FROM KENT TO NEW ZEALAND.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5381, 14 May 1879, Page 3

FROM KENT TO NEW ZEALAND.

The exodus of the Kentish hop-pickers who went en masse to New Zealand a month or two ago is graphically described in the new magazine Time, under the head "Toilers in Field and Factory." The hardships of the locked-out laborers in the grim wintry weather, their protests coached in rude but vigorous language against the order of things which they blams because it drives them from home, all these are told in truthful and impressive language. The emigrants themselves, it is stated, resolved to leave tho the country as " a sort of self-helpful protest against the landlords and the clergy." They were not poverty-stricken ; they were "well-housed, well-fed, and well- I clothed." They were only angry at the unjust incidence of taxation ; at the difficulties placed in the way of their rising in the world. " Other people lives more expensive and extravagant " than they do — •'they hold their heads higher." It ia only the agricultural laborers who can never get on in tho world, and the reasonable prospect of bettering themselves is a very plausible inducement to men to start J anew in a new country. Whether those who count upon doing well quickly in New Zealand will have their hopes realised is not quite certain. One man said confidentially, " I know all about plantations (of hops), and I shall have plantations of my own in a 'ear or two. It is the beautifulest work aB is ; and I know all about it. Oh, yes, I've been | pretty well off in England, but I shall be better off in New Zealand." Let us hope they may all prosper ; but whether or not, New Zealand will find a valuable accession of strength and sinew in these eight hundred industrious men in Kent. — Home News.