The attendance at schools, public and private, during the fourth quarter of 1902, was European 150,332, Maoris and half-castes 5,573.

If children spend their useful years of child life at school, they can render little or no remunerative service to their parents.
Neither boys or girls can earn anything till over the age of 14 years.
Our laws prohibit child labour.
In New Zealand, children, therefore, while they remain at home, are a continual drain on the resources of the bread-winner.

More is expected from parents than in many other countries.
At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities, to see children attending school with bare feet.
During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.
If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years, is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office or work.
An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view, a failure.

There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand--in dairy farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when the family is a large one.
Quite apart from considerations of self, parents declare that the fewer children they have, the better they can clothe and educate them; and they prefer to "do well" for two or three, than to "drag up" twice or three times as many in rags and ignorance.
Clothing is dear in New Zealand.

The following is a labourer's account of his expenditure.