The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1930 WHAT’S WRONG WITH NEW ZEALAND?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 908, 27 February 1930, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1930 WHAT’S WRONG WITH NEW ZEALAND?

APPARENTLY there is nothing wrong with New Zealand, i£ H one should seek an answer to such a question in the experiences and first impressions of visiting farmers from other countries in the Empire. As welcome tourists, here to teach as well as to learn, they already’ have discovered on their initial outings that this Dominion is “a wonderful country with wonderful possibilities” and an “eye-opener” to oversea agriculturists. And their warm praise of Auckland farms and the rich pastures of the Waikato need not be taken merely as flattery or as an expression of exuberant politeness. They have been favourably impressed because strangers with competent knowledge in support of alert vision could not otherwise he affected by such attractive evidence of agricultural and pastoral productivity and (let this be said in the teeth of grumbling landowners!) such proof of a comfortable prosperity. Moreover, the visitors, many of whom would rather see the picture of dairy cattle on lush meadows and sheep upon a thousand hills than smell the sulphur at Rotorua, have been assured by representative leading dairymen that the remarkable expansion of their industry in the Waikato during the past ten years has been nothing to that which may and almost certainly will he achieved within the next decade. Has not Mr. W. Goodfellow, managing director of the greatest co-operative dairy company in the world, said that he was certain that, if the present rate of' progress were continued, the yield of dairy produce in the Auckland Province would be increased by fifty thousand tons during the next ten years—an increase which would necessitate the tackling of the problem of selling the great output. Since other problems of a similar nature have been solved in the past, there is no reason to fear failure to solve another one in the future. There will he ample time for the development of marketing methods and the extension of satisfactory markets. The good work of increasing production need not he slowed down because of the prospect of more difficult salesmanship. Firstclass quality all the time will do more than anything else to overcome marketing difficulties. Unfortunately, no country may pro'sper on butter and cheese alone. While local and oversea farmers are finding delight in the position and prospects of the dairying industry, and demonstrating that, in spite of high taxation and had polities, there is nothing wrong with New Zealand as far as one of its principal primary industries is concerned, other experts have broadcast a statement of despair in which they have attempted to prove that an additional million pounds in taxation will be required every year for ever for the relief of unemployment and the payment of a dole ranging from 12s 6d to 21s a week for any period up to thirteen weeks, to the most distressed persons without employment. Such a recommendation goes much too far in asserting that there is a great deal wrong with New Zealand. And the worst fault in the Dominion today is the lamentable fact that it is not in a position favourably and with some cause for envy to impress visiting industrialists with the growth and prosperity of New Zealand manufactures. A piquant lesson from America may be cited as the applicably best explanation of New Zealand’s difficulties. It is the confession of a small-town newspaper in the United States, and it can easily be confirmed in this country which squanders so much of its earnings on American productions: “Nothing’s wrong with Emmitsburg except—entirely too many of us get up in the morning at the alarm of a Connecticut clock, button a pair of Chicago trousers to Ohio suspenders, put on a pair of shoes made in Massachusetts, wash in a Pittsburgh tin basin, using Cincinnati soap and a cotton towel made in New Hampshire, sit down to a Grand Rapids table, eat pancakes made from Minneapolis flour, spread with Vermont maple syrup and Kansas City bacon fried on a St. Louis stove, buy fruit put up in California, seasoned with Colorado sugar, put on a hat made in Philadelphia, hitch a Detroit mule on Texas gasoline to an Ohio plough and work all day long on a Maryland farm covered with Pennsylvania mortgages, send our money to Chicago for anto tyres, and at night crawl under a New Jersey blanket to be kept awake from a dern dog, the only home product on the place—wondering all the while why ready money and prosperity are not more abundant in this wonderful town of ours.” That is exactly what is wrong with New Zealand. THE SEVEN CITIES BY the elevation of Invercargill to the rank of city, the capital of Southland is given a new dignity, and the number of accredited cities in the Dominion raised to seven. Of these cities Nelson, a city only by virtue of its cathedral, is much the smallest. Its population is just over 12,000, considerably smaller than progressive centres like Hamilton, Hastings, New Plymouth, Palmerston North and Timaru. According to the somewhat vague rights which cover the creation of a Cathedral City, it is remarkable that Hamilton, with 5,000 more people than Nelson, and Napier, with" nearly 7,000 more, and both with cathedrals, are not accorded the same distinction; hut in the case of Invercargill, no such ecclesiastical eminence has governed its promotion. In official eyes the determining test is population, and Invercargill, with 25,000 people, now has the required status. The advent of another city shows to a gratifying extent how well distributed is the population of the Dominion. Scattered between the four cities which, at first glance, might seem to the stranger to be the chief centres, are prosperous and thriving towns. The larger cities are not predominant. They do not, as in Australia, drain the country of its population. Here the healthy struggle for individual place is apparent in the aspirations of town councils and harbour boards. While Auckland has developed in population ih recent years, it is a fine sign of advancement that Hamilton, a country centre which in less happy circumstances might be under the City’s domination, has been proportionately progressive, and while Wellington, too, has grown, its advance has not checked the healthy growth of Wanganui, New Plymouth and Palmerston North, its vigorous provincial handmaidens. On these grounds, and on others of civic sentiment and cordiality, the older cities will be pleased to welcome Invercargill among them. Though new as a city, Invercargill is old and stable as a town. Sound businesses line her streets, beautiful gardens deck her parks and reserves. Long ago her far-sighted legislators provided her with wide and spacious streets, that at first sight and under unfavourable conditions might suggest an emptiness not consistent with the town’s activity. But today, with a great and growing volume of traffic throbbing daily in and out of the town, maintaining communications between the business houses and the people of the wide and fertile plains of the south land, the wisdom of that planning stands demonstrated, and even as she modestly takes her place among her sister cities, Invercargill can exhibit graces for their envy, __