TOWARDS SMALLER PEOPLES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 150, 28 June 1930, Page 24

TOWARDS SMALLER PEOPLES

POPULATION1 WItL FALL SAYS-INGB

There is a widespread opinion that the family,- as wo have known it, is in. process of breaking up. In support of this view wo are asked to consider the now economic independence of women ai>4 ♦'iris, the steady increase of divorce, and tho spread of birth-control, which not only makes deliberate childless marriages common, but facilitates irregular unions such as the so-called eompaniate marriages in America, writes Dean Inge in tho "Eevning Standard." I do.not agree with these alarmists.' Statistics show that marriage is not declining. It is, on the contrary, becoming inoro popular. The percentage of women above the age of fifteen who are married is higher in England and Wales than it was before the war. t :'lt is not likely that an institution \Vhich is older not only than Christianity, but than humanity itself, is in any danger. Even tho anthropoid apes practise monogamous marriage. Promiscuity is contrary to Nature, and would probably be destructive, of any society which adopted it. Nevertheless, great changes arc in. progress. Until rocent times tho wife exhausted her strength by bearing from ' ton to fifteen children, of whom in many families less than half liyed to grow np. This dismal- procession' of cradles and coffins prevented tho married woman from earning money on her. own .account, and almost debarred her from having any active life outside the borne. Now tho average married couplo, except in tho slums, regulate the number of their children on rational grounds, and in very many cases tho wife goes out to work and contributes regularly to the family budget. Tho mechanisation of production has deprived the woman of the homo industries which , formerly occupied hor time when she was not looking after her husband and children; but she has found a new scope for her energies in the outside labour niarket. Very many unmarried girls have done tho same, and their work often obliges thorn no longer to live under their parents' roof. In a sense this may be

called a break-up of tho family, since formerly mothers counted on the society and help of their daughters until i they married. Whether we like it or not, the movement is world-wide, and has come to stay. It has indeed been forced upon us. We are now beginning to understand tho^mcaning and causes of unemployment. It' 13 an international problem. Thero aro at present threo million unemployed in tho tJnited States, which is bursting with' prosperity, and two million in Germany, where the "rationalisation" of industry has been organised with characteristic thoroughness. We must find someexplanation which will account for the appearance of tho same trouble in three great nations, tho conditions of which are. widely different. I do not think that there can be much doubt about the answer. The two main causes are the displacement of hand labour by machinery and tho employment of women as wage-earners. An American railroad announces that it has dispensed with all switchmen and brakesmen "One skilled man, sitting in a tower, does the work of five hundred." The employment of women has certainly driven hundreds,of thousands of ineu out of work. If I sco aright into tho future, we are moving towards a state of society in which tho optimum population will be much smaller than it is at present, a state in which rough .manual labour, and much skilled labour too, will have been superseded, a state in which thero need bo no poverty, but in which the claas of manual labourers will bo much less numerous and less politically powerful than it is now. - if I am right, we must acquiesce in and even welcome a shrinking population, for we cannot resist the inevitable trend of social evolution. But this does not mean the break-up of the family. It will mako marriage much more attractive to an intelligent woman, who wishes to have two or three, children, but not to bo a mere domestic drudge.