BETTER MARGIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 4, 14 September 1942, Page 5

BETTER MARGIN

INCOME AND COSTS IN N.Z.

COMPARISON WITH CANADA

Wages and incomes generally are high but so are living costs, states Leading Aircraftsman J. S. Curtis, who was Stratford representative of the Taranaki Herald before entering the R.N.Z.A.F. and is at present training in Canada, in a letter received in New Plymouth.

When in private homes on occasions he has talked household economics with the people and it, was clear that in New Zealand the average person had a better margin of income over expenditure.

"Our taxation seems solid," he states, "but between Dominion and provincial taxes and a host of indirect dips into the public purse taxation here is just as bad if nqfl worse. In fact, the more I see of this country—impressive though it is in many respects—the more I realise that we arc not so badly off in New Zealand.

j "They have nothing here to compare with our P. and T. Department, for instance. The post, office handles only mails. Cable and telegraph companies have a corner in wires and cables, private concerns run the power systems, telephones, sometimes even the street cars (trams), while the Canadian Pacific Railway has a linger in nearly every pie in the country—railways, road, air and sea transport, cables, hotels, and so on ad infinitum. It absorbed a whole string of airlines the other day. Very little with a prospect of profit escapes its: capacious maw." Canadian Newspapers Interesting observations on Canadian newspaper services are also contained in the letter. Leading-Air-craftsman Curtis mentions one of the papers which carries a lot of "funnies" mixed in the classified advertising section and adds: "This is common practice for obvious reasons and it amuses me to see a Canadian buy a paper. He glances casually at the cable heads on the front page and then turns straight to the comic strips. They are evidently popular. "Their cable service is not as broad as ours but they get immediate news of the part played by Canadian forces in overseas operations. This is particularly noticeable in respect of the Canadian Air Force.

"Only the big places run dailies with a full cable and Press Association service. Places of 15,000 tcv 20,000 population run 'busters" not much better than the old Stratford Evening Post. Niagara Falls City, which is as big as Wanganui, has what is little better than a 'local* buster.' '*

A magnitude of train, air and, bus services had enabled the city dailies to secure a big coverage and it was interesting to find that the evening papers in Toronto were twice the size of the morning one and had twice the circulation.

"That shdws what an evening paper can do," says the writer, "as long as the transport facilities are available, even in a rural area, for Ontario is an important production area. Of course Toronto lias 600,000 to 800,000 population and that gives the evenings a huge fiekj at their back door.' 9