FRENCH BIRTHRATE

Evening Star, Issue 12674, 30 November 1905, Page 8

FRENCH BIRTHRATE

Every country has its own particular trouble", some deep-seated disease, for which the best practitioners fail to find a remedy. In England it is the Army problem, and a hundred years of treatment have left 'lie evil as malignant as before. In France it is depopulation, which is eating out the nation's heart, in defiance of doctors. Some time ago an extra-Parliamentary Commission, the French equivalent of the English Royal Commission, and equally long-winded and inconclusive, was appointed to diagnose the disease and prescribe a remedy, which might be pigeon-holed in the usual way. The Comm ssion have got through their work (says the 'Standard's' Paris correspondent) with a despatch we must admire and ought to emulate, and the conclusions of the reporter, M. Yves Guyot, are before the public. It was easy to suggest the means of relieving minor troubles connected with and aggravating the disease —infant mortality, overcrowding, and the rest. The report will not be challenged on that ground, but the medicine prescribed bv M. Yves Guyot for the greater evil will cause many a wry face. M. Yves Guyot is a Freetrader, and his anti-tariff remedies wit', be received with as much favor in this country of Protectionists as the prescription of a homoeopathic quack in consultation with allopathists. " Everything which tends to limit the demand for labor, and consequently to lower wages, encourage strikes, make life harder, and increase fictitiously the price of necessities, is an economic obstacle to the development of the population." It would he difficult to contest that principle, but M. Guyot advances on to debatable ground when he' lays it down that only an infinites mul portion of the working people of France derive any benefit from the Protectionist regime, and that the remainder suffer by it. "Our economic system, ly restricting the demand for labor and lowering wages, has a depressive effect on he population." As wages are comparatively high in. France, M. Guyot probab'y means that the purchasing power is restricted. He contends that the price of commodities is increased by every farthing of taxation or import duty imposed, and that the whole of the thirty-two millions produced by the duties on breadfituffs and meats is pure loss, though M. Meline argues differently, and it does seem certain that the money would have to come out of some pocket. Briefly, tariff reform, and a return to prices resulting fiorn unrestricted competition are the rcmcdi<.s which M. Yves Guyot believes would do most to cure the evil of depopulation, "We have the right to demand full scope for our activity, and it is the duty of the Government to ensure that we get it. Thus the economic obstacle would disappear which places our countrymen in the alternative either of restricting the number of their children, or of running the risk of being unable to bring them up under decent and proper conditions." The 'Temps,' commenting on the report, ays that France is not the only country* which in a prey to Protectionism. Many States, in spite of high tariffs, still continue "o show large increases in population. Why. the 'Temps' asks, i 6 that the case when the conditions are the same as in France? Evidently M. Guyot's chain of evidence is not complete, and he must make it so with links of no uncertain strength if his conclusions are to be accepted without demur.