POINTS FROM LETTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 238, 7 October 1936, Page 12

POINTS FROM LETTERS.

'GOING ON REFRESHED. A leading article, "Coming to a Standstill," provided me with material for rumination. Accepting the population records quoted as substantially collect and showing unmistakable decline, to know the cause might suggest a remedy. If we want population merely with a view to bragging we have more to the square mile than some other hungry people elsewhere, the desire is stupid, as would be a desire to acquire money where nothing could be bought with it. The birth-rate could be substantially increased if more consideration were given to the thousands of young men and young women willing and anxious to marry, who for economic reasons postpone* matrimony years longer than they otherwise would. The basis of competitive industry tends toward the frustration of their hopps of adult life. How many firms dismiss employees of both sexes as soon as age qualifies them for remuneration befitting the adult? It is a sliort-siglited and anti-social policy, unbecoming to industrial leaders with any pretentions to religion or patriotism or professing the goodwill which one trusts is genuine, though possibly benighted. The people quite naturally desire a higher standard of life, and science and invention have made it possible; if more people can bo bred to enjoy that standard, so much the better for all of us, and the chief barrier to that end seems to be the frustrative effect of old economic ideas; overemphasis on the art of living at the other fellow's expense and forgetfulness of the art of living joyously together. E. MORTON.