REARING OR FAMILIES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 156, 20 July 1937, Page 8

REARING OR FAMILIES

State Must Help To Raise Birth-Rate One of the mosfc important issuei before any civilised country to-day was that of population, s-aid Mr. J. Hargest, M.P., in an address to a meeting of women in Timaru. It was a striking fact, he said, that whereas in 1916, with a population of 1,099,000, there were 28,000 births, last year, with a population of 1,500,000, births numbered only 23,000. New Zealand had lost 17,000 lives in the Great War, but the difference between the birth-rate now and in 1916 meant that the Dominion was losing the lives of 17,000 potential citizens in 15 months. Any future Govcrnment must make early marriage Und the rearing of f amilies attraqtive to women. That had been done in Germany, where the birthrrate had xisen from 14.6 a thousand in three or four years, mainly by the settlement of large areas of new country, the draining of ' swamp areas, and inducement to young people to marry early by giving interpst-free loans for setting up homes and by the cancelling of one-quarter of those loans on the birth of each child. " In this country wo can do much the same thing," said Mr. Hargest, "It cannot be done without money. Neither can we settle people on the land without demanding that ' land suitable for settlement should be used for that purpose.-'' One of the difficulties facing women who were housekeepers to-day was the rapid increase in the cost of living, which was cancelling out tlio f benefits of the wage increases to workers. Already in the first 18 months of the present Goveirnment'a life, the cost of living had almost overshadowed the wages increases and, as had always happened in the past, wages would lag behind soaring prices.