A FARMER'S DREAM

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 58, Issue 4167, 1 August 1949, Page 9

A FARMER'S DREAM

BUTTER 6/- PER POUND LAND £5OO PER ACRE A VISIT TO SWITZERLAND “Butter and meat at 5s to 6s per pound, a dairy cow for £l5O, a working horse for £3OO to £5OO and farming land at £4OO to £5OO per acre,’’ sounded like a farmer’s dream when Mr T. Reidi of Hikutaia, who has just returned from a visit to Switzerland, gave to a Gazette representative the above figures as to prices ruling in the land of his birth. Mr Reidi stated that Switzerland was very prosperous at the present time and that during the months he was there, particularly during last Easter, crowds of tourists arrived and at times as many as 85 extra trains a day were put on by the railway department to handle the passenger traffic at Zurich.

Mr Reidi noticed tremendous activity in the building industry. Buildings of every description were going up all over the country. Houses in Switzerland were mostly of the three storey type of 10 to 12 rooms and those with central heating and double walls cost from £3OOO upwards. Wages in the farming industry were very much on a par with those ruling in New Zealand, a single man, who was provided with his'keep, receiving about £22 per month.

In the factories a tradesman received the equivalent of about £35 to £4O per month. There was however a different method of computing the wages of married men with families. The wages paid by the employer were increased according to the number of children dependent upon the worker. It was a sort of child benefit but instead of being paid by the State the benefit was paid by the employer. “ The loveliest spring I have ever seen was in Switzerland last Easter,” continued Mr Reidi. “ The whole country was just a blaze of colour. It was like a great bunch of flowers. The houses and the churches were just poking their roofs up above a mass of blossom. It was all so wonderful that I find it most difficult to describe its amazing beauty. And then the hills are so different from the hills of New Zealand. There even the mountains are dotted with buildings, houses and hotels and of a night when you look up at them they are all twinkling with lights, which in so many cases are massed and clustered to advertise or mark where each place is situated. “ But life is quite different in my native land to what it is in New Zealand,” said Mr Reidi. “ There they start work at seven o’clock in the morning and they do not cease until 6.30 in the evening. In New Zealand we do not work at all when compared with what people do in Switzerland.”

Mr Reidi said that whilst he was in Switzerland he was approached by ever so ipany young men who enquired as to the prospects of taking up land in the Dominion. They were prepared to take up undeveloped or partly developed land and to find their own finance, but unfortunately, said Mr Reidi, he had to tell them the truth, which was, that at the present time there was no prospect of their being able to take up land in New Zealand. Hundreds of his countrymen were prepared to come out and settle on the land, and they would make very good citizens, concluded Mr Reidi.

Mr Reidi left the Dominion on January 4 last and arrived back in Paeroa on July 11, returning to Sydney on the “ Toscana ” and from Sydney to New Zealand by flying boat.