SANE AND FRUGAL FOLK.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 February 1921, Page 11

SANE AND FRUGAL FOLK.

VISITOR’S VIEW OF DOMINION. NOISY ELEMENT OF EXTREMISTS. A highly favorable opinion of conditions in New Zealand has been formed by Mr. W. D. Boyce, a prominent Chicago journalist, who has spent the last six weeks in travelling through the Dominion. “From all I can read and see,” he said in Wellington, “the national aim of New Zealand is to keep the Dominion for New Zealanders —to keep it free from the taint of colored races and the influence of undesirable immigrants, and to develop it for your oyvn people.”

The Government of New Zealand seemed to have been for the people and for their benefit “from the year one.” From the Prime Minister downwards everyone with whom he had spoken seemed to be thinking first and foremost of the country and its welfare — how to make it a better New Zealand. When New Zealand possessed a population of five millions it would then have inhabitants equal, in proportion to area, to the United States. But New Zealand in regard to population was heading along such well-defined lines that she was not likely to make the same mistakes as America in admitting undesirables.

“What impresses me most about New Zealand,” Mr. Boyce continued, "is that you have solved a problem that worried us greatly, and that is the handling of trusts by the establishment on definite lines of such business as the Public Trust and the Fire and Life Insurance Departments, which have had the effect of regulating competition and prices,” New Zealand, he said, was like America, in that we were a people living on the soil. That was the basis of our life. /And while we had made it attractive tn large holders of land where it was necessary to open up the country quickly, we seemed to be following a very sound system in trying equitably to divide up the land into small holdings. Of course. New Zealand, like the rest of the world, had its industrial problems, but from the study Mr. Boyce had made of the situation, he considered Labor had little to complain of so far as the general conditions were concerned in New Zealand. The extremists seemed to. be making up in noise and strife —disturbing factors—what they lacked in numerical strength, but lie ventured to express the view that the sane moderate men would eventually shake off the influence of the agitators and realise that evolutionary, not revolutionary, methods were in the best interests of all concerned. “The sane New Zealander, from what I have seen of him, is a fine, sturdy type capable of thinking for himself, and with plently of initiative, and he will not allow himself to be chloroformed by the pernicious doctrines of wild irresponsibles.

“The people of" your country appear to me to be naturally a saving, frugal people,” said the visitor. “They do not seem to spend all they make. The only evidence I have seen to the contrary is in the waste of alcohol. The homes of poor people are well kept up, there are no excessively large houses, and the people d 'pss well.” As a sheep and cattle-raising country Mr. Boyce spoke enthusiastically of New Zealand and its possibilities. It was the best in the world, because of its soil, its plentiful rainfall, which gave three grass-growths, and its numerous stockwatering creeks and rivers. In Argentina and America the great problem was to get water for the cattle and sheep. The visitor was equally complimentary on other phases of New Zealand life, upon the health of the people, the average age longevity, which now showed the highest average in the world, and the possibilities of the future.