KEIR HARDIE ON NEW ZEALAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9047, 5 February 1908, Page 7

KEIR HARDIE ON NEW ZEALAND.

"BEST COUNTRY ON EARTH." Mr Keir Hardie, on arrival in Tasmania from New Zealand, stated to an interviewer that he was thinking of advising his two sons (both engineers) to settle in New Zealand. "Maoriland is certainly the best country on earth for the workers," he said. "The people are slow-going, cautious (yes, Scotch, if you like),. ye,t have proceeded further along Socialistic lines than any other people. Maybe they don't quite realise how Socialistic they are. And it's a good job they are cautious, for an undue'recklesaness in a Socialistic direction would attract more immigration than the country could easily absorb, and create a Canadian situation, with its consequent bad advertisement. A brainy organiser or two could l'ft Maoriland into the position of an earthly paradise. "The agitators there don't seem to me to quite fill the bill. They are mostly imported men. and make the mistake of talking to ths fairly-pros-perous Maorilanders about 'chains' and 'slavery,' which, however applicable such terms might be to the very poor Old World industrial centres, are really not. understood in New Zealand. It was the same in America, until the propagandists got 'racy of the soil.' "