MAN-POWER RACE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4329, 31 August 1937, Page 7

MAN-POWER RACE

, SWADDLING BANDS AND GANNON FODDER RUSSIA'S BABY BOOM SETS PACE Bursting with babies was Moscow—all Russia, in fact—last week (says the Literary Digest' of July 10).' No statistics were needed to prove it lhey were there. They told that the birth-rate—already highest in the world with the exception of Japan's—had doubled in a year. Had there been no figures at all, the most near-sighted stroller of Moscow streets, no matter how seriously preoccupied with the mysteries and multiple deaths at the top among his m \ers, must have noticed that one new generation had arrived at the bottom, and that more babies, babies by the band-wagon load "ere on the way. ' From one end'of Great Russia to the other poured in reports of deludes avalanches, tidal waves of babies The whole Soviet Union from Baltic to Retiring Seas was bulging with babies newly-born or about to be Cause of the glut: One year ago this month the " big family decree " became effective. Abortions, from 1920 to 1926. legal and more easily obtained than boots were banned. Divorces, hitherto encouraged to be acquired with no more difficulty than postage stamps, were frowned' upon taxed, and penalised. Rabies were subsidised. Similar bounties for babies in Germany and Italy were comparatively ineffective. No matter how the Fascist dictators twisted the figures, thev could not conceal the fact that, with all their marriage loans and baby premiums, their birth-rates remained lower than they were before the World War. To bounties, Hitler and Mussolini had added warnings. Said Mussolini: "With a declining birth-rate, a nation does not create an empire, but becomes a colony." Said Htiler: "That country alone has a safe future in which diapers (or swaddling bands) wave beside the national flag. German woman must be willing to give her life on the bed of childbirth just.as our soldiers do on the battlefield." Still, German and Italian birth-rates failed to reach the 1914 level. So vigorous was Russian fecundity, meanwhile, however, that, even with go-as-you-please divorce and legalised abortion offered under State control as a " social service," the population leaped from 130.900,000 to 176.000,000 between 1920 and 1937. In 17 years, Russia's increase, despite easy divorce and free abortions, passed by four millions the whole population of Italy, three-fourths the whole population of Germany, and, at the same rate, was calculated in the eighth Fiveyear Plan to put the Soviet Union above the 300.000,000 mark by 1967. Man-power, utilisable 18 or 20 vears hence, was the preoccupation in all three dictatorship-led States. " We have lost since 1924," mourned II Duce's daily. ' Popolo d'ltalia," "enough babies to comprise 14 army divisions." Next week, Mussolini's countermeasures to give Italy 60,000.000 bv 1950 begin. He had taxed bachelors'. He had given free honeymoon trips to Rome to newly-weds, increased taxes on childless couples, levied l.OOOdol fines for the practice of birth-control, punished abortion by prison, subsidised families after the birth of the seveuth child . . . still, the birth-rate fell. To these measures, promissory and punitive, he adds, beginning on July 5, a wage increase to every worker on the birth of any son, marriage loans to newly-weds ranging from 52.70d0l to 158dol, with 10 per cent, reduction of principal for the first child, 20 per cent, for the second, 30 per cent, for the third, 40 per cent, for the fourth. In Moscow, meanwhile, the big babypush is no unmixed blessing. The maternity hospital building plan, included in the " big family " decree, is proving nowhere near ample for the avalanche of births. Clubs, restaurants, and factory kitchens have had to be requisitioned to take care of the rush, though eight new maternity hospitals are under construction in Moscow alone. A girl who recently obtained a bed in one maternity room found that before she was ready to leave, new beds were being installed in the corridors—and still they came! Women work with men in Moscow's

factories, and the baby-boom is resulting in serious depletion of the personnel as women depart on maternity leaves. Idle machines in the factories— idle harvesting machinery on the farms. From the wheat and tobacco country in Kuban province, equal to Indiana in area and population, come reports that " the coincidence of the two crops —agricultural and human—is a serious obstacle to the harvest." In one collective farm brigade a third of the women are, just as the wheat is yellowing to ripeness, unable to work in the fields because of advanced pregnancy or new-born children. The condition is reported as general. Four million a year was the annual increase during the period of legalised abortions—which admittedly prevented millions of births. This year's figures for the whole country are not yet available. But if, as seems probable, the birth-rate over all Russia is, like that in the districts thus far reported, doubled at the very least, the increase, not in mere birth-rate which might be compensated by deaths, but, in actual population, will be more than 8,000.000. Bad second among world Powers in breeding cannon-fodder babies is Japan, whose rocky, cramped little islands swarm already with 75,000.000, aud whose population is growing at the rate of 1,000,000 a year, with no threats or aids from the Government to spur the rate. Beaten this year in the race with Eussia, Japan last year had the highest birth-rate in the world, when 2.190,000 little slant-eyed babies saw the light in Japan's rice-fields and paper cities, but, in the same year. 1,161,000 died, leaving the actual population growth only slightly over 1,000.000. - Trailing the field among the military powers comes France, still striving to reach a population of 40.000.000 without counting the foreigners within her borders. In five years the increase is but 71,0-15.