MORE MATRIMONY. Fewer Children.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 165, 29 August 1903, Page 8

MORE MATRIMONY. Fewer Children.

NEW ZEALAND politicians are at present going deeply into many questions. They have discussed baimaids and totahsators, which tieasuied institutions lemain where they weie. They have spent a good deal ot time on the all-important question of an elective executive, and the old faith is still unbroken and the old system will still prevail. They have talked about the disfigurement of romantic rocks by the peregrinating advertiser, and young politicians, who are positively aching to save their bleeding country, want new Ministers who will do as the joung levolutionanes desue Oh, well, the country is. prosperous, and can afford to pay for nothingness. An evidence of the exceeding prosperity is the enormous increase in marriages. In times of trouble, the marriage rate sank woefully. Therefore, the be&t asset the countiy could haye — children — were few Then came the fat yeais, the sort of jears that we are having now, and people with lots of sa\ ed cash got manned Here was the solution of the defective population question. Yes ? In the lean years the marriage per centage was 5.90 per thousand, and with the coming of overwhelming prosperity it rose to 8.01 per thousand. * * *■ And the childien? The children bom during the fat yeais and the years dm ing which marriages increased were appallingly fewer than they were during the lean years and the lower marriage rate. Wherefore? None can say. Not even our new Ms.H.R. Either the people are purposely avoiding their responsibilities, or the fecundity of the New Zealander is impaired for some unknown reason. Were the whole of

the business of the country set aside, including the licensing question, which the enthusiasts deem to be the one block in the path of progress, and the remainder of the session occupied in discussing this, the most important question of all, the time would not be wasted. * * * Othea countries have faced the question. In France, wheie the infant mortality has been large, the State undertook to rear physically weak children scientifically. The question is being thrashed out in England, where the natural increase is less than formerly. In New Zealand, wheie the physique of the people is a boast, the proportion of child weaklings is small. Those that are born have a better chance of surviving than those of almost any other country. But they are not born in sufficient numbers, and the fact is a dread menace to our position as a young nation, and, perhaps, to oui ultimate existence. t * *■ This decrease is so marked, and so incessant, that one cannot comfort oneself with the thought that it is a temporary freak of nature. It is notable that well-nurtured, intellectual people usually have fewer children than the average man who has to work hard, and subsist from hand to mouth. As the olass distinction is not in great evidence in New Zealand, and as the majority of the people have equal educational advantages, the march of culture may make us a childless nation. * * ¥■ The craze of the age is for novelty and distraction. The woman who is for ever itching to become a politician, and who would regard motherhood as a handicap to social or political ambition, is increasing. Many men tacitly subscribe to the ideas of many modern women, and it is bad for the nation that will not provide for posterity by arresting the decline of the birth-rate. Here is a subject worthy of any man's study. The man who can supply a solution of the decreasing population menace is worthy of the highest place in the esteem of the people.