SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25429, 10 January 1944, Page 2

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

.LIFE IN THE DOMINIONS AMERICAN VISITOR’S VIEWS (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) (Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 8. New Zealand and Australia on the one hand and . the United States on the other have much to learn from each other, said Dr Allan Nevins, professor of history at Columbia University, New York City. Dr Nevins is now completing a tour of New Zealand and Australia on behalf of the United States Office of War Information. He said that some revision of the educational systeihs of New Zealand, and the United States was an essential first step towards effective co-operation between the countries. “ Going byeond this,” Dr Nevins said, “the United States must realise that she has very special lessons to learn from New Zealand and Australia, which countries have carried out a number of interesting experiments in the relation between Government and industry. These have the profoundest significance for the United States. . The United States, which in the depression years had to abandon her traditional laissez faire policy of democracy, must go further along the road New Zealand and Australia began to follow many years ago. She must learn from your experience not only in what to do but in what not to do.”

Dr Nevins emphasised the lessons which the United States might learn from the study of bold New Zealand thought towards a more socialised State. It was perfectly clear, for example, that price control was working much better in both New Zealand ana Australia than in the United States, and Americans must realise the significance of the fact that New Zealanders and Australians were conditioned to State interference, whereas Americans were not. On the other hand, Dr Nevins said, New Zealand and Australia might take cognisance of the high incentives for individual initiative which the Americans have maintained in their system of free enterprise. Americans on the social and cultural side could learn much from the orderliness and sobriety of New Zealand and Australian life. These two countries in turn had much to learn from America in the value of heterogeneity. There was too much uniformity in New Zealand and Australian life.

“ There is a certain tendency in New Zealand and Australia to become a monolithic social structure. You are,*’ Dr Nevins said in conclusion, “ entirely British in your social structure. We Americans have gained something as well as lost something by our rich variety of social heritages from Europe. New Zealand and Australia might therefore reconcile themselves to what they could gain from a more diversified immigration system, which would mean more diversified cultural life.”

In the course of his tour of the Dominion Dr Nevins visited Dunedin early last month.