The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-12-14
OH WIO8PIHG UP
 TIE BIRTH- RATE
Race Suicide as It Appears to Colonel Watterson, the
 Louisville Editor.
POvERY AND CRIME TRACED
What Big Slum Families Mean to Themselves and
 Others.

| families, pay no more serious atten- ton to discussions Of race suicide than the average matinee girl pays to the Santo Domingo treaty the rights of | American citizens in the Isle of Pines, the question of free trade with the Philippines or of municipal ownership of public utilities But everyone likes to witness a hot contest between game cocks, dogs or men, and from the purely grandstand point of view the intending war waged between the ad- lvocates of unlimited families and their opponents is decidedly entertaining.
 President Roosevelt always strives to be upon the popular side of ev- !erything. With the exception of the recent panic he has very nearly ac- icompllshed his purposes. Nothing is more certain to call forth plaudits of the many than the spectacle of a great
 man laying aside the cares of state to whoop up the birth rate before Mothers congress, but while we ap-
 plaud we cannot fall to see, even with
 our eyes shut, that there are two sides
 to the argument. Mrs. J. II. Cross man, who is courageous even if she is
 wrong, comes out in 8 perfectly flat 1 footed advocacy of the limiting of families, especially among the poor, las a measure to reduce the sum Of
 human misery and crime. She points Tout that when the mother of ten, tho youngest of which Is two weeks old, is
 breaking her back over washtub
 and the father is earning a meager Living as an unskilled laborer the
 odds are greatly in favor of some Of
 the children turning out badly, to say nothing of the mother finding an
 early grave, and trudging tb it in pain and poverty unspeakable.
 It is argued by subscribers to the lRoosevelt idea that to be poor and one lof large family is a great thing for
 the young American, since most of our presidents, frenzied financisrs, cap- ltains of industry, United States sen ators and jurists, were bred in pow Ierty It is, therefore, the duty of parents to contribute many sons and
 daughters 10 socisty. however dispro- lportionate tho size of the family to Ethe size of the Income. Granting that the American boy cradled in log
 cabin and rearedefn the cornheld has
 often found the world his oyster, and 1 opened 1t, It is diflicult to overlook tho
 fact that there are many more con victs than Presidents, and that most Iof. our criminals eome from the ill., Inourished class.
 In the country poverty does not en- ltail hunger or force human beings to lgo half clad and want decent shelter
 land 1t is often the sharpest spur to th lboys' ambition But there Is another
 land darker slde'to the picture. From
 the underfed stun families in the
 great centers of population come a majority of the male criminals--the lpickpockets, the sneak thieves, the burglars, the yeggtnen in each of
 whom Is the embryo murderer-and a livery large proportion of the unfortu- mate women In the tenemerts pow
 erty spells suffering. It means a
 lack of food, shelter, breathing space.
 Even air that is fit to breathe Is often tdenied to the tenement dweller, and
 enforced uncleanliness lowers vitality and depletes moral strength. Crime Isuggests itself as the shortest cut from
 physical suffering to comfort, Girls land boys are driven from the straight
 path not because they have criminal
 tendencies" but because the lusty cry
 of an empty stomach stills the voice of : conscience. It isn't probable that any
 amount of preaching from the White
 House or elsewhere ever will have any Ieffect one way or another upon the
 number of births in poor families, but . who is the truer humanltarian, Presi- dent Roosevelt, who cries out for un- limited families in all walks of life
 upon the theory that the Lord will
 provlde, or Mrs. Crosman, who takes , the opposite view?
 : A comic weekly, which dips into ' pathos now and then, publishes In 1t
 Christmas number a cartoon plcturinl Christmas eve in the home of poo
 lman with a Roosevelt family, consist ing of a dozen sons and daughters
 There are stockings enough to i'll { e counter in a department store ant 0 there is nothing with which to i'll tn e stockings. To change the cartoon iron e pathos to tragedy 1t would only be ne '- cessary to sketch into the picture, in j. stead of disconsolate father an e mother, a coffin, the widowed mothe d of many babies.
 ' But tragedies resulting from power IS ty in large families are not depend '- ent for development upon the deat
 of the providing head of the family n Are the poor who bring a dozen chi 5- dren into the world to suffer. with Ii 'e tie or no thought or care for thei I future, more praiseworthy than thos it who take little thought for the mol Il row and try to rear two or three chi T. dren decently y?--Louisville Courier le Journal.
 m NIAINE'S THREE-FO FOOTED BEAR Ia hio tbraa- fao+ad hea