A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9290, 11 August 1920, Page 4

A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

"Here we are, 500,000 English women, and not a man to marry us!" was the legend of a famous "Punch" • cartoon of a generation ago. The latest census in England, that of 1911, showed 1073 women for every 1000 men; and now we have a statement made by Dr, Murray Leslie before the Institute of Hygiene, in London, that the disproportion of the sexes has grown to such an extent that there are now in England 1 and 2,000,----000 more females than males. From a eugenic point of view, the lecturer found that the late war had been a greater disaster than the Black Death, which carried off 25,000,000 people in the Middle Ages, because the men killed in the war were just those who should have been husbands and fathers. Another cause for the disparity between the sexes was the greater mor-, i tality among male babies; another was the tide of emigration from the Bri--1 tish Islands. Discussing various remedies, Dr. Leslie went so far as to suggest that Princess Mary and other royal princesses should set the fashion iof adopting boy babies. An increasing number or England's physically and 1 intellectually fittest women had been t forced into the labour market, and thus the nation' was 'deprived of the i best potential mothers. The domestic type oi wonian still formed the bulk in the industrial classes, but was becoming rarer' every day in 1 the middle and upper classes'. he ' said, '.'has the,social bnqterfly type been so prevalent as 'it is^ now—even more numerous thai*- affter the>'Napoleonic wars, ft con^m's a large, proportionof, jj physically attractive girls who are forever -vying with one another for the scarce and elusive male." The lecturer oft'oi'ed no solutionfor the woman difficulty, , in, England ü beyond, though lie pointed out'that in most of the British dominions 'the war „ha/i brought about a preponderance" oiV women hardly less awkward'tilan that

in England itselfiv