YUGOSLAV SETTLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16, 20 January 1926, Page 11

YUGOSLAV SETTLERS.

"DESIRABLE CITIZENS." AUCKLAND BUSINESS MAN'S j OPINION. SHARP BUSINESS INSTINCTS. What manner of man is the Dalmatian resident in New Zealand? Every now and again a newspaper correspondent will fly into print with a tirade against the "square head." as he is popularly termed. and a "Star" representative thought it might make interesting copy to ascertain the views of local business people, who have dealings with the Serbians. Croatian.- and Slovenes, living in our midst. "Dalmatians, eh? Well, they have certainly, taught ii- the kauri gum business." said one husiness man. when the subject was mentioned. "And they have kept the gum business alive. Had it not been for the Dalmatians tbe industry would have died a natural death-. They are great workers, but my experience of them is that they are no pood to the employer on wanes. They do very well on a contract. When they are paid wages they will usually take things easy, since it is not their way to allow an employer to profit by their- labour, but give them a contract, with a chance of making money for themselves, and you won't find more industrious workmen anywhere." Great Co-operative Workers. Our informant instanced the transformation of swamp lands in the north into rich dairying country, all as the result -of the dogged perseverance of Dalmatians, who. he said, were great co-operative workers. Where colonials or Englishmen would give in. the Dalmatian would go ahead, content to rough it and work hard, so long as there was a reasonable prospect of making money. Another who has had dealings with Dalmatians over a long period of years, I said he had found that the majority of them did not have a high sense of business morality. That innate sense of honour, which was the boast of the Britisher, seemed to be lacking in the Dalmatian: who usually seemed to be out to profit at the expense of the other party to a deal. Chinese were good business men. but their sense of business honour was higher than that of a Dalmatian. "Mark you. the Dalmatian is quite a desirable citizen, despite this characteristic." he added. "He is infinitely preferable to a Chinaman. As a grafter, he is unequalled. Regarding morality in tae ordinary sense of tiie wcrd. those to whom our representative mentioned the point, were of the opinion that the Dalmatian was, as a general rule, a good living fellow. His besetting sin appeared to be gambling. "A Dalmatian will gamble anywhere, any time, on anything." said one man. "It's born in him. and he can't help it. You invariably see the gum diggers come down from the north at holiday time, attracted by the race meetings. They are fairly lucky too." said a man who has lived in the North Auckland district for some years. He recounted several instances of having seen Dalmatians gambling in the gum-diggers' camps. where, not infrequently, large sums of money could be seen on the tables, the stakes rising as the night drew on. Only 2500 in New Zealand. A shopkeeper, who numbers several Dalmatians among his customers, said he had found them a quiet, well-behaved class with whom to do business. They had a sharp sense of money values, and it was seldom that they purchased anything for which a fancy price was asked. However, Dalmatians as a class, invariably paid their d,-ebts. and were honest enough in the general sense. Of course, there is always a tendency to over-estimate the number of foreigners living in New Zealand. A statement recently published that there were from ten to fifteen thousand Yugoslavs living in the Dominion is altogether inaccurate, according to a local merchant who is in close touch with the gum-diggers. He was confident that the total number of foreigners in NewZealand whom one might classify as Dalmatians did not exceed 2-">00. Many of these were naturalised British subjects. Finding of Commission Recalled. A correspondent made the assertion the other day that "morally the young Yugoslavs are a menace." but the commission appointed in 1916 to inquire into the alien problem in the North of Auckland found that Dalmatians were "much more law-abiding thaft the rest of the population." Taking the amount of crime per head (or for 1000 or any other number) of each class, the commission found trtat they commit only 1 about one-half of the number of crimes that other people do. Most of these offences were breaches of the Kauri <ium Industry Act. "They are, as a I class, remarkably free from serious ' offences," was the commission's verdict. It was an extraordinary thing to find amongst us a large community of of an entirely different race, so well behaved as the Dalmatians. That they were "better behaved than the best of the British communities" was stated by the members of the commission to be "a striking testimony in their favour as sojourners or citizens,"' and their loyalty was undoubted. During the war many people became alarmed 0 at the reports spread concernino- the alleged pan-Austrian sympathies of" the Yugoslavs, and the Commission of Enquiry- was set up to report on the whole question. It was found that many wild and reckless stories were circulated about them, and a diligent search for evidence of disloyalty revealed nothing. A number of Dalmatians served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and many "Diggers" will remember what excellent'marksmen these "square heads" were. ' They were among the best snipers the Drmiuion sent overseas.