THE PROGRESS OF THE DOMINION

New Zealand Tablet, 7 December 1911, Page 2471

THE PROGRESS OF THE DOMINION

Mr. John T. Donovan, LL.B., writing to a friend in Belfast, who published the letter in the Irish Weekly, says: ‘ Coming back to New Zealand after an absence of four and a-half years I noticed many evidences of the wonderful progress in this land. Here is a country where the conditions are next to ideal, thanks largely to the spirit of progressive democracy which impels the beneficent legislation of the Government. The wealth and happiness of all classes is the keynote of the policy of the Government. The Administration has produced that form of advanced legislation before which many of the proposals of the Liberals at Home, denounced as. Socialistic legislation, pale into insignificance. The result is that a country like New Zealand is minus poverty, and differs from America in this respect. In the United States you generally find the extremes of poverty and wealth bumping against each other. In New Zealand you have no multi-millionaires, for the character of the legislation aims at preventing the overaccumulation of wealth. ‘ Again, you find more real genuine prosperity than in any country I know of. Many thousands of agriculturists can be found averaging holdings worth from ten to twenty thousand pounds. ‘ A matter that struck me this time was the invasion of motor cars. They are as common almost as blackberries at Home. To see old farmers, who came out without a sou to New Zealand some forty or fifty years ago, driving their motor cars, a luxury confined to our fairly well-to-do classes in the cities at Home, is to realise the wonderful prosperity in this democratic country. The difficulty a stranger would find in walking along the streets of Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin, would be to differentiate between the “master” and the “man,” for in this country the employee is very often more independent, and in very many cases nearly as well off, as the employer. ‘ The advantage of a tour of lands such as these beautiful States of Australia and New Zealand to men in public positions at Home is incalculable. Most of the economic and domestic problems that will face us have been tackled and solved successfully in the New World. ‘ ’Neath the Southern Cross we saw for ourselves what the management and control of State-owned railways can do for the development and enrichment of a country. In the older countries the railways are run solely as dividend-making concerns, the convenience, happiness, and prosperity of the people being a secondary consideration. The converse of that policy obtains out here. The railways are extended into the backblocks even before the population reaches there. The migration of the people follows, and new towns, new industries, and agricultural development result as a natural consequence. Despite all the assertions to the contrary, the success of the State-owned railways in the colonies is a great and instructive fact.’