PROSPERITY OF AMERICA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1692, 31 January 1888, Page 2

PROSPERITY OF AMERICA.

The Mataura Ensign gives the following as the contents of a private letter written by a Dunedin resident from Los Angelos, in California, to his friends in Dunedin:— BEATS fHE WORLD. Have had letters from Auckland, from which I learn that place has utterly gone to the dogs. When honest, hard-working people like —- come to the wall, the place is wrong. If twenty-four years of industry and no speculation result in this, it is a good place to clear out of. Th® whole of New Zealand is insolvent, but they have not the courage to own it. Los Angelos continues to grow; immigrants are pouring in by thousands, with all California, Lower do, and the whole of Mexico to settle up. I speak soberly when I say this country will take centuries to settle. It is no mere boom, but a national, if not universal movement to settle the most fertile lands in the world. Yalues may fluctuate; there may be a check—there is one now, and there was another just after I came here—but the advancing tide, though the waves fluctuate, rises steedily. New Zealand towns have but one rise, and no more; then they stop and do not recover. Here the check is only for a little while, and the next rise far overtops the former one.

LEAPS AND BOUNDS.

I speak within the mark when I say the rise in values since my arrival is one third since April last, and the wihter rush yet to come. All the hotels are full, and people sleep in the cars in which they came, and go back East for want of where to lay their heads; and this though the building of houses is immense. L think I am. fairly correct in saying that 500 tc 600 are being built every month. The Sunday after my arrival here I walked, up to a pretty site near the engine house of the cable car linev The're were then three houses built, and the price of lots was ISOOdol. There, are now forty first-class houses built, worth, on ah average, SOOOdol each, and the prices of lots is 25,00d0l to 4000dol. This is not done on. borrowed money, as all improvements are in New Zealand. A mortgage is rare, and the interest 10 per cent, clear of all taxes. Tell this to some of your money-lending friends, and let them send their money over here for investment. The shops are crowded now, and cannot supply all their customers —all cash—fast enough. Trade of all kinds is booming. Wages are the highest ever paid in the States. The trades all strike, and dollar after dollar is added to their wages. Carpenters 4dol, masons sdol, hodmen 4dol, plasterers 7dol per day, and plenty o£ work. Next month two or three trains with excursionists will arrive daily. This means—one of Philip’s consists of fifty cars divided into trains of ten ears, each carrying 2500 people—that 100,000 are expected this winter, and already the Chief of Police reports 100 to 200 sleeping in the streets every night. Debts are practically irrecoverable in this land of freedom. Two thousand five hundred dollars worth of everything a man wants, from a beehive to a horse and buggy, are exempt from execution, excepting for the debt incurred in buying the very thing.. The creditor parts with his goods at his peril: so bankruptcy is unknown—there is simply none. Shere are stiW

* plenty of neglected parts, to which railj[ ways, cable and horse-tram lines are no w being built, which will look up in a year or two and perhaps sooner. So if anyone likes to send me a few pounds to put into lota I will do my best for them, and will not buy any land without seeing it myself. Los Angelos] is still growing, though I think they have laid out enough town lots for a bit. I suppose they have put about 5000 acres' on the market in this form in the last six months, which, I think, will supply the legitimate demand for some time to come. Still, the demand is heavy, and the building going on enormous. Some idea of the activity in this trade may he gathered from the fact of the famines in building materials which constantly arise. One day there is no cement —money won’t buy it, for a week or ten days; then nails run out ; then lime. Now there is no lumber itself, and it is a favor to get a load to keep things going. At least twenty houses per day are built, and all to no purpose. The demand for accommodation is far in excess of the supply. This is not speculation; it js settlement; Eastern cold has again set in, ■ and the streets are crowded with visitors a thousand a day ; often arrifing; and the prediction is that within five years this city will have ’ 250,000 inhabitants. Have now been here seven months —and those the dull ones— and have certainly seen no check in the growth of the city so far. TEAIN OP EAlsnre. The country is just in its infancy, and imagination can hardly conceive the vast population it will support. I ? quote from last night’s paper lying before me. “A Baisin Train” :Meade and Co. announce that a train of twenty-five or thirty cars, loaded with raisins, will arrive in this,city"ew route to Hew York from “ Fresho.” This immense consignment has been sold at good prices, and the quality is declared to be equal to the best imported. Here is an industry not three years old employing, not like wool-growiug, a few shepherds, hut large numbers of people to plant, care for, pick and plant the raisins, and an unlimited market at the door. Hot one-tenth of the raisins consumed in Hew York alone are produced in the State, and the soil and water are available for unlimited production—the same with all other fruits and grains

ITS GREAT EXTENT. What will the San Joagium Valley (as rich as the Nile, 300 miles long by fifty), the San Jacinto Valley, the Salt River Talley in Arizona, the vast valleys of Lower California, produce, all equally favored ? Immigration will last a century and then there will be room. Let no one be afraid to come here who can do anything, or who has capital or enterprise enough to till the soil ,and not hang about the cities. All trades are brisk. At the butcher’s, the grocer’s, the draper’s, the ironmonger’s you have to wait ten minutes to half an hour before you can be served; and cash, not credit is the order of the day. Here you pay for a thing or go without it. One thing alone should cause a large influx of people from New Zealand — there are no politics; Stout, or Vogel, or Sir John Hall might preach in vain, Ths country has no politics; never have I heard the name mentioned, nor the name of a senator spoken of. I don’t know the name of one; and, except that the Governor died recently, I should hardly know that there was a Government. What does a new country like New Zealand or California want with politics F AM agistrate and a policeman is all that is wanted. My house is about ready, and half-a-dozen trains daily pass my door, where before the running of the trains not fifty people passed in a month. There are now 1500 a week going through. Igo to town daily, do a little business (not much), and await further developments. Then, perhaps, I shall sell out and go to Arizona. Who knows?