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Page 27
This class includes clerks with an income of �100 and under,--a large
number with �150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.
It includes labourers with �75 a year and under, and many who receive
�100.
Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.
Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule
good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in
life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot
adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice prevention,
consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit
their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish
reasons.
These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that
so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden
the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed
determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set
themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.
In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited
to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late,
preventive measures are resorted to.
The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their
self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a
certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential
motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.
The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a
very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and
prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society.
But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In
those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are
conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.
There is another class of people that has strong desires to keep free
from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good
citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition
to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous
body in New Zealand.
They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as
children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the
responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.
There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and
luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to
sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.
Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and
at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to
their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from
them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the
best progeny.
One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is
limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of
two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled
statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can
produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well
developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more
matured.
If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due
to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and
self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities
are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.
But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are
our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most
prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.
Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage
early asserts itself.
Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility,
and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the
common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they
live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their
desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire
of sex.
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