The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1917-03-22
ness will be greater than the combined careers
Of all the clergymen who resign because tnelr
churches disappoint them

4 OF all the clergymen WHO resign ueCauSc oAoAA
churches disappoint them
BIRTH RATE PROBLEMS OF THE DAY.
Attention to the birth rate is general among
the belli gerent governments OF Europe, and we
have already seen that the social and economic
laspects Of the problem of repopulation have be-
come the chief concern of some of the foremost
| minds of the old countries. Quality as well as
quantity is being studied in Europe as result OF
the sad advertising of the wartime marriage.
Children where children can be well supported
has become the slogan OF group OF BRUSH
eugenists whose Influence is gradually supdulng
the earlier hysteria Of the brutal economists
who called for children at any price. In Ger
many, if we may have faith IN recent as
patch, quality is so well established that guam
Itity is the first requirement of the moment.
In Germany study of the birth rate is be-
ing conducted by no less a parsonage than Dr.
Bernhard Dernburg, who sometimes serves his
government in less constructive capacities. AS
a leader in the work of the Greater Berlin AS
sociation for the Institution OF Small Homes,
DR. Dernburg discovers that the falling birth
rate Of the cities is associated with the tene-
Iment house evil Where the family is crowded
into a small tenement, he reports, the tendency
is to limit the size of the family. He holds the
tenement chiefly responsible for the fact that
one-fourth Of all marriages are chlldless. lie
notes that since 1890 the number OF frst-born
children has declined twenty per cent, the
number of second-born forty-two per cent, the
number of third-born sixty-three per cent, the
number of fourth born seventy per cent. The
German family in the cities is growing smaller.
Germany's plan is to increase the size OF the
families by giving families more room IN which
to live. Comfortable homes are an inducement,
sduaIid tenements deterrent to the raising OF
families And how plain that seems, IN Ger
many's case. How curious that IN America eX-
actly the opposite is true and known to be true.
In America the large families are found IN
wretched tenements, usually in sum sections OF
| the cities, and the small families are found IN
the commodious homes of the well-to-do. In
Germany the problem is to build the home to tit
/ the family; in America we are satisfied to
make the family fit the home American birth
control agitators intend to teach the very poor
to limit the size of the family, and shame the
rich into raising more children Germany al
ready understands birth control; the tenement
dweller measures the extent of his family by
the extent of his home. This is as it should be
in nation which values intellect.
America, where the poverty of the very poor
makes an ugly scar upon the highest prosper
ity, is bound to learn lessons from Europe S ex-
perience of the next few years. A lower birth
rate and higher health rate among the poor
can be brought about by decent teaching of
birth control. There can come a decent hous-
ing reform in the great cities But the housing
facilities will not improve until the people i'm
prove and demand something better. The peo-
pie will not improve as long as poverty strick-
en- parents are compelled to devote all their
energy and all their means to great filters OF
hungry children.