LIFE IN AMERICA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5160, 3 August 1927, Page 1

LIFE IN AMERICA.

VIEWS OF MORRINSVILLE VISITOR

DOMINION BETTER TO LIVE IN.

“The Almighty Dollar dominates every phase of American life; it is bowed down to by practically every man and woman in the country/’ said Mr F. Ellis, who, with Mrs Ellis, has recently returned to Morrinsvilie from a tour of the United States and Canada. “I am satisfied that New Zealand is better than America to live in/’ said Mr Ellis, in an interview with a reporter of the Morrinsvilie paper. “It may have some disadvantages, but the method of government, the scenery, and the climate are far in advance of those obtaining in the States.” IMPRESSED BY ROADS. What impressed Mr Ellis most was the roads. Concrete highways extended for hundreds of miles in all directions and all the principal towns were linked. A road extended from Seattle to Los Angeles a distance of 1000 miles, and crossed the continent to New York, a further 3000 miles. Most of this stretch was either concrete or bitumen. This was, made possible by the millions of cars used in the country, a recent estimate placing the number at four for every eleven people. Benzine was cheap, the retail price being lOd a gallon, which included 3d tax. Cars were also cheap, £3O being sufficient to purchase a good second-hand model. A great majority of the people who owned cars did so under the hire-purchase system and could not really afford them. In New York a visit was paid to the slum area. “It is inconceivable that such conditions of. living as we saw there could exist,” said Mr Ellisj The streets were narrow and lined with dingy tenement 'houses. Disreputable hawkers of all nationalities backed their barrows into the footpaths on both sides, barely leaving room for a car to pass, and threw all their refuse on to the road. Sometimes whole families lived in a single room in the tenements. The children were ill-clad, and, having as their playground only tlie footpaths and gutters, they grew up in an invironment that did not tend to help them out of the rut and only served to make them wasters as disreputable as their parents. In some parts of the. slum area were streets into which the sun never pentrated, and they had t.o be illuminated artificially. PRICES FOR MEALS. The exorbitant prices charged for meals were commented on by Mr Ellis. Rarey could breakfast be secured under a dollar (4s 2d), while dinner and tea cost two dollars in all the hotels on the Pullman. The meals were not served as we are accustimed to in New Zealand, but each item is charged separately. Prices for some of the dishes were as follows : Mutton shops 2s Bd, potatoes 10d, apple Pie 10d, pot of tea 10d. Meat, which is not eaten a great deal by Americans, was a fabulous price, somei of the cuts costing 3s 6d a helping. The tea, too, was of poor Quality, tasting, as one English visitor remarked, like the ■water in which had been stewed. The national beverage of America is coffee. According to Mr UlliS', the privations suffered by farmers are infinitely worse than those of New Zealand farmers. The extremes between heat and cold and the vagaries of the weather combine to make his lot a hard one. The wheat farmers generally get about one good crop in five. In winter snow covers the: ground for eight months in the year, and as poorlydbuilt shacks are generally all that stand between the: farmer and his family, and the biting north wind, and the disastrous blizzards that, without warning, sweep across the country, his life is a hard one, and his livelihood uncertain. iOn his trip through Canada in the spring Mr Ellis saw hundreds of acres: of wheat rotting in the fields because: prices for the grain were so low as to make it unprofitable to re an. THE NASAL TWANG. The nasal twang of the Americans, though it amused them at first, was heartily detested by Mr and Mrs Ellis ere the trip was over. “We expected it in the uneducated classes,” said Mr Ellis, “but found that even in well-educated people and ladieist it was the rule. The children seem to speak with a worse twang than their parents.”