mes of wealth and
poverty. The climate is equable, the progress is uniform, the classes
are at peace.

Every natural blessing that a people could desire in a country, is to be
found in New Zealand. Climate, natural fertility, and production,
unrivalled scenery in mountain, lake, and forest, everything to bless
and prosper the present, and inspire hope in the future. Why is it that,
with all this wealth, and with the country still progressing and yet
undeveloped, a desire exists in the heart of the people to limit
families.

The reason is social not economic, if one may contrast the terms.

Take women's attitude to the question first. Our women are well
educated. A state system of compulsory education has placed within the
reach of all a good education, up to what is known as the VI. or VII.
Standard, and only a very few in the colony have been too poor or too
rich to take advantage of it.

Most women can and do read an extensive literature, and to this they
have abundant access, for even small country towns have good libraries.
Alexandra, a little town of 400 inhabitants amongst the Central Otago
mountains, has a public library of several thousand volumes, and the
people take as much pride in this institution as in their school and
church.

People move about from place to place, and it is surprising how small
and even large families keep migrating from one part of the colony to
another. They are always making new friends and acquaintances, and with
these interchanging ideas and information.

Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and
there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is
not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even
the lowest, which is not very low.

The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it,
and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes. A woman
is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union,
another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.

If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the
social scale, he or she is welcome--if one of the richer (they do not
like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly
belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or
repute.

In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between
the various strata of society that obtain in othe