The above diagrammatic histories of eight families are taken from Dr. Strahan's "Marriage and Disease."
CHAPTER VIII.
The Multiplication of the Fit in Relation to the State.
The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects.—Keen competition means great effort and great waste of life.—If in the minds of the citizens space and food are ample multiplication works automatically.—To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well as the necessities of life.—Men are driven to the alternative of supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of defectives.—The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the other.—New Zealand taxation.—The burden of the bread-winner.—As the State lightens this burden it encourages fertility.—The survival of the unfit makes the burden of the fit.
The multiplication of the fit is of the first importance to the State. It supplies competent producers and courageous defenders, and the more of these, consistent with space and food (using these terms in their fullest significance), the better off the State.
If healthy happy citizens are the State's ideal, then limitation of population well within the space and food will be encouraged. If national wealth and prosperity in its material aspect are the State's ideal, the harder the population presses on the means of subsistence the sooner will that ideal be realised. For it cannot be denied, that the greater the stress and hardship in life, the more strenuous the effort put forth to obtain a foothold. The greater the competition the keener the effort, and the higher the accomplishment; while to ensure an adequate supply of labour in time of great demand there must always be a surplus.
The waste of life must always be greater; but what of that! National wealth is the ideal—the maximum amount of production. Child labour, and women labour, are called in to fill the national granaries, though misery and death attend the process.