“KIND AND COURTEOUS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27388, 13 May 1950, Page 6

“KIND AND COURTEOUS”

Visitor's Impressions Of New Zealanders COMFORTABLE HOTELS PA WELLINGTON, May 12. An English business man who finds in New Zealand “a gracious way of life which the Old World has lost” is at present visiting Wellington. He is Mr F. N. Klugman, a director of A. Oppenheimer and Co. of Lancashire, and of Bartons (Manchester), Ltd. He directs the manufacture of cotton and other textile goods and a variety of small articles. Mr Klugman has spent more than a month in New Zealand on business.

There seemed to be little of the tooth-and-claw struggle for existence in New Zealand life, said Mr Klugman. “I find it a pleasure to do business in New Zealand. The people seem pleased to meet a British business man and everyone we meet is kind and .courteous.” Mr Klugman also finds New Zealand hotels comfortable and the service good. “I was surprised to see another visitor found them unsatisfactory,” he said. But although Mr Klugman is Impressed with the present in New Zealand he has doubts for the future. “The present rising prices for your primary products appear a fine thing for young farmers, but'for our manufacturers in Yorkshire who buy your

wool they are a source of worry, and if I were a New Zealand farmer 1 would be worried, too,” he said. “The price Britain pays for raw materials must be reflected in the textiles she sells to the world, and the manufacturers are wondering what the public reaction will be to these high costs. In my own line, which is cotton, raw material prices are still going up and with them must go up the prices of the finished goods, but just how much will the public pay? Sooner or later these prices must fall, and the thing that is worrying British manufacturers is how far the prices will fall when they start and where they will stop.”