2. Coal and light 0 4 0
3. Butcher 0 4 0
4. Baker 0 4 0
5. Boots, with repairing 0 2 6
6. Clothing and underclothing 0 5 0
7. Rent in suburbs 0 10 0
8. Sundries 0 2 0
9. Benefit Society 0 2 0
-----------
Weekly total £2 8 6

Most young people make a good start in New Zealand. Even men-servants
and maid-servants want for nothing. They dress well, they go to the
theatres and music-halls, they have numerous holidays, and enjoy them by
excursions on land or sea. It is when they marry, and mouths come
crying to be filled, that they become poor, and the struggle of life
begins.

In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds
of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.

A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many
children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable
a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New
Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of
child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help
that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to
supply.

These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married