AN AUSTRALIAN ON TOUR.

Waipa Post, Volume VI, Issue 260, 31 October 1913, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN ON TOUR.

Mr A. W. Pearse, who represented the meat freezing companies of New Zealand and Australia, and who was also the official delegate of the Commonwealth Government of Australia at the Third International Congress of Refrigeration at Chicago, left Australia early in April, and before proceeding to the United States spent three months in Great Britain. During this stay he visited all the leading manufacturing districts and many of the factories. He also visited, inspected, and wrote full illustrated accounts of the London Southampton, Bristol, Hull and Manchester Docks. These are being published in the Pastoral Review, of which publication he is editor.

Asked as to the condition of things in the Old Land, Mr Pearse stated that business was never better and never sounder ; that almost without exception all the works were fully booked up with orders months ahead. Shipping yards, motor works, engine works, ironworks, woollen mills, biscuit factories, and in fact every kind of business was crying out for more hands. Bradford alone wanted 2,000 girls for looms at wages up to 265, a week (permanent). Edinburgh wanted 1,000 in her biscuit factories ; in fact, everywhere was the same cry, “ More labour wanted.” This is no boom, Mr Pearse says, it is the result of generations of good work. British manufactures may not be as showy or as cheap as those of other nations, but they are the most economical because of their high quality. Anyone who states that Great Britain is decading is telling an untruth. She was never more prosperous. The enormous number of live stock in those little islands is always a surprise to Australians and New Zealanders. The amount of crops raised is also very large, the 1912 figures were: Wheat, 6,680,347 quarters or 2868 bushels per acre; barley, 5,342,405 quarters, or 30.44 bushels per acre ; oats, 9,145,690 quarters, or 35,30 bushels per acre, Beans and peas, turnips and swedes-are large crops, and clover and meadow hay was harvested to the amount of 8,125,000 tons. After a motor trip of nearly 4,000 miles through Great Britain Mr Pearse considers that the farmers there are very much up-to-date, and are certainly doing well. The most modern laboursaving plant is used throughout, and this largely accounts for the falling off in the amount of rural labour employed. One man does the work which three did twenty years ago. ' , •

Britain’s stud breeders have had a record, season, the demand for the stud stock has been enormous. Argentina? Canada, Uruguay, Rhodesia, British East Africa, South Africa, Chile, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand, besides other countries, have been large customers. Brazil, for instance, is now buying largely. Asked as to his opinion regarding the cost of living, Mr Pearse said he considered that food, transport, and clothing in Great Britain cost about half what they cost out here, and, in addition, the quality was better. He considers the Old Country one of the ■cheapest places for a family to live in he knows of, and that with an experience of 40 years’ travel all over the world.

Asked as regards the Meat Trust, said it may have been a trust some time or the other, but it certainly isn’t now. The various firms are fighting tooth and nail againstone another in Argentina, and giving such high prices for cattle that they must be losing from five to seven dollars on each beast’ Two other American firms are thinking of opening up in Queensland. All good, he says, for the producer, but against the interests of existing meat companies.

After leaving Chicago, Mr Pearse passed through the best harvest on record in Canada, a three hundred million bushel crop being expected. The C.P. Railway is spending twenty million pounds sterling on duplications, improvements, and new connecting lines, and a vast army of men is employed. He considers that Canada is wise in having kept clear of a State-owned railway monopoly. Nothing, in his opinion, stagnates a country more than that. Nothing will keep population from increasing more than that policy. People will not come to a country where railway facilities are bad.

In reference to the Panama Canal, he thinks it will do more harm than good to us at first. It will bring South American frozen produce in quick time to the Pacific ports, where so far we have had a monopoly. A large trade is bound to develop in frozen produce, and our rivals are keen as mustard after it.

Mr. Pearse heard nothing but good reports of our meat and butter, especially of the latter. New Zealand butter is quite the luxury of the West Coast.