AS OTHERS SEE US

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3591, 27 January 1927, Page 3

AS OTHERS SEE US

AN ENGLTSIIMAN’S. VIEW OF

NEW ZEALAND.

Tin* following 1 , letter, over the signature of “one who has boon/’ was published in n 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 shine, as I have spent some time in that country. First of all, I must mention the preference for British goods, etc. In all my travels, which was practically the whole of the North Island, I found that it was anything but the case. All the agricultural implements, or nearly all, were of Yankee manufacture and ajlt the (dairies il visited Were fitted with Banish 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 ha/d to purchase out there. English-made 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 them out. I am speaking, of the years 1920 to 1922, but from what I can hear things liny not much al-

tered. “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 arc 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 mail cannot go and live with a wife and family on the climate altogether. The real trouble is, in my opinion, the present day labour troubles .here, which affect’ New Zealand very much, as the English market absorbs most of her produce; and I consider unless the Government can devise some scheme of developing the land it is useless trying to get people 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.”