That Victorian/Edwardian idealization of children we talked about in our discussion of the Beautiful Garden of Children had one little problem. Not all children were clean, well-dressed, middle or upper-class kids out for a walk with nanny. There were also those poor kids…and stuffy Victorians didn't really like to lump in those grubby rugrats when they thought about how cute and sweet kids are.

Yeah: in case you hadn't gotten the memo, the Victorian and Edwardian eras were super messed-up.

Immediately following her description of the beautiful garden, Sanger says,

And always—remember this—you have got to fight weeds. You cannot have a garden, if you let weeds overrun it. (17-18)

Weeds, or poor kids. We've heard it both ways.

Sanger gives us another way to think about it:

Trainload after trainload—many unwelcome, unwanted, unprepared for, unknown, without baggage, without passports, most of them without pedigrees. (24)

Sanger describes the emergency measures well-meaning people take to deal with this, and unites her two metaphors (weeds and trainloads) to describe why it's not enough.

But still trainloads of children keep on coming—human weeds crop up that spread so fast in this sinister struggle for existence, that the overworked committee becomes exhausted, inefficient and can think of no way out. (27).

Whoa there, Sanger. Not only have you clearly never heard about the folly of mixed metaphors (trains and weeds, really?) but your ideas are hideously racist and classist. And you were doing so well.