IX.
THE KNOWLTON PAMPHLET.
The year 1877 dawned, and in its early days began a struggle which, ending in victory all along the line, brought with it pain and anguish that I scarcely care to recall.

An American physician, Dr.Charles Knowlton, convinced of the truth of the teaching of the Rev.Mr.
Malthus, and seeing that that teaching had either no practical value or tended to the great increase of prostitution, unless married people were taught to limit their families within their means of livelihood--wrote a pamphlet on the voluntary limitation of the family.

It was published somewhere in the Thirties--about 1835, I think--and was sold unchallenged in England as well as in America for some forty years.

Philosophers of the Bentham school, like John Stuart Mill, endorsed its teachings, and the bearing of population on poverty was an axiom in economic literature.

Dr.Knowlton's work was a physiological treatise, advocating conjugal prudence and parental responsibility; it argued in favour of early marriage, with a view to the purity of social life; but as early marriage between persons of small means generally implies a large family, leading either to pauperism or to lack of necessary food, clothing, education, and fair start in life for the children, Dr.Knowlton advocated the restriction of the number of the family within the means of subsistence, and stated the methods by which this restriction could be carried out.