NEVER SO DISGUSTED IN HIS LIFE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 129, 17 June 1937, Page 4

NEVER SO DISGUSTED IN HIS LIFE

Welshman Who Went to N.Z. House for Information "ENOUGH UNEMPL0YED" Strong eritieism of the methods by whieh publicity is given to.New Zealand in England is contained in a letter received bv Mr, Nicol Lumsden, of Hastings, from a friend in Llandudno, Wales. An explanation is given by Mr. Lumsden that the wiiter's family had Heen farming in Canada for eight years and had been thinking of coming to New Zealand. The letter reads:— "We have heard nothing over here - about men and women being trained for New Zealand farms. In faet, last week — and I went to London and while we were there we went to New Zealand House. I was never so disgnsted with any one in my life. We were told that there was 110 room for anyone else in New Zealand, that you had enough unemployed over there as it was. So then we mentioned taking capital into the country and they told ns that we would be almost snre to loee anything we had. If we did not write to so many people and know differently we would have believed that New Zealand was goihg 'broke' and almost on the verge of civil revolt and that your Government -was going out fast. "I thought it was a poor policy to have people like that in the information bureau over this side. as it gd-ves a very bad impression to people on this side. ' " . . . Of course, when you have been brought up to it (farm-work) everything seems easy. It is different when they have wojked all their lives in coal-mines, quarries or perhaps in city shops or offices and* have never been on a f arm and probably don 't know one end of an animal from tke othef. It is people who h§ye been seut out to the Dominions knowiag nothing of the life and work that givo Englishmen a bad name. "I don't think a New Zealander would find it very easy to find work in England, as I am sure they would find too big a difference an conditions. I don 't know how it is, but Britishers seem to take to conditions abroad easier than colonials do to English ways. "Glad to hear you had some success with. your dog at the trials. We have sheepdog trials here once a year. Two ' years ago the Intornational Trials were held here."