While the gravest attention is paid to the problem of hunger and food,
that of sex is neglected. Politicians and scientists are ready
and willing to speak of such things as a "high birth rate," infant
mortality, the dangers of immigration or over-population. But with few
exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of Birth Control. Until
they shall have broken through the traditional inhibitions concerning
the discussion of sexual matters, until they recognize the force of the
sexual instinct, and until they recognize Birth Control as the PIVOTAL
FACTOR in the problem confronting the world to-day, our statesmen must
continue to work in the dark. Political palliatives will be mocked
by actuality. Economic nostrums are blown willy-nilly in the unending
battle of human instincts.

A brief survey of the past three or four centuries of Western
civilization suggests the urgent need of a new science to help humanity
in the struggle with the vast problem of to-day's disorder and danger.
That problem, as we envisage it, is fundamentally a sexual problem.
Ethical, political, and economic avenues of approach are insufficient.
We must create a new instrument, a new technique to make any adequate
solution possible.

The history of the industrial revolution and the dominance of
all-conquering machinery in Western civilization show the inadequacy of
political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in population.
The advent of the factory system, due especially to the development
of machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, upset all the
grandiloquent theories of the previous era. To meet the new situation
created by the industrial revolution arose the new science of "political
economy," or economics. Old political methods proved inadequate to keep
pace with the problem presented by the rapid rise of the new machine and