recently signed a bill making it a misdemeanour for landlords to refuse
to rent apartments to families in which there are children. In that State
children thus regain equal rights with dogs, cats, and canaries. Is it too
much to ask of the House of Commons that they should pass a similar law? We
shall see.

The dangers of birth control were apparent to that great American, Theodore
Roosevelt, when he said:

"The greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the severest
of all condemnations should be that visited upon wilful sterility. The
first essential in any civilisation is that the man and the woman shall
be the father and the mother of healthy children, so that the race
shall increase and not decrease." [43]


Section 4. THE SAME RESULTS IN ENGLAND

On a smaller scale the position is the same in England and Wales, where
Catholicism has probably checked to some extent the general decline of
the birth-rate. In 1919 there were only six towns in England [44] with a
birth-rate of over 25 per 1,000, these being St. Helens (25.6), Gateshead
(25.9), South Shields (26.9), Sunderland (27.1), Tynemouth (25.9), and
Middlesbrough (26.7). Now in these towns the Catholic element is very
strong. During the same year in the four registration counties in which
these towns are situated, a larger proportion of marriages were celebrated
according to the rites of the Church of Rome than in the other counties of
England and Wales. [45] The actual proportion of Catholic marriages per
1,000 of all marriages in these four counties was: Lancashire 116, Durham
99, Northumberland 92, and the North Riding of Yorkshire 92. That gives a