ENGLISH BARONET

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 71, 21 September 1936, Page 11

ENGLISH BARONET

SIR J. STEEL-MAITLAND

BRITISH BUSINESS INTERESTS

After having been in the Dominion a little over a week, Sir James SteelMaitland, an English baronet, arrived in Wellington last night by car from Napier. Sir James intends settling, permanently in New Zealand as a representative of British manufacturing interests. He is accompanied by his seven-year-old daughter and Mrs. Brenda Tapp, a friend of his mother, Mary Lady Steel-Maitland. Sir James, on his arrivel in Auckland from London by the Tamaroa, said that although he had never been to New Zealand before the Dominion always had attracted him. His business interests provided the opportunity for him to come to the country and he indicated his intention of residing in Wellington. Among other concerns Sir James represents a firm of structural steel manufacturers which proposes to carry on an importing agency in New Zealand at' present, but eventually may consider manufacturing within the Dominion. As economic conditions improved, Sir James said, there was . a tendency for British companies to 'extend their operations to the Dominions. THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT. From the point of view of the average English business man a Labour Government in New Zealand was not considered a necessarily unfortunate happening, Sir James said. "Not by a long chalk," he added. It depended entirely on how far the Government's policy was in the interests of the country as a whole, andhow it affected New Zealand's position abroad. "Providing—and this applies to all parties—the Labour Government's politics are not extreme, there can be no harm done, and perhaps a lot of good," Sir James said. Shortened hours and increased wages need not be bad as long as production did not /after, but was increased by mechanisation. Sir James said he was a great believer in the five-day week, provided the costs of production were not raised thereby. QUESTION OF POLITICS. Sir James Steel-Maitland is 34 years of age and succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father in March last year. For seven years he lived in the United States and Canada, being first associated with the banking firm of J. P. Morgan and Company in New York and later with another banking company in Montreal. Trout fishing figures prominently among his interests, and he hopes to devote a considerable part of his leisure to the sport in New' Zealand. As yet Sir James has not emulated his father by taking an active interest in politics, but he suggested that such an interest was by no means unlikely in the future. "Who knows what might happen later," he remarked.