" KEEP AWAY FROM NEW ZEALAND."

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13750, 12 September 1908, Page 3

" KEEP AWAY FROM NEW ZEALAND."

SOME RIDICULOUS ASSERTIONS.

In an English paper to hand appears an article on New Zealand, supposed to have been written by "one who has been there." The article reads:— "Aye, keep away from New Zealancr. Shun the country as you would a plague. That is, unless yoii have spare money you would like to dispense with for the benefit of the people struggling to live in the colony. If you haven't any money at all you're not wanted out there. The Government won't have you at any price. In fact, they don't want any emigrants from this country. I've been there, and I know.

"Go to ,New Zealand with the idea of first learning farming, and then starting on your own account, and see how long it will take you to find a farmer to employ you at the meanest living wage. You won't find one. The average New Zealand -farmer has all his work done by Ms family if lie has one. If be has not he struggles on to attend to e*f jbrything , himself^ « "And' it is the same story in, nearly every walk of life over there. " No matter what trade you are prepared to follow, no matter how skilful you may be-in that trade, no matter what capital you may possess, it will be the same. A, hard, hard struggle with, s\t the best, a barely sufficient income after it all— at the worst, an ignominious return to the Old Country, or an early death. » • "And the suicide returns in New Zealand are wonderfully . high. . So high, that there are whispers of attempts to suppress reference to them in the press. And let me here state bhafc what I am writing is not merely prompted by my own experience. Hundreds, nay, thousands, of others every year are failing as I railed. ' The fault does not lie with them. The openings they go to seek are not there. "The engineer in Britain reads of openings in the colony. The splendid Erospects he is led to believe in make im discontented. He emigrates — to New Zealand — and looks for a situation. He heai*s of many 'factories' and engineering firms, but sees no advertisement for hands wanted. At last he starts out to canvas the likely firms, spending much money in travel and keep of a far from comfortable order. And he receives a shock. Every l shop' in New Zealand employing a 'boss' and another hand has to be registered as a 'factory .* Wherever he goes, even at the places boomed as 'good en- 1 tineering centres,' he 'finds struggling rms of this order. And no hands are wanted.

"What's the result?" queries the writer, who thus answers his own ques-^ tion : ' "Well, he either has to make bracks for home or take up some unskilled labour, if he can get it. . In cither case he will' spend his savings. If he returns home, he can console himself with the fact that over thirty thousand other persons leave the colonj' yearly. Consider the cost of living, in New Zealand, and remember, when you do so, that the wages promised the emigrant on this side are far different from what are offered in the colony. You may hear of jobs at eight shillings a day before you start on the long voyage, but you will find that the wage has dwindled while you have been on the water to two or three shillings a day. And the trade unions have control of nearly all employment not under Government, and a master is rarely able to please himself in employing his men." Then there is the 'pace' set in most workshops. The average English . mechanic is taught to make his work solid, the colonial man aims at getting it done in the shortest possible time. The effect is bh&t, although doing infinitely better work than the old hands, the skilled newcomer is rarely able to keep up to the 'pace' of the other hands, with the inevitable result that ! he is fired out. The trade unions may, and do, set the standard of wages in some cases at eight or even ten shillings a day, but they also set the 'pace' — and the 'pace* to a good workman i? J an abomination."