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.

These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married
couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their
disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great
decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the
existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.

Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this
seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of
all hope of attaining comfort and success.

Marriage between two who are hopelessly poor is extremely rare with us.
Each is able to provide for his or herself at least, and in all
probability the hus