Britain Warned of Peril of Falling Birthrate

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 300, 1 December 1936, Page 3

Britain Warned of Peril of Falling Birthrate

LORD lIORDER “UNMOVED”

While Dr, E. P- Poulton was declaring at the British Association at Blackpool that Britain should follow Italy’s and Germany’s lead and encourage larger families, Lord Border, Physician-in-Ordinary to the King, was telling othe’- delegates that the falling birthrate left him “unmoved.” "I am more concerned with quality than quantity,” explained Lord Border and went on to tell us how quality can be improved. Fear he denounced as the archenemy. There was need for leisure for all “who grunt and sweat under a weary life.” “I see little hope for the people of this country through a mass movement —Fascism or Communism,” he added. “I hold the view it is not too much science, but too little science that has "We need not drive the car so fast that it kills nor make a loudspeaker so loud that it deafens. Science was made for man and not man for science. The one thing that really matters is control.” But- Dr. E. P. Poulton, of London, took another view of the birth-rate problem. He warned his listeners that at the present rate the population of England and Wales in 200 years will bo only 6,ooo,ooo—half the present population of London. A family of four or five is apt to be regarded in middle class circles as not quite the thing—if not actually indecent, he commented. It would be advisable for us to follow the lead of Germany and Italy in encouraging larger families, although it might be argued that six million would be a more suitable population than forty-five millions.

"The strain of modern civilisation, with the inducements towards an even more luxurious standard of living among the middle classes, must be held responsible for this serious state of affairs,” he declared. Analysis of the psychology of unemployment has brought Mr C. A. Oakley, of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, to the conclusion that men in the thirties feel it most, and in those critical years sometimes become very embittered. The extent to which family relationships were upset by unemployment was not commonly realised. “I often wonder,” he said, "what are the various consequences of, for instance, the lowering of the father’s status before his children.” Mr S. R. Dennison, of Manchester University, who held that little had been achieved in attracting new industries to depressed areas, declared that while State control of the location of industry may involve economic loss, this .would be balanced by social gains.