THE BIRTH RATE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 April 1913, Page 4

THE BIRTH RATE.

"To what do you attribute the low birth rate?" asked Mir O. C. Kettle, S.M., of Mrs Emily Nicol, when the latter wa s concluding her final address at the St. Helen's Hospital enquiry at Auckland on Thursday, with a 'reference- to -the declining vital statistics :f New Zealand. "To the curtailing of the family circle," was the reply. When further asked to . state exactly what she meant, Mrs iXiebol said: "I mean the practice of deciding to have so maiiy children and no more." She could not blame them, she said, because the tensions of life were so tight that something must be done to .relieve them. The commercial condition's of the world were such as to produce a high scale rf living, which made it imposscble for working people to bring up large, families. . Mrs Niehol urged that the report of the comnnV •sion should ontwin a recommendation which would perhaps result ' improving the system' of maternity homes •in Now Zealand go that the Dominion would be able to assert itself and honourably respond to the repeated cry of the late Richard Seddon to "Keep the cradles Ml."