SAN FRANCISCO.

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 July 1908, Page 1

SAN FRANCISCO.

THROUGH A NEW ZEALANDERS' EYES. Mr 11. R. Dix, of Wellington, who was for many years connected with the Adams "Star" Bicycle Company, has returned from San Francisco, where he went a year ago with the intention of settling. Mr Dix comes back (says the "Dominion,") with very definite ideas of life in the city inside the Golden Gate. "So you've come hack." "Yes," said Mr Dix, "I have lived too long in New Zealand to waste time in acquiring a new way to live. It was the living conditions that brought us back—the absence of anything resembling decent life." "But can't you make your own home life? What's the matter with getting a cottage in the suburbs and living as you like?" Mr Dix was asked. "Everything's the matter with it," was the reply. "Nobody does it, and if you want such a thing you have to go to an undesirable suburb too far out—but you have to be there to know how impossible it is to lead our sort of life. People looking for home life do not take a house—that would take them too far from town —they hire a flat wherein to live the simple life; But even then they mostly go out to meals to cafes and restaurants. When you go to a restaurant in 'Frisco you don't merely go to pay for the meal. At an ordinary dollar cafe, the waiter expects a, 10-cont tip; if you go to a better cafe you give a better tip —or you get left. I was warned that this was so, but thought it an imposition, so

passed out without appearing to notice the outstretched band of the waiter. The next time I went to that cafe 1 never received any attention at all—they served people sitting at the same table as I was, but they would not take my order. So I had to do in Rome as the Romans do, while ('hating under the imposition practised." "And 'Frisco itself —is it being built up again?" "Yes," said Mr Dix, "they're making a start, but for some time after we got there there was nothing much doing in the building line, and things were very bad. It appeared that the banks would not advance the money — nobody seemed to have any confidence in the place, but before we left there was a turn for Ihe better, and a good deal of building was in progress. But the place is as bad as ever —'graft' everywhere. You can't do anything without greasing someone's palm. That sort of thing is a cancer in the community, and its introduction into New Zealand should be carefully guarded against. The working man is well paid there, but I doubt if he is better off than in New Zealand on account of the high cost of living. I kept a store there for a time, and did fairly well, but the hours—from 6 a.m. lo 11 p.m. —were hardly in accordance with our ideas of a fair thing unless you looked on store-keeping as a. pleasant recreation. I have come to the conclusion that there are worse places on the Pacific coast than New Zealand."