DOING BIG THINGS

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 70, 15 December 1921, Page 2

DOING BIG THINGS

NEW ZEALANDER’S VIEW OF AMERICAN METHODS A CONTRAST DRAWN Mr. Harry Paul, formerly of Wellington, who was at ono time connected with the drapery business here, and was known also in athletic circles, is visiting the city after a long absence. Mr. Paul has been away from New Zealand for some nineteen years, and the greater part of that time ho has been living in the United States. He camo over in consequence of the death of his father (formerly of Paul and Roberts, shipwrights, etc., of Clyde Quay), but so depressed was he at the conditions here after what he had become accustomed to in New York that he was almost per. suaded to return by the next boat. He did not say that, he informed ft Dominion reporter, with any idea of "knocking” the old town which ho loved —and ho had never lost his British citizenship—but the .wonderful way America did things and the bigness and brightness of everything over there had a dwarfing effect. Coming back to Wellington seemed like slipping back into a former age, before much was discovered. Everything seemed ridiculously small and shabby. "Take tho hotels, for example," be said. "All over the States, not in tho ETg cities only, the hotels are really wonderful. . Nothing that would cater for tho public is left undone. They are out to please tho public, and they mako hotel life a pleasure. Things are made easy there that I find are still made hard by tho New Zealand publican. Publican! There you are. The hotels in America know no publicans. They are all run by companies, with expert managers and assistants. They aro business concerns which have to be made to pay, and to do so they vie with each other in making you comfortable; in giving you the feeling that if you ar® passing-fhat way again you would like to stay at the same place. That helps to make life worth while for the man on tHo road. ■ The Hotel Commodore in New York, for instance, has. its own subway —that' Ts to say, if you want to connect with any of the underground tramway systems you ean do so from the hotel without walking a few hundred yards, and you are brought right home by subway, if you are using that method of transit. Hot and cold wafer, a bath, and a telephone in every room are common even to every second and third-class hotel. These were considered the common necessities of life—anything less would bo considered as bordering on the impossible. And tho expense! "Well, sometimes you pay for the name, hut on tho whole prices for accommodation aro dearer in New Zealand than in America. One can get very good accommodation for a dollar and a half or two dollars a day, and 1 that is not the case in New Zealand.”

Within two years of his arrival in New York he witnessed the whole of a residential area turned into a business onef—beautiful residences pulled down ruthlessly to make way for twenty and thirty-storied buildings to bo utilised for business purposes. There were no factories in Now York. They were all at New Jersey or on Long Island. "All tho time tho city is growing up like that,” he explained. “You see ten and fifteen-storied buildings being demolished to make way for thirty or fortystoried buildings. As tho Irishman said on landing from Dublin and having a look round at the alterations, 'BegOb! this will bo a foino city when it’s finished 1* But it never looks anything like being finished. The population is now computed at about ten millions, and a largo percentage of the immigrants who come through Ellis Island stick in New York.

On the subject of prohibition, Mr. Paul said that little reliance could be placed on biased views of the subject, some of which had made him smile. As a matter of cold fact, it had turned a largo percentage of the people into lawbreakers, for, go where one would in the States, there was not the slightest difficulty in getting all the drink one wanted. "Boot-legging” had developed into a high art. Even aeroplanes were used to carry thousands of gallons of whisky over the border from Canada. Further south people did not need to trouble! tho air. "There are places,” he said, "where on a quiet country road you may with safety leave a demijohn and' a five dollar bill, but in leaving it you must not turn round, or you might get shot. But return in ten minutes or so and you will find the demijohn full and the five dollar bill gone. Of course in America the hotels do not have drinking bars as they do in Now Zealand. They used to have a license to supply liquor, but even though prohibition prevails, the liquor is always there when one wants it. "To imagine what growth is, one only has to refer to Los Angeles. When I was there about five or six years ago it had a population of about 200,000. Now it has 650,000,and five years hence it will have a million—all the result of boom.”