The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-08-21
WIFE MURDER vs. RACE SUICIDE

WIFE MURDER VS. RAGE SUICIDE.
 President Roosevelt's action of Au- gust 3, 1903, in sending a three hundred dollar check to MT. and Mrs. William H.
 Signet, of PIttsburg, Pa, on the occa-
 sion of the birth of their twentieth eshild, taken in connection with his re- Ecent California reference to "crops of
 children his action of March 3, 1903, in
 congratulating George Cunningham ofl Gloucester City, N. J.. on the birth Of
 triplets and his previous letter to Mrs. Van Worst of New York city, advoea-
 ting large families, affords increasing
 evidence of coarseness in the presi-
 dents character which is calculated to create general disgust and aversion.
 The president is welded to a failacy whose prevalence is equaled only by It's far-reaching capacity for evil, namely, that large families are desirable per SC, a fundamental social fallacy about which both education and religion are strangely and culpably silent. Is the
 president so ignorant as not to know
 that mere numbers is the last things that parents should covert, or the n1u- nicipality, or the state, or the nation? Does the not know that one child born l thoroughly well endowed is enough bet l ter for society than ten children born to a life of utter commonness, with the world no better for their having lived?
 Which, pray, does the president rate l higher-Greece, with her small popula- ton and imperishable achievements, or China, with her teeming millions? Ay which will he say is better,-the United States, small in population, but great in | moral strength, the world-power for I liberty and self government; or the
 United State of the twentieth century 1 with population so grown as to en- thrown brute force as the national ideal, l to seek her highest national concern no l longer in social advancement at home, l but in foreign markets and information
 al complications; to sacrifice the high- l est political ideals on the altar of a pi- raticai, conscience-searing, soul-de- l stroying commercialism. ':.~
 I But the chief victim of the presidents s proposed policy would be the woman hood of America, subjecting, as it would, one-half the people to the pas sions of the other half; inhicting in ever-increasing severity "the august martrydom of motherhood" multiply | ing society's chief danger. the unwel- come child; condemning women to a life of toll rendered shameful by the
 unworthiness of those served; abridg- ing for half the people those birthrights of the soul, education and world knowl- edge. On President RooseveIt's theory, woman is not so much human being l as an animal, not so much Gods great agent for the idealization and spiritual ization of life as a factor in the exer-
 else of certain physiological functions common to the brutes. Napoleon l.
 when asked the chief need of France is said to have replied, Mothers, "- Imothers, not in the noble sense in which
 they may indeed be considered the chiei desideratum of society. but mothers tc
 the end that he might have more fight. ing men to sacrifice to his personal az. grandizement. We can we'll imagine
 President Roosevelt echoirg the bruta
 answer of the French emperor. If the
 women of America do not protest lagainst the degredation which the pres. ident of the United States would impose iupon them, they lack the intelligence