AS OTHERS SEE US.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5080, 26 January 1927, Page 4

AS OTHERS SEE US.

PREFERENCE FOR BRITISH GOODS AN ENGLISHMAN’S VIEWS. The following letter, over the signature of “One who has been,” was published in a recent issue of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph :— “Having read Mr Coates's speech on New Zealand in Sheffield I feel it my duty to reply to the same, as I have spent some, time in that country. First of all, 1 must mention the preference for British goods, etc. Tn all my travels, which was practically the whole of’ the North Islland, I found that it was anything but the case. All the agricultural implements, or nearly all, were of Yankee manufacture, and all the dairies I visited were fitted up with Danish machinery, so where do the Mother Country’s, goods come in, as we all know that .agriculture is the mainstay of New Zealand ? “The only articles I. saw which were, most in demand were saws, knives, etc. All the engineering tools were Yankee, as I have in my possession to-day spanners, etc., which I had to purchase, out there. Englishmade tools were out of the question there. “I see roads are also mentioned. Now, unless things have altered very much, it is impossible to travel from Auckland down to Wellington by road in winter. A car cannot get through. It was nothing to pick a daily paper up and read where such a person had been stuck waiting for someone to come to help him out. I am speaking df the years 1920 to 1922, but 'from what I can hear things havq not muJi altered.

“Preference., I see, is also mentioned for British labour. How is it that a good 95 per cent, of the fruit and vegetable merchants’ shops are held by the Japanese, and Chinese? I wonder where is the preference for English labour. “I will admit that New Zealand is a fine country, but a man cannot go and live with a wife and family on the. climate altogether. The real trouble is, in my opinion, the presentday 'labour troubles here, which affect New Zealand very much, as the English market absorbs inost her produce,; and I consider that unless the Government can devise some scheme o'f developing the land it is useless trying to get pe°p lj e. from this country to go out there to* spend their all and have nothing to carry on with, when the land should be doing them some good.”