"MOST EXPENSIVE COUNTRY”

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22437, 25 June 1938, Page 14

"MOST EXPENSIVE COUNTRY”

VISITOR’S COMMENT ON DOMINION ATTITUDE TO WAGES AND WORK “Without exception New Zealand is the most expensive country I have ever been in,” said Mr N. PurcellFitzgerald, of Waterford, Ireland, who is accompanying Mr Edmund de Rothschild on a .tour of the Dominion, to a reporter yesterday. “The increased wages,” he said, “seem to have defeated their own end. People think only in terms of wages and not in terms of the real value of money, and the result is that costs increase and a vicious circle is produced.” Mr Purcell-Fitzgerald directed some strong criticism against the waterside workers in the Dominion, who, he said, seemed .to make a point of doing as little work as they possibly could. New Zealand was everywhere recognised as the worst place in the world to get anything done on the wharves. The waterside workers seemed to be able to do what they liked, and the Government was probably afraid to take any action against them for fear of losing votes. “I have heard that they will not unload a ship in Wellington when the south wind is blowing,” he said. “In an exporting country which has to compete with the rest of the world this kind of thing means increases in costs, which make the country poorer. ' “There are a lot of fine chaps who could work on the wharves, but there is a closed union and they cannot get in,” he added. “It is nothing but legalised racketeering.”