Birth control brought
wealth to US

Editor, Asheville Global Report,

It should come as no surprise that in the third world, many people, especially policy makers, look at United States economic successes and wish to emulate those successes in their own countries. To do this, most people look at our history. Something happened, early in the 20th century, in the United States, which resulted in an unprecedented increase in our standard of living.

But here is where I believe our history books are misleading. Most of them credit inventiveness and industrial development under capitalism, with people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford for the events which brought USians wealth. But someone else lived around the same time, who I believe deserves far more of the credit and the emulation than she receives. Her name is Margaret Sanger and she was instrumental in bringing birth control into widespread use.

It is birth control and not industry which deserves the headline of history. It was birth control that made the United States a powerful and prosperous nation, and it is Margaret Sanger and her birth control that deserves to be emulated by the world.

It sometimes seems too obvious to try to explain how birth control made such a huge economic contribution, but here goes. If industry had developed in the absence of birth control, the US population would have grown as fast as the economy. The early wealth which was produced by industry would have been absorbed by the rapidly growing population. Once this wealth was absorbed, it could not have been reinvested to produce more industry. The momentum would have died and our standard of living would still be at 1910 levels or below. In fact, the 19th century had some inventions and industrial development, yet in spite of massive US territorial growth, the increase in our forefathers’ standard of living was marginal compared to that of the 20th century. Before Sanger, we achieved little while consuming far more land, even with industrial growth. After Sanger, we achieved much more with continued industrial growth but diminished territorial growth. The achievement correlates to Sanger, not to industry or territory.

Alan Ditmore
Leicester, North Carolina