SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3801, 18 January 1927, Page 68

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

LECTURE BY PROFESSOR E. WOOD. On Tuesday night, at the Theosophical Hall, Professor Ernest Wood gave his second lecture on “Social Problems and Their Solution,” which was attended by a large audience. Professor Wood opened his subject by saying that everyone recognised that the body social was full of ills, but people were waiting for time to put matters right, or • for things to right themselves. This they would never dt>, he asserted emphatically, for all that man had of good he. had won for himself by the application of his own intelligence. It was a sad thing that many men regarded our social ills, especially poverty, as a permanency, because they said the population would always multiply to the limit of subsistence; therefore, a good percentage of humanity must live on the starvation line. All facts, in every country, denied this, for, as families advanced in physical wellbeing, their birth rate went down. College girls had fewer children than others. Rural schools ■’ in Canada which were opened when the farmers were poor were being closed now that they were prosperous. Clergymen —. once passing rich with many children on £4O a year — had now nearer £4OO a year and an average of two children in the family. The diminution of the birth rate among, the original stock in America had become a problem, the British birth rate was now approaching that of France, and even in Australia it had fallen to 23 per thousand. The professor said he did not want to discuss all the causes of this, but to recognise the fact. Some of it was due to later marriages,' women’s freedom, varied outlets for interest and energy, and a better condition of the imagination. -.-Young people of to-day met freely and had few sex thoughts, while the prudery of earlier times was a perpetual suggestion; Among the higher classes in America there were now many cases of children being adopted. So the population question was no problem at all; it was the poverty problem which was the great menace. It had been proved, continued the lecturer, that if men worked heartily in cooperation with modern methods for a few hours a day they could produce more than enough for a rich life. Every family could have a town and country house -»th land round them, one or two cars, the best medical and dental attendance, musical instruments, books, and good food and clothing.' We would have them sooner or later, why not make a beginning now. The professor said he hoped it would, not be. regarded as sentimental or stale if he said , that the-sole means to this end was an increasing application of the golden rule in afl affairs. Jesus said it was the law, and unquestionably He meant not a vague spiritual law to be followed to please God and secure a pleasant hereafter, but the material law of our social progress. Another name for that rule is the communal sense. In American cities there were newspaper stands at the tram stops. You took a paper, put your money in the box, and nobody watched you. It. paid because the communal sense was growing. We must have in the nation the spirit of the family; recognising and respecting differences. It paid materially always? It led to the socialism of mutual trust as distinguished from the socialism of regimentation.