Evening Star Newspaper, December 17, 1922, Page 81

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 17, '1922— PART 4. 3 France Believes .Her Fate Depends on Increase of Population BY FRANK G. CARPENTER. PARIS, France. HE ¥ ghost that nce is a baby. me s 4 ©M Hans, and is m There are more badies born o a Rhine every vear than the Seine, and five births than deaths. Moreover, the dropping. In the days of Napoleor the number was four to the family. in thi times Its first | it © the land more rench birth rate is | 16 per cent to 20 per cent, or one baby in every five, six or seven. Almost half of the illegitimate children of France are abandoned by their par- ents, and tens of thousands of legiti- . | mate babies die through preventable { causes. The ministry of health for | this reason has opened a large ma- | ternity hospital and is providing | funds for another. Tt is giving allow- | ances to convalescent mothers and is doing much to safeguard babies 1gainst death and disease. 1t is now two or less, and the million | and a half young men killed in the war will make the babies still fewer. As it is now, the nearly twc million fami dren at all, three million which have e are only one child, and two and a half he great orphan asylum of Moscow. million each of which has but two |y has many thousand times more children. The population of Germany babies than were slaughtered by is increasing five times as fast. In Herod at Bethlehem, and it costs Frand ad abou 1= several milljon dollars a year to keep wle, and in the fifty ¥ nee then | the little nobodies alive. The insti- she has mained only 4.006.000, While tution has been in existence for more many, starting with the popu'a- than two centuries. It was once tion Fran at present, has made | managed by the nuns, but is now un- a gain of 15,000,000 souls, and that in der the government. There is a little | spite of her g ation 1o Moses basket, a sort of revolving America and other parts of the world. births in France tle over 400,000 numbered onl a inst 1,000,000 has some of the largest ylums in the world. RANCE foundling as es which have no chil- There is She here in Paris which, un- til now, has been surpassed only by set in one of the windows, on and b herself being detected. a whirl put it inside without The child is for the y 1865, long time then taken as a member of the insti- the natural increase of the Germans tution. It is given a name, and if in has been more than 1,000,000 per an- any way the place of birth or the num. You may remember that Gen. name of its father and mother can be von Moltke once said that the Ger- obtained the are put on a tag, a mans gained a battle every year over ' strip of parchment, which is tie v by the annual addition around the child’s arm. their population of 1.000.000 souls. The b are kept in the refus A member of the ho lonzer than is absolutely neces- 1 not long ago th facts have stirred the up government, elle captains and her tuals nts ey ove planning new babies and incre LARGER FAMIL FRENCH EMPLOYERS ARE MARRIED MAN. AND 2 F] ONE LANDLORD IN PARI BORN IN HIS HOUS is saving crop. GIV] E §2, A CHICKEN AND A SUPPLY OF away to those r sent in great d given them, Wet nurses are and then o and their railroad fares paid Paris. There ar ways more Vabies than nur nd at one time every T w of six babies. Some of the babies are kept on “one cow and goats and IES AMONG THE WORKERS, SOME _PAYING EXTRA WAGES TO THE A\ DAY MORE FOR EACH CHILD. THE MOTHER OF EVERY CHILD AL” Within recent years more than one- sixth of all the babies born in the republic have not reached the age of twelve months, and one-third of this sixth died during the first month after birth. The death rate of French infants within their first year is from Leven donkeys add to the feeding ! supply. Since the war boy bables have been in the greatest demand, and the or- phan children of France have been more than ever carefully nourished. Connected with this branch of sal- tied \ 10 R S A A < | | In the first half of last vear the which a mother can lay her baby, | | | | “THE ONLY TROUBLE WILH THESE KINDERGARTEN CHILD! SR Larger Families Among the Most Vital Elements of Future’ Advancement. Watching the Record of Germany—What the Government and Private Parties Are Doing—Surtaxes for Bachelors and Families Having No-Children—Bonuses for Babies—Taking Care of the Foundlipgs and Orphans—Inheritance Laws That Frighten the Stork—Poverty and Alcoholism—The French Dot as a Clog Upon Weddings—Industrial Associations Which Boost the Birth Rates—Getting Wives Through the Newspapers. N S S R N N N N N O N S O N N O R S O S N N N N S DA D D D REN OF LENS, FROM THE FRENCH POINT OF VEIW, IS THAT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF THEM. vage has been the national executive t " h 5 Childre which has been so much | nelped contributions from Amer- | ic Since 1918 over $12.000.000 has hecn here from the United States 1 over to 256.000 or- ns. i cent of the mone scribed has been used for the €3 ves. 1 have visited the offices of the in- ution here in Paris and ialked with Mme. Seligman Lui, the efficient director. She has the business thor- oughly organized. There are great rooms filled with card indexes, each « Learing the name a child and the record of its family, of where Ris father was killed, and whether he needs money or not. Mme. Seligman | Lui told me that there are 900,000 dren who lost one or both parents the war, and that 27 per cent of | these have since found some means | of support. The money given the or- | phans has come from America, and the receipts are still $25.000 a month. And now let me tell you some of the many methods that have been|tho thrift of the people. Many feel |orphan, he must get the permission proposed or have been adopted to in- crease tbe population of France. In the first place, I would say that I do not believe that the lack of bables comes from natural causes or a Latin The Latins, as a rule, have children than Anglo-Saxons, hen the French came to Canada breught forth as many ckildren as the famous— 014 woman that lived in a sl Who lad so many children she didn’t know what to do. fewer As an illustration of the birth rate | of the French Canadians, the govern- ment of Quebec some years ago of- fered 100 acres of land to every father of a family having twelve or more living children. On the day ap- pointed more than 700 clalmants came forward to get the farms. As to celibacy among the Latins, the old Romans had fines for bachelors and other measures to increase marriage. Jouis XIV and Napoleon both granted special advantages to parents having more than two children. . * k x x NE of the great causes for the U 1ack of babies in France today is LARDNER SUGGESTS WINTER SPORTS Well Cleaning Recommended as Result of Pre-Volstead Find— Furniture Moving Another Game. O the editor: now came Wi 1 n * The has en us boys {hat ernclimbs can't enjoy ourself no more with com- nion outdoor sports like golf, tenni quoits, duck shooting and etc., on acct of the cold and of course they's a great many boy crazy abcut ski jumpin, ing and the like but personly this is just a pose and a gards to girls as [ never se that was not complaining season in the coid the minute old mercury drops be- low the 70 mark particularly gals that about is 25 yrs. of age and up. If you would leave it to the fare sex the coal shortage would be even worse than it is If any. because they would Leep the furnace running till the 4 of July and light it up again the 1 of Aug. and dureing those 27 days of no fur- nace fire they would not even set down 10 play the piano unlest they was a hot brick on all 3 peddles. But that is either here or there and what T wanted to say was that a great many of my admires has wrote to me for suggestions as to how to enjoy themself in some kind of athaletic sports between now and spring as their doctors has told them that it ain't “FISHING THROUGH THE ICE IN THE ICEBOX AND AMONGST THE | DIFFERENT CATCHES HAS BEEN A CAN OF SARDINES, A BOX OF CAVIAR AND A JAR OF PICKLED HERRING.” nealthy to just set around and play bridge or something where you don’t get no exercise a speclally if your wife ain't got-no respect for your game and \hand as long as she kept you dummy. pronounces wrong whether it is hot or: when you do get it out nothing happens. Well friends I been trying to think | up sports that would keep a man in | shape dureing what I often call the| frigid spell and amongst other games | I have thought up the game of moveing | the furniture. ! They ain’t no day dureing the yr. hot | or cold when your wife can't enjoy her- | self and at the same time get exemisei moveing this chalr over there and that | plano over here and she would enjoy herself just the same if you was to join | in the game with her and just as often | !as she moved them, why you step in and move them back. This game also entrails the element of competition and argument without which they ain’t no game complete. * k kX NOTHER game which I thought up | might well be dubbed jumping in | {and out of the bath tub. The idear| | of this game is to first fill the tub with | | water so hot you can’t ‘hardly stand it !and them jump into it and jump out | and you will find the air so cool outside | |that you will jump in again to get| warm and this keeps up till you have | had plenty exercise and at the same | time feel tepid to say nothing about | havejng had a bath which ain’t nothing | |to be sneezed at even in the winter | time. | Only be sure and keep tiie stopper in | 50 as to not carry the joke too far. But of course the real game for the | winter season is fishing through the ice. The usual method of playing this game | |is to go out on some lake or ocean or | | river ‘and set there in a boat freesing | | to death and knock holes in the ice and then push down a spear in the hopes of | catching something. | What you are mostly libel to catch is eels and the chief trouble with catching { eels is that when you have got them | what of it, | Or if you aint’ lucky enough to catch {a eel you might probably spear a ice | skater that fell through several yrs. ago | and to find him now just means trouble. The kind of fishing through the ice | which I am calling to your tension is Immng through the ice indoors namely the refrigerator. I have got friends ‘who has did most of their winter ex- erciseing in the last 2 or 3 yrs. fishing through the ice in the ice box and amongst the different catches has been la can of sardines, a box of caviar and a jar of pickled herring. * % * ¥ these friends' was catching same they run mo risk of getting frost bitten because the minute they felt their fingers getting numb they could throw down the ice pick and dash into the nearest rm. where they's a radiator ‘which a good many people cold. If however a person insists on doing their winter sports outdoors why I don't know nothing better to recom- mend than a suggestion which come to me last wk. from one G. E. Morrison at the Beaver Lake Club in Rio, Orange County, N. Y. This bird claims that a-little wile ago they was a farmer up his way that had a hired man and nothing for him to do 0 he told same to clean out the well. Well the man cleaned out the well and all as he found in it outside of well water was 2 dozen qt. bottles of beer “1at was brewed when Volstead was a aessenger boy and the way you could tell was on acct. of the bottles haveing corks way down in their throats like they use to put them where as now they just put a little stopper on top of them which is easy to get out because N According to Morrison this nug- get was suspended down in the well ¥yrs. ago so as it would cool off and good beer was so common in them days the proprietor went off and forgot it. Any way Mr. Morrison Is trying to organize the American Well Cleaners Corporation to go. around winters when they ain't no threshing to do and clean wells and not only will they get plenty outdoor exercise but they are libel any time to find pre-Volstead becr basking in the wells to keep cool which would be like locateing a tre- mendous gusher. But even If they wasn't no beer the corporation might pull up numerable sticks of gum put down there to keep them preserved because in the old days girls was much more careless than they aré now. RING W. LARDNER. Great Neck, Long Island, Dec. 15. W = , ¢ | | | too poor to marry, and some who are married do not want children on account of the high cost living. Yesterday 1 talked with my taxi driver about existing conditions. Ha was bitter as to his earnings and the unequal division of wealth. Said he: “When I got married I told my wife we would never have any children. I was one of a family of eight in north France. My father was poor. and my youth was all kicks and of of his grandparen in order to, marry. They will look into the so- cial and financial condition of the girl, and parental relatives of foth parties will ange the trans- action. Indeed nt i b- vlutely nec D to the age of five and No man can marry until he venteen years of agme. but gl Ty they have reached the age of fiften or sixteen. It is uncommon for a yYoung man to insane asylums and hospitals are drunkards, and the geientists claim that alcoholism is contributing to the weakening of the yof the French race in more ways than one. Some say It Is lessening the number of births, but this is questionable, for | many of the nations who-drink much have a far higher birth rate. The British, for instance, who are gr | drinkers, have one-third more babies per thousand than the French, and a the Russians, who are add to vodka, have a birth rate of forty-fc |to the thousand, while France has only twelve. Other contributory causes are said to be the decline of religion, the em- ployment of women in factories and the absolute necessity of every boy place in the the advent as soon and infant, of every new as it comes a government doctor in- spects it. If it is a boy, his name { goes down at once as a futur 1 dier of France. Indeed, there is no | way of escaping the army, no mutt |if one's parents be American or | any other nationality if a boy is born on French soil. For this reason i« ! elgn mothers often cross the cf | nel to England to have their bubics | born there. For years the government has been enacting laws with a view to incr ing the French population. It pas one in 1913 which gave an annuai ¢ lowance for every poor family which had more than three children. amount of the allowance wa by the communes, and it rz $11 to $17 per head. In 1520 i were introduced into the French = ate making physical education com- pulsory for girls as well as for and this included plans to acquire lands and buildings to be used for physical training. Another law sought modify the marriage one could marry without the of his parents and grandpa another proposed that “obey” be taken out of the womarn ! part of the marriage contract. To the latter the women's joumnals were it especially hostile, declaring that would lead to anarchy in the ho There are other laws that been suggested. One is the tax: of bachelors, and another the tion of married men who hav become fathers. There is a move- ment to curtail the taxes on the lurge families, and in some places gold medals are given for more babies Since 1916 the department of the Seine has been assisting poor moth- ers until their children reach the a of three vears, and since April, 1918 it has granted a premium of 200 francs per annum to such women as nurse their own babies. In order to get this a doctor must certify that the mother breast-feeds the in * X X X RIVATE parties and indusirial companies are doing much to = crease the baby supr A notable stance is that of M. and Mme. Cox nac, who some time ago gave an amount which, at the present of exchange, would equal more than $225.000 to establish ninets aw of $2,500 each for every large family among the poor which has had at least children cither alive or nine | twenty ments | Those to - advertise in the subscribers who subgeribe have the righ advertise for wivgs or husband to the extent of fifteen words in eacl while their subscription lasty wish to use more space they cents for each additional word are numbered all correspondence goes ot | through numbers. and not by names the magazine Leing the mail The advertisements of ise run from 100 1,000, from which I judge business is done | To show what the advertisements are like, I shall translate several choser at random olonel’'s widow fifty, young in franes vear, will Would mari ho: position and fortune. e twenty-eight dopted children. Would 1 with marrizge taken up by sent by issue 1f th pay The | ana vertisements the curren some childrer g 25,000 100,000 man witho carn spirit a o n honorable ol has three 0 cor respond. n vi witk pedagogy.” brun Would hard- ted i a person interes nice likes te, ) from twenty-nine tc articles in the magazine— many of which are by eminent writ- ors, relate to marriage for or unother, and to the necessity ol inc g the French population Copyright, 1922, nter.) (Carpenter’s World Travels Frank G. « IT i aid that no imilation diamondy with facets made in this coun. For the most part they are man- tured urope. where labor 1 per. and probably imitatios which have ground facety £ owill he America, bee here however, e presscl the United States, but i to stones without anywhere from less i to five cents apiece. When quantities of the nicer quali- ties of imitation stones are set in an iner in gold gettings, the rticle may bring a few dol- irs apicce, but the stones themselves little value. g stones are made out of quartz, as people think, with the excep tion of a very few, which are cut in Colorado and other tourist localities, 1 these are of value simply as gou- The imitation stones made of , which is only a higher quality of glas much superior to any- thing which could be cut from quartz. In this relation it may be well to correct a great misapprehension in the minds of millions of persons in this country. A white stone is either a diamond or it isn't. If it is a dia- mond, it is worth a hundred dollars a rat, or » 1f it isn't a diamond it isn't wo ng. There is no middle course. The idea that there is something which is better than imita- tion paste stone made out of strase nd not as good as a diamond, * n fostered by fake “diamond pal- stones made re confi ts. They cos n nt these pos = very str b ces” so liberally sprinkled over the various cities, but it can be stated positive that the “A monds,” “Barrios diamonds, nothing more than imitation stones made out of strass, and are not made in this country. very few “doublets nd sold. These are constructed with a garnet front and a glass back By means of using a different colored iss. different colored effects are ob- d the front is a little harder little more durability and ains its luster a little longer than the ordinary imitation white stone. But the garnet front is of no particu- lar value, and the extra cost of these doublets 1y due to the labo: that enters into them. These, how- are not used to any great ex- 1 it may be repeated that the st majority of imitation stones sold in this country are made out of glass and turned out In Europe and mounted by jewelers in this country. are Synthetic Sapphires. (CRYSTALLIZED alumina, or alumi- num oxide. is a gem, more pre | cious as the crystals are larger and more perfect. It goes under various names according to the coloring mui- ter that is associated witn it; if L ed. it is a ruby: if blue, a sap- < if purple, an oriental amethyst; s0 on. Alumina is artificially all d. articial rubies have been on the market for many years Their discoverer. A. Verneuil, has “THE BABY CARRIAGE GARAGE IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE INFANT WELFARE STATION OF PARIS, aixo, devised a method for giving ‘WHICH THE FRENCH HOPE WILL HELP TO REDUCE THE DEATH RATE OF CHILDR! blows, with little to eat. T ran away | from home, and now—well, here I am, driving a taxi. It's not much of | a life. It is so uncertain. I earn about 900 francs a month, but that is | hardly enough for myself and my | wife. Anyway, I am not going to| run the risk of making a little child suffer as I d¥d when I was a kid, and | there are a lot of us who feel the| same way. Look at those men work- | ing in that ditch over there. They | earn 20 francs ($2) a day. How can they support a family on that? It is| up to the rich to have the large fam- | ilies now. We poor cannot afford it | and, anyway, we know what the life | of a poor child is like.” Speaking of the rich and the poor | |reminds me of a French beggar— | there are but very few of them now— | who applied for aid to a pompous Paris philanthropist on the grounds | that he had a large family of young children. The sanctimonious rich man replied: “The Lord never sends mouths but | that he sends bread to fill them.” | “That is true,” answered the beg- | gar, “but He has sent the mouths to | my house and the bread to yours.” Another factor in the baby crop is the custom of giving a dot or dowry to,one’s daughter when she is mar- ried. This is so much expected that| a girl who has no dowry has diffi- culty in getting a husband. The French draw a fine distinction be-! tween love and marriage. Most of { them regard love more or less as & personal matter, whereas marriage is a soctal necessity. One should love his wife or her husband, but the hap- plness of the children and parents will be more certain if it is based upon certain rules of business and conduct. Love s a passion which may go as it came, but marriage must endure, and it should haye enough to support it. For this reason a French marrisge depends, largely upon the conaent of the family.’ If 3 man is it o get married until he has completed his term in the arm The French laws of inheritance form another obstruction to the flight of the stork in bringing new babies in France. According to them, all' children, boys and girls alike, must have equal shares of their parents estate. The daughters often get their portions when they are married the children theirs at the death of the parents. The greater part of the land of France is in very small hold- ings, and such equal division makes the patches and scraps which I have described in former letters. Often each boy will want some of his land facing the road, and what is a large field of the father becomes mere rib- bons when parceled out to"the sons. In order to prevent such division, par- ents keep down the number of chil- dren, and thus leave a sizeable por- tion to each. The peasant loves his land and his ideal is a single heir married to a single heiress. There- fore, he leaves only one or two chil+ dren. Attempts have been made to change this inheritance law, and give the father the right to will away his es- tate as he pleases. If this can be ac- complished it will increase the birth rate. Some authorities suggest an inheritance tax of 30 per cent on all estates where there are ‘only two children, and of €0 per cent when there is only one. This means that | the man with one child would leave to the government all but 40 per cent of ‘his savings. * Kk ok % 4 OTHER load on the wings of the bird that carries the bables is the great amount of alcohol consumed by the French. The average per capita is about fourteen quarts every year, and in certain cities of Normandy it is twice as mucl Statistics show large per dent of the %mn_;xu 3 3 2 SH T in the shape of a dot. and the rest of | who had died for their country, and all from one marriage. This man and his wife have givén this year another $100,000 to make 100 awards | the crvstals w blue color and thus ‘ making sapphires. It must be borne in | mind that these gems are not imita- | tions: they are real. and related 1o the natural gems as artificial ice 1s to real ice. In other words, the di‘- | of $1,000 each, the requirement be-/ ference between them is not one of ing that each family receiving them should have at least five children, d that the parents should be under thirty years of age. There s a landlord here in Paris who accepts only married coupl with children tenants and Sives every mother who has a baby born in his house the sum of $2, a chicken |and a supply of coal for the winter. There is another patriot in the d partment of Haute-Saome who r cently called the married men of his town together, promising each 20 trancs for each child he had over {four. The mother had to bring out the children and show that all were her own. 1 am told that more than 100 mothers came forward to claim the reward and that they had 516 children. There are several industrial asso- clations which are contributing to increase the birth rate. One has a fund that gives every warried man among its employes an average of 2 francs a day in additfon to his wages and 2 francs a day for each child. An association of linen manu- facturers Is paying a supplementary wage of 240 francs per-annum, or’ about $2 a month, to families having one child under thirteen years of age, and $5 a month to families hav- ing two children. The extra wage goes on increasing until it reaches a maximum of $420 a year, where there are seven children or more. Since I came to France I have oc- casionally bought some of ‘the news- papers devoted to the increase of the baby crop. One of these, entitled “Marriage,” lies before me. It is is- subs ice, but of methods, or rathe of circumstances of production. Deal- ers are of course anxious to disco; t methods of discriminating betwe the natural and artificial gems, as the former are supposed to he more ~a! uable. They have been able to do thix | with rubies, but the saphhires appear defy their art. | The made sapphire surpasses | synthetic ruby in excellence. All | dinary tests have been tried on the | synthetic stones without finding the | least difference between them and natural sapphires. With a microscope | an expert can detect readily whether | a ruby is real or artificial by the dif- | ference in the minute bubbles and | striations. In the synthetic sapphire ! no such difference is found. The crys- | tallization seems to be just the same | in one as in the other. The artificial | ruby has sometimes what seems to be | layers of dust, detracting from the general silk-like effect, and these are | not to be noted in the synthetic sap- phire. the or- The Light of London. 'I‘HE location of every great city may be recognized afar off at night by the reflection of the sky, but the distance in the case of London is somewhat surprising. An instance is recorded when, in the #pring, there was seen the reflection of the light of the British metropolis at a distance of fifty miles. The glow was rather more than two degrees in elevation and stretched at least ten degrees sued twice & month. Of the shape]along the horizon. It is assumed that of the ordinary Amerlcan magazine, |it was due to reflection trom clouds it has forty pages, of which more than gomething mur‘o than two uu?u high. &