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Page 33
On the last census date there were 340,230 bread-winners, and 12,747
persons suffering from sickness, accident, and infirmity, or 26 fit to
work and earn for every one unfit.
The cost to the Colony per year of--
�
1. Hospitals, year ended 31st March, 1903 138,027
2. Charitable Aid (expended by boards),
year ended 31st March, 1903 93,158
3. Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,
1902 (gross) 85,238
Lunatic Asylums, year ended 31st Dec,
1902 (nett) 64,688
4. Industrial Schools, year ended 31st Dec,1902
Government Industrial Schools for
neglected and criminal children 21,708
Government Expenditure on Private
Denominational Industrial Schools 2,526
5. Police Force, year ended 31st March, 1903 123,804
6. Prisons, year ended 31st March, 1903 32,070
7. Criminal Courts (Criminal Prosecutions),
year ended 31st March, 1903 16,813
8. Old Age Pensions (pensions only for
persons over 65 years of age, who
have been 25 years in the Colony,
and who make a declaration of
poverty, including departmental
expenses) 212,962
A total of �705,756. This constitutes the burden due to defectives and
defects in others, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse
population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the
sun of heaven ever shone.
The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr.
MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands,
parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely
so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded
assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their
families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and
independent neighbours."
The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall
marry, or that women shall procreate. All it can do is to discover why
its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is
possible.
As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations,
and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.
The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women
be to incur the burden of a large family. The more the conditions of
existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized,
and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.
If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the
strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.
No direct encouragement is possible. It was tried and it failed in
Sparta, it was tried by Augustus and it failed in Rome, it must fail
everywhere, for the most willing and the most ready to respond to any
provision made to encourage increase, are the unfit, and it is the
fertility of the unfit that is the very evil that has to be attacked.
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