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ROOSEVELT, Theodore. Typed letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt"), as President, to Rev. Charles C. Smith, Washington, 24 January 1906. 3½ pages, 4to, White House stationery, five words added in T.R.'s hand.
ABORTION, BIRTH-CONTROL AND FAMILY PLANNING: "NO MAN WHO IS BOTH INTELLIGENT AND DECENT CAN DIFFER WITH ME"
An extraordinarily forceful Roosevelt letter, touching on his deep concerns about the morality and "virility" of the American "race" and indeed the fate of western civilization. T. R. goes ballistic on a Nebraska minister over policies of abortion, birth control and family planning. "Men may differ about the tariff, or about currency, or about expansion; but the man who questions the attitude I take in this matter is, I firmly believe, either lacking in intelligence or else lacking in character." Rev. Smith has the misfortune to be one of those dissenters: "The attitude you seem tentatively inclined to favor is one of astounding folly as well as of astounding immorality. To advocate artificially keeping families small, with its inevitable attendants of pre-natal infanticide, of abortion, with its pandering to self-indulgence, its shirking of duties, and its enervation of character, is quite as immoral as to advocate theft or prostitution, and is even more hurtful in its folly, from the standpoint of the ultimate welfare of the race and the nation." Smith, evidently, registered his support of "certain French thinkers" (as Roosevelt calls them) who maintained that fewer children receiving closer parental attention would be better than large families. T. R. is having none of it. The French birthrate is stalling, he points out, and "frightful moral and physical evils have followed in its train."
"I have taken the time to write you," Roosevelt says, "because I think from your letter that you, a minister of the Gospel, are in imminent danger of adopting a position both vicious and foolish--a position which would make your influence baleful to the state, and a deep discredit to the church." Deliberately limiting family sizes--particularly among the upper classes as Smith suggests--"would mean the speedy collapse of this republic and of western civilization...Character counts more than intellect; and character, in any true sense, is wholly wanting in people who practice such a course of conduct."
ABORTION, BIRTH-CONTROL AND FAMILY PLANNING: "NO MAN WHO IS BOTH INTELLIGENT AND DECENT CAN DIFFER WITH ME"
An extraordinarily forceful Roosevelt letter, touching on his deep concerns about the morality and "virility" of the American "race" and indeed the fate of western civilization. T. R. goes ballistic on a Nebraska minister over policies of abortion, birth control and family planning. "Men may differ about the tariff, or about currency, or about expansion; but the man who questions the attitude I take in this matter is, I firmly believe, either lacking in intelligence or else lacking in character." Rev. Smith has the misfortune to be one of those dissenters: "The attitude you seem tentatively inclined to favor is one of astounding folly as well as of astounding immorality. To advocate artificially keeping families small, with its inevitable attendants of pre-natal infanticide, of abortion, with its pandering to self-indulgence, its shirking of duties, and its enervation of character, is quite as immoral as to advocate theft or prostitution, and is even more hurtful in its folly, from the standpoint of the ultimate welfare of the race and the nation." Smith, evidently, registered his support of "certain French thinkers" (as Roosevelt calls them) who maintained that fewer children receiving closer parental attention would be better than large families. T. R. is having none of it. The French birthrate is stalling, he points out, and "frightful moral and physical evils have followed in its train."
"I have taken the time to write you," Roosevelt says, "because I think from your letter that you, a minister of the Gospel, are in imminent danger of adopting a position both vicious and foolish--a position which would make your influence baleful to the state, and a deep discredit to the church." Deliberately limiting family sizes--particularly among the upper classes as Smith suggests--"would mean the speedy collapse of this republic and of western civilization...Character counts more than intellect; and character, in any true sense, is wholly wanting in people who practice such a course of conduct."