The Fertility of the Unfit by W. A. (William Allan) Chapple
page 52 of 133 (39%)
page 52 of 133 (39%)
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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 |
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