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Page 19
The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the
kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.
Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from
financial status. Those who are referred to as the better classes, are
simply those who have got, or who have made, money. All things,
therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.
There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social
rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted. The social
status of one class exerts an attractive force on the class next below.
But, apart from the influence of status, one class keeps steadily in
view, and persistently strives to attain, the ease, comfort, and even
luxury of the class above it.
Because the members of different grades are so migratory, there are
many in one class known well to members in some class or classes below,
and the ease and luxury which the former enjoy are a constant
demonstration of what is possible to all.
Many who do not acquire wealth enough to make any appreciable difference
in their social status, are able, through family, to improve their
position. Their sons and daughters are given an University education,
and by far the largest number of those entering the learned professions
in New Zealand are the sons of farmers, tradespeople, and retail
dealers.
The great mass of the people in our Colony are conscious of the fact
that their social relations and standard of comfort, or shall one say
standard of ease, are capable of improvement, and the desire to bring
about that improvement is the dominant ambition of their lives.
Anything that stands in the way of this ambition must be overcome. A
large family is a serious check to this ambition, so a large family must
be avoided.
This desire to rise, and this dread too of incurring a responsibility
that will assuredly check individual progress were counselled by
Malthus, and resulted, and he said should result, in delayed marriage,
lest a man, in taking to himself a wife, take also to himself a family
he is unable to support.
But if this man can take to himself a wife without taking to himself a
family, what then?
Men and women, in this Colony at least, have discovered that conformity
to physiological law makes this possible.
A wife does not really add very much to a man's responsibility--it is
the family that adds to his expense, and taxes all his resources. It is
the doctor and the nurse, the food and the clothing, and the education
of the uninvited ones to his home, that use up all his earnings, that
keep him poor, or make him poorer.
Then there is one aspect of the question peculiar to the women
themselves. Women have come to dread maternity. This is part of a
general impatience with pain common to us all. Chloroform, and morphia,
and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.
When there was no chance of relieving it, we an�sthetised ourselves and
each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of
Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.
Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest. Women
now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as
soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each
succeeding occasion.
Women are less than ever impressed with the sacredness and nobility of
maternity, and look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom.
This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that
is beginning to possess us.
It is, however, no new phase in human experience. It characterised all
the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity,
and was really the beginning of their decay.
Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands.
They feel the burdens of a large family more. They are often heard to
declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her
disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave. A large
number think this, and, if there is a way out of the difficulty, they
will follow that way. And they are not content to escape the hardships
of life. They want comforts, and seek them earnestly. With the advent of
comfort, they seek for ease, and, when this is found, they seek for
luxury and social position.
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