Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31st., 1933. POPULATION PROBLEM.

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 October 1933, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31st., 1933. POPULATION PROBLEM.

JLJANY problems face the civilised world, to-day, and not the least is that of population. Birth-rates are dwindling nearly everywhere, despite inducements offered by some States to popularise maternity. The controversy rages hot as to whether this limitation of births is good or evil. It is among the richer and more intelligent classes that the smallest families are found, and many of Ihe children who are brought into the world are unfitted for the struggle before them, and these become a financial and social burden on the community. Thus, it is that sterilisation is increasingly advocated, and what the ultimate development will be, is difficult to predict.

Defenders of small families ba.se their ease on the need for greater consideration for mothers, it being thought wrong to expect them to undergo so often the burden of child-bearing. Economics, too, are. used to prove the greater difficulty, to-day, to feed and clothe the offspring adequately, and to educate and give them a good start in life. .Machinery increasingly displaces human labour, so that serious unemployment has become almost permanent. the greater the rale of population, the greater the competition for what work and earning power are available. In these days of desire for peace and disarmament, the old appeal for many sons to become if necessary, defenders of national rights, has less force. Moreover. it is emphasised that if fewer babies are born, the infantile death rate has decreased more so. thus birth statistics do not tell the whole story.

There is much to be said on the

other side, instinct and national

experience answering some of the < modern theories regarding the size . of families. History recalls what 1 has happened to nations who placed ; self-indulgence before duty, or who ’ allowed themselves to he unduly : outnumbered by aggressive neighbours. Yesterday, was published a cablegram announcing the formation of a society, termed the League of National Life, having for object the urging of more offspring by the middle classes in Britain. The old belief that the ratio of intelligence

and physique was in accordance with the possession of rank or wealth, has been disproved, but it is not in a country’s interests to have its poorest classes prolific and the more educated and better fed comparatively barren. That Britain, for example has cause for introspection regarding its people was recently emphasised by Lord Border, a leading physician, who declared that a national stocktaking had revealed that one person in 120 was feeble-minded, that one in 200 was insane, and that one in ten was over-dull or over-sickly.

The 'suggestion fhat the intelligence of Britain, the United States and other leading countries, w’as declining so rapidly as to endanger civilisation was made by Dr. C. C. Hurst, of Cambridge, addressing the recent conference of the British Association. Intelligence'tests, he said, showed that the genetical grade of an individual could be measured at a tender age, and normally remained constant from childhood to old age. Recent statistics showed that in England, the United States of America, France, Holland and other advanced countries. owing to the rapidly decreasing birth-rate of the more intelligent families, the intelligence index of the population, namely, the percentage of the five high grades, was declining so rapidly as to endanger the safety of modern civilisation. He said that immediate State action on biological lines was necessary. A scheme of family allowances might solve the problem by giving parents of the five higher grades of intelligence educational and maintenance grants for each of their high-grade children. “Such a scheme,” said Dr. Hurst, “would immediately encourage the production of high-grade offspring, and in the course of a generation the intelligence index of the population would be increased. The relatively small amount required to finance it could be found by transferring a small portion of the large grants now expended on individuals of low and mediocre intelligence, which in many cases were of doubtful advantage to the State or the individual. ’ ’