People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1897 — FRANCE IS RECEDING. [ARTICLE]

FRANCE IS RECEDING.

Various Methods Being; Tried to Increase Her Declining; Population. Frenchmen, or a large section of them, are beginning to manifest serious concern over the revelation of the last censns, that France is the only great nation which is no longer obeying the divine command to increase and multiply. The subject has been taken vigorously in hand by public and others, and various plans have already been suggested for making Frenchmen, amenable to compulsory fatherhood. It has been pointed out that by reason of her shortcomings in this respect France loses every year a battle of Sedan. The National Alliance For the Increase of the Population of France has presented a petition to the prime minister, setting forth certain drastic measures which the government is urged to adopt. Dr. Bertillon, inventor of the system of measuring criminals, is the head of the society, and its plan includes some interesting features. It proposes that government scholarships in schools, lycees and academies be given only to families having at least three children living; all favors of government, such as tobacconists’ licenses, concessions in colonies, etc., to be given to such famities;. when the claims of government officials for promotion are decided, their number of children to be taken into alljrS/ count; allowances and traveling expenses to officials, as well as the salaries of subalterns, to be regulated according to the number of children; the posts under the government, except those requiring special qualifications, to be given only to fathers having more than three children. Already something has been done to encourage large families. For instance, every seventh child may be educated and boarded at school at the expense of the nation. Tins law was passed some years ago, but no results are apparent. Another effect of the national concern over the nongrowth of the population is the extraordinary popular interest that is taken just now in the establishment on the Boulevard Poissonniere, where delicate infants of diminutive weight and dimensions are reared by charitable hands. In the showroom of the place are always a dozen or more incubators, each with a tiny inmate on exhibition. The managers of the institution boast that th*y have saved 1,200 children who otherwise would have died since the charity was established.' German and Austrian rivals have fin, kindly seized this moment of French discomfiture to send out stories of ex- ! traordinary prolificness. Thus a Vienna ■ man in her fortieth year the other \ presented* her husband with her ty-second child.—New York Sun.