Our Race Suicide

New Zealand Tablet, 16 July 1908, Page 9

Our Race Suicide

' In the sweetest bud, The eating canker dwells.'

Race-suicide is the ' eating canker ' which is gnawing at the sweet bud of promise in ' God's own country,' and bringing to our nation, in the days of its youth, the decrepitude which overtakes the land ' Where wealth accumulates and men decay.' Viewed even from the purely economic standpoint, the position is ' sufficiently serious. Thus, the annual report, of the Department of Labor refers to the- manner in which business enterprise is " being cramped through the paucity of hands to do the work, The report speaks of ' a real dearth of manual labor. But,' it ■ adds, ' what is far more important, the Dominion itself will supply less and less for some considerable time. This is owjng to the low birth-rate and to the absence of any labor reserve that can reinforce the depleted ranks of the workers as time removes • them one by one through sickness, age, death, or (in the case of women) by marriage. The birth-rate fell from 41.32 per thousand in 1876-80 to only 27.08 per thousand in 1906. If we take the case of girls of suitable age to work in factories, we find that in New Zealand between the years 1891-96 there was an increase of 21.62 per cent, in the number of girls between fifteen and twenty-one years of age. In the next five years the increase had fallen to 6.77 per cent., and in the five years ended 1906 the rate of increase further fell to 1.26 per cent. ■ In regard to still younger girls, those between five and tenyears of age, the further want of reserve power for our labor. supply is apparent. In 1881-86 there was an increase of girls of the ages mentioned of 24.34 per cent. ; in 1886-91 the increasefell to 1.90 per cent.; in 1891-96 there was a decrease of 0.29, per cent.; in 1895-1901 a decrease of 0.10 per cent.; and in 1901-06 an increase of 4.81 per cent. Even if this latter increase is maintained or added to, it will take a long time to make upfor the " lean years " of the previous decade. '

As a concrete example, the Department's report cites the" fact that 'the average- daily attendance at Dunedin schools fell ~ from 4148 pupils in 1887 to 2882 in 1907. These returns are taken from the report of the Education Board of Otago, and, Jn spite of the large increase of population, show generally a remarkable absence of that class of increase of those from five years of age to fifteen years, useful for training to industrial and commercial life. The figures regarding * the boys are very much on the same lines as those of their sisters. Such figures as the result of twenty years' national .growth absolutely startling to those who have to make provision for the welfare of the people generally. The difficulty may not be evaded or shirked. -Either our industries, instead of expapding, must shrink and disappear, or worked to carry on their industries must be found That there. are few arid fewer recruits available from among the children of the Dominion will appear certain as time goes on, and even if there could be a remarkable filling up of cradles from this moment onwards, it would still take years to close the present vacant spaces in the thin ranks of our children who are now between five and fifteen years of age.' In conneo

tion with the menacing condition of things disclosed by the Labor Department's annual report, we may appropriately quote from an excellent lay sermon delivered some weeks ago by -• President Roosevelt to the members of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. President Roosevelt said in part :

' We admire a good man, but We admire a good woman more. We believe in her more. All honor is due the man who does his full duty in peace, who as a soldier does his full duty in war ; but even more honor is due the mother, for the birth pangs make all men the debtors of all women. No human being has a greater title to respect than the mother who does her full duty, who bears and rears plenty of healthy children so that there shall be national growth and not national decadence, so that in quality and in quantity our people shall increase. The measure of our belief in and respect for the good man and the good woman must be the measure of our condemnation of the man and the woman who, whether from viciousness or selfishness or from vapid folly, fails to do each his or her duty in his or her special sphere. Courage, unselfishness, commonsense, devotion to high ideals, a proper care for .the things of the spirit ', and yet also for the things of the body — these are what we most need to see in our people ; these are the qualities that make up the right type of family life, and these are the qualities that by precept and by example you here, whom I am addressing, are bound to do all in your power to make the typical qualities of American citizenship.'

There, the highest executive officer in the United States' spoke the words of good sense, of, good patriotism, and of good Catholic doctrine. ' 111 fares the land, tb hastening ills a prey,' in which the cult of the human child is replaced by the cult of the bull-pup and the canary.