HAPPY INDIA 137 



children, it would certainly tend to make life easier 

 and tend to assist the accumulation of property, 

 and tend to give the people better food, better cloth- 

 ing, better housing and more amusement, so as to 

 make life better worth living. It has been found 

 in parts of Europe, such as England and France, 

 that as the wealth of the people increases the birth- 

 rate diminishes. So much has that been the case 

 in France that now there is hardly any increase of 

 population, and in England the rate of increase of 

 population is getting slower. In England, sanitation 

 has so reduced the death-rate that it has almost 

 got down to the minimum possible, so that further 

 reduction in the birth-rate will greatly reduce the 

 rate of increase of population. 



In India the death-rate is still very high. If 

 the improvements that I have suggested are made, 

 the death-rate will be brought down, and if it should 

 be reduced one-half its present rate, and if the birth- 

 rate should remain the same, the population of the 

 British Provinces would increase 4,000,000 a year 

 more than its present increase, or, say, 5,000,000 

 every year, or 50,000,000 in ten years, requiring 

 50,000,000 more acres of land to cultivate. This 

 would cause an intense struggle. It is obvious 

 that the time has now arrived when the leaders and 

 teachers of the people must unite to discourage the 

 present fashion of excessively early marriage, and 

 must teach both women and men that it is not neces- 

 sary for all of them to marry at any age, that young 

 people must consider, before they marry, how they 



