Atlanta Daily World

The Stork, That Lays the Golden Eggs

Up in Canada a troll breheo died a decade ago and left half a million dollars to the mother who would produce the greatest number of little Canadians in the next ten years. Since then, many a mother has broken down under the strain of stork competition. The first of November was the marathon's dead line.

Why all of this new interest of capitalist countries in multiple births, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets? The root of the matter is the actual general decline in population in Western nations.

America reached the peak of its birthrate in 1921, the year that beckoned three million little ones from the Infinite. But it will never happen again. It came right after the World War as a reaction to the feeling that we had conquered, that we were a great, expanding empire. That was before we had to pay the war debts. Since then, what with two depressions, several droughts and prospects of new, unwanted wars, the birthrate has steadily declined. If it keeps on, thirty years hence will see the start of a permanent depression from which we'll never recover.

More Babies, More Industry

When we are unable to maintain our present level of population, no more building on a large scale will be possible. Real estate, which has been rising in value here since 1620, will constantly decline. So will all other industry, including farming, teaching, medicine and law. But between now and this disaster date, probably less than our period of greatest building expansion. Those three million 1921 infants are growing up and will soon be married and demand homes of their own. So all ye wicked land speculators get your profits soon or never.

Cities to Blame

Cities have always been blamed for every major evil. Now, according to O. E. Baker, U. S. Department of Agriculture, cities are to blame for falling birthrate. In the city, children are an economic liability, not an asset. On the farm, children pay for their keep from an early age. So with the industrialization of all western countries has come the steady birth decline.

Europe, of course, suffers far more from this trend than we. She is more urbanized. Italy puts a tax on bachelors, pays for the honeymoon and offers bonuses for babies. Germany has a marriage loan and all kinds of state privileges for large families. But these are crutches and have not actually increased their birthrates a jot.

What would do it immediately would be a rising standard of living. Humans like animals respond to a greater food supply by immediate natural increase. What is the only country in the world today with a rising standard of living? Soviet Russia. Fascism's bugaboo! Russia has the largest and only steadily rising birthrate anywhere. The Fascists know that Time is on the side of the Russians: hence, their haste for war. It's now or never for