NEW ZEALAND AND THE ARGENTINE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7945, 22 January 1906, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND AND THE ARGENTINE.

■ * ■ Mr P. S. Smith, who owns an immense estate in the Argentine—44 l square miles of territory—is at present on a visit to New Zealand. Mr > Smith, in reviewing the great development of the Argentine,, is emphatic in predicting a rebuff to New Zealand's oversea export trade,, chiefly in resDect to frozen meat and 1 wool from the wide-rolling plains of the Argentine. There are now 130,000,000 , sheen and some. 40,0u0,000 he«d of cattle in the bontry, and this number is being largely increased eaoh year by the advance of settlement. With such a country so stocked, only half the distance from the Home markets that the colonies are, how was it\ possible that New Zealand could compete much longer as at present, unless Mr Chamberlain's preferential tariff 'scheme was adopted? , One needed only to see the country to judge how futile it is for New Zealand to be regarded as a rival in the immediate future. Ihere labour is half as cheap as in New Zealand, and in the summer time the halfbreeds (farm labourers wcrk from before sun-up (4 a.m.) until after sundown (7 p.m). Wages? Well, he paid his men £5 5s per mouth, and in return received good and faithful service. Ihey, indeed, became devoted to their employer. Of the hanis he employed when he first took over the place, ten years ago, only one had been dismissed—the rest weie still on the estancia. In the dairiyng industry, says Mr Smith, another rebuff to this colony's trade must come from Canada, into which country immigrants are streaming by the thousand. He had beeu at Quebec and seen steamer after steamer arrive from England and the Continent with 200, 300, and 500 sturdy young men and w,omen, and to each of the men 'he Government was giving 160 acres of land free of coat. What could they do with 160 '• acres? Nothing, but go in for dairying. Vast areas were being cut up into small allotments in the west and north-west, the staple product of which must be butter, almost solely. And these people were within a fortnight of England, as against forty-two days in the case of New Zealand..