THINGS IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2804, 21 January 1888, Page 2

THINGS IN AMERICA.

An Interesting Letter. . Money and Work in Plenty, ADunedinite on his Travels.

Tho following extracts from private letters written by an old resident of Dunedin, now in Los Angeles in California, will no doubt be interesting, to many of our readers, says the Evening Star. 1 ' Have had letters from Auckland, from which I learn that place has utterly gone to the dogs, When htfnest, hard-working people likecome to the wall, the place is wrong. If twenty-four years of industry, and no speculation results'in'this, it is a good place to clear out of. Thu whole of New Zealand is insolvent but they have not the courage to own it. Los Angeles continues to grow; immigants 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. Values 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 steadily. 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, .' I speak w'thin the mark when I say the rise in values since my arrival is one third since April last, and the winter rush has 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 the houses is immense. I think I am fairly correct in saying there are 500 to 600 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 line. There were then three houses built, and the price of lots was l,500dols; There are now forty first-class .houses built, worth, on an average, 5,000d01s each, and the price of lots is 2,500d01s to 4,000d01. 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 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 4dol, hodmen Idol, plasterers 7dol per day and plenty of work. Next month two or three trains with excursionists will arrive daily. This means—one of Pillip's consists of fifty cars divided into trains of ten cars, each carrying 2,500 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 thousaud 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, There are still plenty of neglected parts, to which iailways, cable, and horse tram lines are now 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 lots I will do my best for them, and will not buy any land without seeing it myself, Los Angeles is still growing, though I think have laid out enough town lots for a bit, I suppose the have put about 5,000 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 be 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 are built per day, and all to no purpose, The demand for accomrao- , dation is far in excess of the supply. This is not speculation; it is settlement. Eastern cold has again set in, and the streets are crowded with visitors a thousand a day often. arriving; 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.

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 Raisin Train": Meade and Co. announce that a train of twenty-five or thirty cars, loaded with raisins, will arrive in this city en route to New 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-growing, a few shepherds, but large numbers of people to plank, care for, pick and pack (he i'aisins, and an unlimited market at the door. Not one-tenth of the raisins consumed in New York-alone are produced in the State, and the soil Mid water are available for unlimited production—the same with all other fruits and grains. What will the San Joagium Valley (as rich as the Nile, 800 miles long 'by fifty), %3 San japintli Y#y, the &lt River Valley |n Arizona, the vast valleys of Lpwer California produce,' all equally favored! Immigration will last a century, and then there will be room, Let noonp be afraid to come here who can do, anything, or wllo has capital an<| enterpise enough thill the b<s j>n<j nqt

hang about the /cities,;. •AH (trades are , brisk,. At the butchers', the grocers', , the drapers', the ironmongers', you have to wait from ten minutes to half an hour before.you can te cash, not credit, is the order V-'the . day. Here, you pay for a thing or to without it. One thing alone cause a large influx of people from New Zealand-there areno politics. Stout, or Yogel, or Sir John Hall might ■ preach in. vain, The country , has no. politics; never have I heard the name mentioned, nor a senator spoken of.. I don't know the name of one, and except that the Governor died recently, I Ihould hardly know there was a Government, What does a new country . like New (Zealand or Oalifornia.want^. with politics 1 A Magistrate. and a poliiceman is all that is wanted. My home is about ready, and half-a-dozen . trains daily pass where before < the running of the trains not fifty people passed in a month. There are now 1,500 a week going through, I go to town daily, do a little business ' (not much), and await further developments. Then, perhaps, I shall sell out and go the Arizona, Who knows i ''Jl