At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities, to see children attending school with bare feet.

During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.

If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years, is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office or work.

An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view, a failure.  There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand—­in dairy farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when the family is a large one.

Quite apart from considerations of self, parents declare that the fewer children they have, the better they can clothe and educate them; and they prefer to “do well” for two or three, than to “drag up” twice or three times as many in rags and ignorance.

Clothing is dear in New Zealand.  The following is a labourer’s account of his expenditure.  He is an industrious man, and his wife is a thrifty Glasgow woman.  It is drawn very fine.  No. 7 is less than he would have to pay in the city by two or three shillings a week for a house of similar size.  No. 9 is rather higher than is usual with Benefit Societies, which average about sixteen shillings a quarter.

WEEKLY EXPENSES OF FAMILY COMPRISING FIVE CHILDREN AND PARENTS.

Per Week. 
L  s.  d.
1.   Groceries and milk            0  15   0
2.   Coal and light                0   4   0
3.   Butcher                       0   4   0
4.   Baker                         0   4   0
5.   Boots, with repairing         0   2   6
6.   Clothing and underclothing    0   5   0
7.   Rent in suburbs               0  10   0
8.   Sundries                      0   2   0
9.   Benefit Society               0   2   0
-----------
Weekly total                   L2   8   6

Most young people make a good start in New Zealand.  Even men-servants and maid-servants want for nothing.  They dress well, they go to the theatres and music-halls, they have numerous holidays, and enjoy them by excursions on land or sea.  It is when they marry, and mouths come crying to be filled, that they become poor, and the struggle of life begins.

In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.

A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty.  Many children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to supply.