LARGE FAMILIES TO BENEFIT

Southland Times, Issue 23140, 5 March 1937, Page 7

LARGE FAMILIES TO BENEFIT

Italian Move to Raise Birth Rate MARRIAGE LOANS FOR WORKERS INCOMES DEPENDENT ON SIZE OF FAMILY (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received March 4, 9.25 p.m.) ROME, March 4. After listening to Signor Mussolini report on the birth-rate the Fascist Grand Council approved the following seven-point programme: (1) Preference will be given to fathers of large families in the matter of employment. (2) A policy of family wages will be instituted, making incomes proportionate to the burdens of families as a whole. (3) The present measures for encouraging large families will be revised to ensure a steady standard of living for such families. (4) Marriage loans, endowments and insurances for young workers will be instituted. (5) A national association will be established, the members of which shall be fathers of large families. (6) Provincial communal boundaries will be revised in order to suppress communes, where the aged and declining population no longer needs the benefits of public institutions. (7) A central organization for the control and propagation of the Government’s policy for a higher birthrate will be created. The Council solemnly recorded that “the birth-rate problem being a problem of life, its continuation is really the problem of problems, for without life there is no youth, military power, economic expansion or secure future for the Fatherland.”