CONFLICTING STORIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 382, 29 July 1911, Page 3

CONFLICTING STORIES.

VIEWS OF NEW ZEALAND. CONTROVERSY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. The criticisms of visitors to these shores must be very often taken for what they are worth—at least, while these visitors are in our midst. If they have not been favourably impressed they will naturally hesitate from saying so in order not to wound our susceptibilities; their unprejudiced remarks they will reserve until they get home. In the "Daily Province," publish: d at Vancouver, British Columbia, Mr D. MacPherson, who was a resident for eignteen years in New Zealand, and has returned to his own country, gives impressions formed during his sojourn here.. "Here in this country of British Columbia," says Mr MacPherson, "a man can work a little while until he has saved a few hundred dollars, buy his little piece of land, develop it and count on making himself eventually almost anything he sets his ambition upon and keeps working fo \ In NewZealand, under its semi-Socialistic theories, he knows from the beginning that the best he can aspire to is his old age pension. The system contradicis the spirit of enterprise and progress that has made America great, and works for a gradual deterioration of individual and therefore national fitness. If the law says that men in the same avocation must obtain the same wages whether one man be a good workman and the other a bad one, whether ona does twice as much work as another, or whether one is possesed of natural inventive or mechanical talent and the other is not, it practically prevents the workman going forward. He seeq no incentive to improvement in his craft, and concludes that the best thing for him to do is to do as little work as possible. The elimination of individual ambition cannot but work out in the long run towards steady deterioration." Mr MacPherson says the New Zealand system compels the public to pay for an army of non-productive and non-essential Governmental officials. The average population in a New Zealand electoral division, he says, is about 6000, and of this about 700, or more than 10 per cent , draw their source of livelihood from the public purse, these including, the recipients of old-age pensions, the police, school teachers, etc. Upwards of £300,000 per annum is paid out in old age pensions, to qualify for which a man must have lived twenty-five years in the country and have no bad marks against him in the police record. The lattnr apparently has no particular effect as a deterrent of crime, ihe average of which is much higher under New Zealand policy and practice than in Canada. There is less crime in Canada with its population of 7,000,000 than in New Zealand with its 1,000,000, and this is attributed to the considerable proportion of descendants of ennvicts who were sent out to Australia in the old penal days. Climatic conditions also play a part, especially in sex crime, which is shockingly high in New Zealand. Wages are very much lower than in Canada, yet living is higher, and the land laws discourage settlement. Besides regular taxes the country swarms with petty assessments of one kind or another, ard little vexations laws at every turn. The whole tendency is to encumber the statute book with a multiplicity of old grandmotherly laws. In liquor and hotel regulation the extremists are very active, and a man cannot enter a hotel on a Sunday for a meal unless he can prove that he comes from an outside centre. The genera! standard of hotel accommodation could not be much worse.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE. In such a far-away country it might have been naturally concluded that a statement like the above would have gone unchallenged, and that British Columbians would have laboured under the impression that Mr MacPherson was lucky to get away from such an undesirable country. However, a champion turned up, and in a following number of the same journal replied very effectively. The writer is a Mr J. Harris, whose residence of fifteen years fully qualified him to answer hostile criticism. He admits that Canada is a wonderful country with a great future and great possibilities, but points out that it is thirty-five times the size of New Zealand with a larger population and bordering the United States with a population of over 100,000,000; also it is only five or six days' sailing from Europe and immigration ilows in freely, while New Zealand with its smaller population is six weeks' sailing from Europe and four weeks from Vancouver and immigration naturally does not flow ao freely. Though New Zealand is the home of many Government experiments of a fundamental character, it is acknowledged by the whole world to be the paradise of the working man. Mr MacPherson is a labouring man himself, and has spent much time aiding in the construction of railroads, yet, adds Mr Harris, he failed to accomplish during the eighteen years something belter for himself than he has done, and criticises harshly a country that has so well sheltered him for so many years. The land settlement is very liberal and favourable. A great number ot large estates have been cut up for small holdings, and thousands of small farmers as well as the big are doing well and prospering. The people as a whole are contented and happy with a beautiful country, and their general condition is very good and bright. They are hospitable and broad-minded; the majority of the workers, after a little while, have saved a few pour.da and bought land, and a great number with ambition have made plenty of money, and plenty are making money there, the same as elsewhere. Mr Harris knows personally several men who, a few years ago without a p enr) y__ so to speak —possess now from

£BOOO to£lo,ooo. Their semi-socialit-tic theories are the means of making them a sociable people; class hatred is done away with, and people of all denominations mingle together, and all do their best to care for the aged a:id needy. The old uge pension is an example, and some countries have followed New Zealand's example. It is not the only thing they can aspire to; that is only for the fe>v that failed in tneir lifetime, not through any fault of the cjuntry they lived in. There is less crime in New Zealand than elsewhere; the people are lawabiding. Mr Harris noticed more burglaries and hold-up in Vancouver in four weeks -than could happen in New Zealand in fiur years. The police force is excellent y organised, the education syste n superb, the postai, telegraph, mi telephone service the best he has seen and owned by the people, as also are the tram, railways, and electric light service. The wages in New Zealan 1 are about the same as those ruling in British Columbia, rents are lower, and necessities of life much cheaper, while the climate is the iinest in the world. There are labour laws which do m.t favour everybody, but no law has been passed in any country which met with the approval of ail. Every country has its advantages and disadvantages, but the writer says he would be sorry, after living in Vancouver for many years, to pick out the disadvantages and advertise them. What he had seen in British Columbia and Vancouver he liked as well, and perhaps better than, any country he had lived in. At the same time he loved New Zealand, and was proud of being a New Zealandor.