SIR JOSEPH'S BABY IDEA

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 20 November 1914, Page 2

SIR JOSEPH'S BABY IDEA

The, world is made up of men and mice, some with funny ideas.

Sir Joseph Ward's latest idea to catch the women's vote is to bribe them with a five-pound note with 3 per cent added, for every child born (after a given date) and 14 years after present the child, if alive, with the huge sum *of £7 ! History does not state if the child shall be legitimate or otherwise. Thus the Clutha Leader :—" Sir Joseph keeps his best scheme —his trump card —up his sleeve for the last, however. He is to increase the birth rate of the Dominion by a very simple expedient. ' I propose on the registration of the birth of every child in New Zealand £5 should be placed to the credit of the child in the P.O. Savings Bank, and that the amount should remain in for a period of 14 years and carrying compound interest at the rate of 3 per cent assessed annually. The State would have the use of the money for the 14 years, and this scheme should not only have effect on the birth rate of the Dominion, but should be a direct incentive to thrift. This reads more like comic opera that the sober statement of a politician of Sir Joseph's standing, and is surely the result of an immature idea. Sir Joseph actually pretends he is to assist struggling parents to rear their families by giving—when the child reaches 14 years, and not before —each child a sum which will amount, with the added interest, to a little over £7. That Sir Joseph, or any of his party, believes that such a scheme will ' increase the birth rate ' is very hard to believe. In the whole ' policy' .this gem is about the only thing that is new; there seems to be a striving after effect —a playing to the gallery —but stripped of its high-falutin' and its wrappings of words the long-looked-for policy of the Liberals as declared by their illustrious leader may be summed up as ' much cry and little wool.' "