Conditions in America

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1922, Page 4

Conditions in America

A NEW ZEALANDER’S IMPRESSIONS.

DUNEDIN, April 5.

Mr Percival Slater, who has returned to Dunedin after spending 15 years in New York where ho now runa » motor garage containing 70 cars, in answer to a question as to the prospects of a New Zealander going to America said: “If a man goes there without a special line, I should have doubt about bis doing much for ' a while. If he has a special line, he can make good; without such an advantage he would find himself an indistinguishable as a grain of sand on a beach. Men Who can simply work are there by the million. Common labour is competed for by immense numbers. .There is this, however, that the people in America will the more readily take up a man who has been elsewhere and has seen tihe world. They think he may be able to show them something.” Mr S lntor a ko had a suggestive and informative reply to the question as to which of the many problems of the day is giving thinking Americans anxiety. “The war,” he said, “took away many of our first-rank men. S&cond and third-class men were pushed up into their places, and they got exorbitant salaries, to which they were not accustomed. In time they became used to big wages and big spending. Now these second, and third-raters have to go back to their places in the community and take smaller pay and economise. That is the real problem ahead. We are waiting for readjustment of wages for the lowering that must come before business gets again on a proper footing.”