THE BIRTH-RATE

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 40, 16 August 1916, Page 2

THE BIRTH-RATE

ENCOURAGING PARENTHOOD

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 29th June,

The National Council of Public Morals brought before the President of the Local Government Board at a deputation yesterday the report of the Commission on the decline of the birth-rate, a private body which has just made public the findings of a two years' enquiry.

In commenting on the report, Dean Inge said the investigators had been careful in framing their recommendations to take, account of human nature as. it was. As mere moralists they might have made suggestions which would have been impracticable and mischievous. They only made one definite suggestion— namely, that the. use of certain drugs1 which were almost exclusively used for purposes of abortion should be forbidden. They warmly supported the findings of the Royal Commission on ■ venereal disease, but expressed the opinion that until the public mind more fully disapproved of.the evils which were mainly responsible for disseminating such disease, the diseases themselves would largely remain unmanageable. Two of the. urgent needs pointed to by the enquiry were better and . easier housing conditions and a better adjustment of the burdens of taxation in favour of parentage. The large and socially valuable middle-class especially needed consideration of this sort.

Dr. Mary Scharleb urged that there should be enforcement, of' registration not merely of births but also of miscarriages and of still births. Middle-class people of small means should be permitted to write off educational expenses in their income-tax returns as they were permitted now to write off insurance; or there should be some means whereby parents should receive a subvention for the education of their children over fourteen years of age to enable them to get a satisfactory start in life.

Dr. Gai-vie, Principal of New College, Hampstead, said the reckless poor did not limit their families, but the prudent, even of well-to-do classes, were more and more practising restriction. It was necessary to improve the circumstances and character of the. poor, so that they would not incur the responsibilities of. parentage without the means of meeting its demands: and the difficulties and anxieties of the middle class must be so mitigated that they would feel glad to accept the blessings of parentage. It would be folly to encourage an increase of numbers without an improvement' in quality. THE GOVERNMENT REPLY. Mr. Walter Long,1 in a non-committal reply, said he had always felt that the Chancellor of the Exchequer lost a very useful.and proper source of income when lie allowed bachelors to pay the same sort of taxation as married men paid. (Hear, hear.) Any proposal which tended to relieve those who paid any portion of their incomes in caring for their chil-| dren would receive his support, and he would bring the matter before the Chancellor. Another proposal concerned emigration, or as he preferred to call it, " migration," a question which he had studied for a quarter of a century. It 1 was essential, and it had never been more so than »t the present moment, that our great race should extend and grow and cover the globe. We had had in this war a most wonderful'illustration of what the British ra.ee could do for the flag. In Canada there was room for a hundred miliop people: in Australia there was room for millions, and in South Africa there was magnificent territory from Capetown almost to the Zambesi. We must rear the children who were to be the men and women to occupy these lands in the future. We heartiW agreed that there might, be a Central Emigration Board, under which the work of migration might be co-ordinated and' •properly directed.