YOUTHFUL SETTLERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 January 1922, Page 6

YOUTHFUL SETTLERS.

IN SEARCH OF NEW LANDS. AMERICAN STUDENT’S TALE OF DEPRESSION. WAVE OF SERIOUS CRIME. While some old advertising material concerning the Panama Exhibition was being destroyed recently a pamphlet on Australia -fell into the hands of a young law student of Los Angeles. He had been pursuing his studies for three years, but saw there was little chance, in the prevailing depression in the States, of securing a competence, so he got married and booked his passage for Western Australia, travelling to New Zealand by the Marama. Before continuing his voyage to Sydney by the Manuka from Wellington, the visitor, whose name is Raymond Fisher, told a depressing tale to a New Zealand Times representative regarding unemployment and trade depression in America.

EXTRAVAGANCE AND CRIME. “A wave of crime is following the depression,” said Mr. Fisher. “It is extraordinary the number of serious offences, robberies, hold-ups * and assaults on women that are taking place. The newspapers are unable to furnish details of them. I speak particularly of San Francisco. Poverty is driving people to crime. Thousands of ablebodied men are out of work. Yet, strangely enough, there is still a good deal of extravagance among a certain class of people. The best seats at the theatres, for which one would pay up to 255, are always full.

TREATMENT OF VISITORS. “New Zealanders and Australians that I met on the Marama said they did not like America. One cannot wonder at it, as the exchange is dead against them, and they lose money everywhere. They get ‘raked over’ in the Customs, and have to ' pay high prices for everything, while hotel tariffs are appallingly high for them.*Then, if they have to do with Government departments, they come up against the system of graft that is for ever associated with Government in the Here, in New. Zealand, I have marvelled at the courtesy that has been extended to me by Government officials. Indeed, some of the New Zealanders I met on the vessel spent most of Lhe voyage persuading us to settle here.” “Why wll people' travel in the second-class?” asked the young American. “We could not afford to travel first so went second. Why, I don’t know, as it is midway between something and nothing. When I was a few days out I found my way into the third-class, and there I met a fine stamp of people, that a man would be proud to know.”

AS OTHERS SEE US. Mr. Fisher remarked that his observations during a week in Wellington proved to him that there was no such thing as unemployment—as he knew it. The people he met and conversed with were all contented and prosperous, and he would be - very pleased if he found the same conditions in Australia. It is Kis intention to secure a post "as married couple, and later on to take up land and grow wheat. He has selected Western Australia as the State that offers the best facilities for young farmers. His wife is a practical young woman—they are both in the early twenties—who earned her living as secretary to a charity organisation in San Francisco. They have a long journey before them before they reach Perth, their destinatipn, and the husband intends working his passage across from Sydney by an inter-State boat, his wife travelling by the transcontinental railway. Together they make perhaps the most desirable type of new settlers any young country could secure.