NOT WILLING TO MIGRATE

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21908, 8 October 1936, Page 10

NOT WILLING TO MIGRATE

ATTITUDE OF ENGLISH PEOPLE

CHRISTCHURCH WOMAN’S

IMPRESSIONS

The opinion that any propaganda designed to induce immigration to New Zealand would fall on deaf ears in England, was expressed to .a representative of “The Press” yesterday, by Mrs M. W. Evans, of Papanui, who has just returned from a 12 months’ holiday visit to Great Britain.

Her observations led her to believe that it would be difficult to induce even those in poorer circumstances, with little or no future, to leave England for any other country. The fact that an era of prosperity had returned to the United Kingdom was undoubtedly a factor against emigration. Revisiting the Homeland after an absence of 17 years, she found people in the same old groove, content 10 stay there even on a pittance, and fearful of any prospect which would cause them to part with institutions and ways of living so dear to them. They might grumble at times, but to sever the ties which bound them to England was to them unthinkable. In Mrs Evans’ opinion, if New Zealand wanted English immigrants, her only hope lay in child immigration. Englishmen were naturally very conservative, and, once they became set in their ways, nothing would shift them. Not Interested in New Zealand In any case, nobody seemed to be interested in New Zealand, said Mrs Evans. Those who did mention the Dominion shrugged their shoulders and said it was too far away from England, and remarked that New Zealand had too many earthquakes for their liking. Apart from earthquakes, the average Britisher was not very well-informed about the Dominion, but they all spoke very kindly of us. Notwithstanding the general air of prosperity in England, Mrs Evans came home convinced that New Zealanders lived in a paradise, compared with the inhabitants of Great Britain. She was impressed with the enormous clearances being effected in the slum areas in the large centres of population, and the replacement of old tenements by row upon row of flats and terraced houses, the rooms in which were still remarkably small when judged by New Zealand standards. As a woman, Mrs Evans was greatly interested in the fashions in clothes in evidence in London, which by all accounts, now led the wor’d in this respect. The visitor frequently encountered women in plus fours, which garment was fashionable when riding tandem bicycles, now all the rage in England. The spread of the smoking habit among women in Britain also impressed her. She found that thousands of yomen smoked quite openly in the streets, in the shops, and in public conveyances.