BRITISH EMIGRANTS LEARNED LESSON IN N.Z.

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 October 1947, Page 7

BRITISH EMIGRANTS LEARNED LESSON IN N.Z.

(Rec. 9 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 22. Describing the reasons which prompted a number of British emigrants who recently returned to Britain by the Rangitiki to abandon their plans for settling in New Zealand, Mr Anthony Alpers, a son of the late Mr Justice Alpers, who was a passenger in the ship, states in the News Chronicle that two lessons emerged from the experiences recounted —that life in Britain today is not as bad as people have been told to expect, and that life in New Zealand is not necessarily much easier.

Warnings Disregarded Some of the returning emigrants had disregarded all the warnings given them about housing conditions in New Zealand, some were “simply foolish, narrow people, who were shocked to find New Zealand so different from their own little corners of Britain.” Some did not know or had forgotten that there was rationing in New Zealand as well as in Britain. These types were not suitable for immigration to New Zealand or anywhere else.

On the other hand there was among 1 the returning emigrants, a number who appeared well fitted for life in the Dominion, and it was necessary that ;the reasons prompting them to return should be known in Britain. One man, a competent Yorkshire bootmaker, after a genuine try, found it impossible to buy either a house or a farm iniNew Zealand, and he also discovered, that he could earn more at his trade in Yorkshire than he could in New Zealand. High Prices in N.Z. This man might have found that he was wiong about that if he had stayed, but he would have found that his £1 bought less in New Zealand than Britain. Only meat, milk, fruit, and cinema charges are cheaper in

.New Zealand than in Britain. The ' prices for manufactured goods would make an Englishman splutter with astonishment. Dwellings of any kind <; are just as difficult to obtain in New ’Zealand as in Britain, and the standards of housing have depreciated so much as a result that many, young married couples on good wages gladly accepted abominable conditions. “In many matters New Zealand standards are lower than they are in this country,” states Mr Alpers. “But whether or not the emigrant finds them lower he is bound to find them , different, and sometimes that is worse I thah finding them lower. The sphere | in which standards are unquestion--1 ably far below those in Britain is in j professional salaries. Scientists and ! intellectual workers are miserably • paid.”