TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3105, 30 January 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

IMMIGRATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT. New Zealand is still very much unpopulated ; there is an enormous area of land yet unsettled and uncultivated, and there is ample scope for the investment of capital in the development of mineral and industrial resources. To utilise these resources more people and more capital are wanted, and every man who comes out here with a little money and settles on the land is helping to establish the prosperity of the country on a surer and a more lasting basis. One immigrant with £2OO and a heart big enough to tackle a bush section will contribute more to prosperity and the solvency of the country, remarks a Christchurch paper, than ten co-oper-ative labourers, temporarily employed out of borrowed money, which will all have to be repaid some time or other, probably when the co-operative labourer is comfortably drawing his old age pension and the erstwhile bush settler has a highly-improved farm fnr a Labour Government to tax.

MUNICIPAL COTTAGE BATHS. A new movement in the provision of bath facilities for the poor districts of large centres in England is now in progress. The first town to initiate tht scheme was Brighton, where a number of old buildings in the slum districts were purchased, and fitted up for both sexes. A purely nominal charge is made, and for this the parents ca'i participate in the pleasure of a bath, together with their family. The lacest city to adopt the idea is Birmingham, though similar estaDlishments have been in operation in Liverpool, Manchester, and one or two other towns, but not quite upon the same lines. As the title implies, the principle is the erection or purchase of existing small houses situated in the poor neighbourhoods, and equipping them with baths. No swimming-bath is attached, but the ordinary slipper oe other tvpes ».re provided. Hot and cold water,, together with soap and towels, are available for a humble coin, so that the luxury of a douche is brought within the reach of all. That the development is appreciated is borne out by the success that has attended the enterprises already in service, and it is an enterprise that might be advantageously extended to all our large centres to the welfare of the commu.iity in general. It involves but initial outlay *"o acquire the necessary buildings or even to construct special establishments, which need be of the most formal description, and to equip them with the necessary fittings.

RACE SUICIDE. The steadily progressiva decline in the birlh-rate of France is a subject of constant preoccupation among political economists, says Renter's Paris correspondent. "Certainly a statistical review of the situation, published in 'Opinion/ by M. de Foville, member of the Institute, and president of the Academy for Moral Sciences and Political Economy, accentuates the national gravity of the question. The latest figures prove that France as a nation is slowly but surely dying. In 100 years the birthrate has fallen from 32 per 1,000 to 19.7, and at the present moment, for the first time in history, and in I France alone among nations, the deaths exceed the births. Since the twentieth century negan the decline has continued at the following alarming rate:—-Excess of births over deaths. ,1902, 84,000; i 903, 73,000; 1904;' 57,000; 1905, 37,000; 1906, 27,000. Last year, 1907, zero was reached and passed. There were 20,000 more deaths than births. The official returns are 794,000, and 774,000, under these respective heads. The word 'depopulation,' M. de Foville points.out, is, therefore, no exaggeration. Is it, he asks, the beginning of the end? At this rate France will soon be ripe for invasion. It is the only fate awaiting a country which is capable of supporting 80,000,000 inhabitants, and is content with half that number. In 1875 the population of Germany surpassed that of France by 6,000,000; it now exceeds it by over 20,000,000. In another twenty years there will be two Germans for every Frenchman, without counting the sons of the Fatherland scattered all over the globe by emigration. 'Thus France," concludes M. de Foville, "is marching with quickened step to her doom.' "