The Guardian And Evening Star, with Which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1926. AS OTHERS SEE US.

Hokitika Guardian, 2 September 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with Which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1926. AS OTHERS SEE US.

When presenting his report at the fifty-fourth ordinary general meeting at London of the National Bank of New Zealand Ltd., the Hon W. l’ernber Beeves, the chairman, made some interesting remarks about the condition of affairs in New Zealand as they appeared to him in the course of his live months’ tour of the Dominion recently. “It was a Bright picture, hopeful, and extraordinarily interesting,” he said.” “I saw a more civilised social system, and a finer and happier people. I am sometimes tempted to think,” said Mr Beeves, “that apart front fishing, football, and frozen lamb, not too much is even known in this country .about New Zealand. The population, although it lias doubled in a generation, is still relatively small, and the notion prevails here that the increase is very slow. As a. matter of fact, its rate of increase lias, for over forty years, been, with Australia’s, the highest in the world, and the increase of its trade and production about keeps pace witli that of the population. The test of this is in the figures of the export trade. Tn 1900, its value was over £1.3,000,000, in 1025 it's value was £54,000.000, and calculated ou the prices obtaining in 1000 was between £2.3,000,000 and £24,000,000. In 25 years therefore it had risen about 8.3 per cent, and so about kept pace with the growth of the population, rapid as that was.” Millions of acres had been converted from fern, scrub, or forest into fine pastures; hundreds of thousands of acres of heavy swamp bad been drained and turned into fine dairy farms. The use of fertilisers had made large areas, once hardly profitable, very productive. The application of electric power to dairy-farming and to factory work and domestic purposes had transformed industry and life, both in town and country. Engineering had improved transport in districts once hardly practicable, and the telegraph, telephone and motor-car were everywhere. Factories were no longer in their infancy; trade in the larger seaports was on a European scale and excellently organised. “As you know,” remarked Mr Beeves, “New Zealand through no fault of her own was drawn into the vortex of the British seamen’s strike last August, and suffered much inconvenience and some loss thereby. Tn spite of the excitement which it stirred up. such local industrial conflicts as there have been in the Dominion during the year under notice were petty and brief, and in some cases so trivial as to appear comic,. The native-bred workmen appeared to me to lie, on the whole, competent, reasonable, peaceable men ; they get the highest wages they can. but are ready to give a good day’s work for a good day’s wage. You see in New Zealand the same phenomenon that you see on a much greater scale in the T'nited States.—namelv, that the more combative workmen have almost always come from overseas. There is not the slightest reason to apprehend a social convulsion in New Zealand. The workmen are at once too comfortable, and too sensible to put their faith in violent change. Mages are higher than in England, though not so high as in American industrial centres like Philadelphia. Other conditions, however, make the lot of the Now Zealand workman easier than that of the American. Evidence of the high standing of New Zealand’s credit in London has been given by the reception of the recent loan of £6,000..000. The High Commissioner brought

it out at a favourable moment, and it was, as a flotation, a remarkable success. “Anything that I have said today,” remarke cl Mr Reeves, “about the necessity of curtailing borrowing should not be wrested into a suggestion that the English investor in New Zealand bonds need have the slightest doubt about his security; that is undoubted.” It was not the British investor that had reason to be anxious, but the New Zealander, who stands in need of a reduction of his rates and taxes. The Dominion has taken over 50,000 immigrants in the last five years, and so far has absorbed them without difficulty, thanks largely to the growth of secondary industries and urban employment. “I am inclined to think,” said Mr Reeves, “that the majority of the immigrants ultimately make their homes in cities and suburbs, or in the country towns where the secondary industries enable them to find useful employment. By immigration of all kinds the population made a not gain of about 12.000 last year. I do not think it would bo prudent to go very much beyond this number.”