CHAPTER XXXV
AMERICAN GOODS IN NEW ZEALAND
IN THE foregoing chapters I have mentioned two facts that should mean much to the exporters of the United States. One is that New Zealand is an agricultural country, exporting raw materials and importing manufactured articles, and the other is that the per-capita wealth of all persons of more than twenty years of age is about four thousand dollars. In other words, New Zealand is dependent on foreign markets as outlets for her rich agricultural production, and on foreign factories to supply her needs for finished goods, and she has the money to pay for what she wants. The total foreign trade, imports and exports, comes to more than four hundred dollars a year for every one of her people. This, the New Zealanders claim, is the highest per-capita foreign trade in the world. In some years half the amount has been spent for goods brought in from other countries.
In travelling here one sees everywhere evidences of prosperity and a high level of comfort. The people are well dressed and live in modern, well-built houses. Unlike Australia, New Zealand has a big rural population, and about half the inhabitants live out on the land or in country villages. There are only four cities of any size, but there are a hundred towns of one or two thousand, and perhaps a dozen ranging between two and ten thousand. All are up to date in their conveniences and equipment.
The New Zealand cities have their theatres, libraries, and stores, their banks and their factories. Each has its cricket club and its recreation grounds, and the people devote a large part of their time to amusements and sports. The short working day gives leisure to the wage earners. They leave their jobs in time to dress for the evening, and take their families to the movies, where they often see American films. During the half holiday they spend more money than if they were at work.
In proportion to its population, Auckland, the commercial metropolis, has more rich men than any other city in New Zealand, although Wellington, the capital, is growing the fastest. On the South Island, the largest city is Christchurch. It is on the famous Canterbury Plains, “The Garden Spot of New Zealand.” South of it is Dunedin, with a population of sixty thousand. Christchurch and Dunedin are rival towns, the feeling between the people of the two places being much the same as that between the populations of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Christchurch was founded by a group of Church of England settlers, who gave it its religious name. Dunedin was started by Scotch Presbyterians at about the same time, and in its early days it was by no means safe to question election, justification, sanctification, or infant damnation within its precincts. The Scotch colonists wanted to name this settlement after their capital at home. But there were so many Edinburghs in the world that they decided on the Celtic name for Edinburgh and called the place Dunedin.
To-day nine tenths of the people of Dunedin are of Scotch descent and the place is a magnet for Scottish immigrants. There are Scotch names over the stores, Scotch names for the streets, and the little stream that runs through the north end of the town is called the Water of Leith. When I asked a rosy-faced boy the name of one of the churches, he replied with a thick brogue:
“That, sor, is the Fierst Kirk.”
The Dunedin men say that their churches are far better off than those of the rival city. They are all out of debt and have money in the bank. When the city was founded one tenth of all the land was set aside for the Church. This is leased out for twenty-one years at a time, on condition that at the close of each such lease all improvements made shall belong to the Church.
Dunedin is in the rich Otago Province, which irrigation has made into a great fruit-producing region. Grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, and several kinds of nuts are raised in abundance. For a time the industry suffered from the great numbers of birds, but the importation of the German owl, which killed off most of them, solved that difficulty. Dairying and sheep raising are carried on almost as extensively as on the Canterbury Plains, and the farmers raise four good crops of alfalfa in a year.
There are four big woollen mills in the neighbourhood of Dunedin and here also is one of the car shops of the government railways. Another local industry is the freezing of thousands of rabbits for export.
Our trade with New Zealand is rapidly increasing. Every year we sell her goods valued at nearly forty million dollars, or more than eighteen per cent. of the total imports. Great Britain has the bulk of the trade, but the United States comes next, and then Australia. There is no doubt that we might double our share if we tried hard enough. I have met a number of American salesmen, all of whom say that they are doing well. They are, however, somewhat handicapped by the bad impression created by that class of our commercial travellers who are for ever bragging of their country and over-praising their goods. This is particularly distasteful to all New Zealanders and especially so to the business man. On the whole, however, the people like our goods and are friendly to the Yankees, as they call us.
Take, for instance, a salesman I met the other night in the chief hotel at Dunedin. He has been selling goods here and in other parts of Australasia during the past five years. Said he:
“American goods are fast making their way in this part of the world. I am the agent for several large companies and am doing well. We are selling printing paper by the ton. There is a good demand for farming machinery of all kinds, and tens of thousands of acres of sheep pastures are enclosed in fences of American wire. Our automobiles are the most popular and the country is alive with ‘flivvers.’ The New Zealanders bought ten million dollars’ worth of our cars in a single year, to say nothing of four million dollars’ worth of tires. They have spent as much again on our gasoline and oils. American bicycles are sold everywhere, and in spite of their higher prices our carpenter’s tools are preferred to those of Europe. Recently I took a big order for steel rails. We have also a good business in electrical supplies.”
As in every other country where modern farming methods prevail, American agricultural machinery is much used in New Zealand. So also are our automobiles, tires, and small tools.
Among the many good dairy herds of the Dominion, Ayrshires, Jerseys, and Holsteins are the favourite breeds. Tons of the finest cheese and butter are annually exported.
Refrigerator ships, sailing overseas with New Zealand’s frozen mutton, have revolutionized her farming. Instead of being raised on wild grasses for wool and tallow, as formerly, the sheep are now fattened on cultivated forage crops.
The government is undertaking to develop New Zealand’s water power. It has picked out no less than seventy-two sites for hydro-electric projects, and it has a big programme under way. The Lake Coleridge plant, seventy miles from Christchurch, serves a population of more than one hundred thousand, and enables Christchurch to have a two-cent fare on its municipally owned street-car lines. The Waikato plant, seventeen miles from the town of Cambridge in the North Island, can generate eighty-four hundred horsepower; and the Waipori Falls project furnishes eighty thousand horsepower for the city and the factories of Dunedin. Extensions of these three plants are being pushed, and the government has plans for other installations which will give electric energy to practically all the towns and rural districts of the North Island. Such projects should mean more business for the electrical-supply firms of the United States.
Our firms are selling Connecticut clocks, Illinois farm machinery, and Massachusetts watches. I saw American typewriters in Wellington. There is a good market for all sorts of Yankee notions. The other day while riding on a train with a New Zealand merchant, I asked him what he thought of American goods. Pulling his right foot from under his travelling rug, he put it up on the seat beside me.
“You see those shoes?” said he. “They are American. They are the easiest shoes I have ever had on. They have not troubled me a day since I bought them.”
The New Zealand government is one of the chief customers for manufactured goods. It owns the railroads, builds bridges, and operates coal mines. Hence, its purchases are enormous. It buys all sorts of iron and steel building materials, as well as hardware, galvanized roofing, elevators, irrigation pumps, and all kinds of machinery and engineering apparatus.
We now have the best consular service of any commercial nation, and New Zealand offers a splendid field for its operations. Times have changed both in this Dominion and in Australia, since the day typified by the young man who got himself appointed consul at Melbourne. His only business experience had been as postmaster in his little home town in Wisconsin. He was asked by an American why he did not keep the State Department posted on the openings for American trade, and on the big business developments going on everywhere. He replied that he reported upon all things that the department directly asked for, but that he did not consider it best to advertise the great trade opportunities of Australia for fear it might call them to the attention of other nations.
New Zealand buyers give to British firms as many orders as they can, without too great a sacrifice of their own interests. This is especially true since the World War, as the people are anxious to do what they can to stimulate British trade and thus help the mother country pay her enormous debt and regain prosperity. I find here a strong love for Old England. Many New Zealanders, even those born and bred here, speak of a trip there as going “home,” and of British articles as goods “made at home.” The Dominion appears entirely content under the British Crown, doubtless because the bonds binding her are not tight. For example, in the World War, Great Britain could not have conscripted soldiers from the Dominion as France did from Algeria. It was the people themselves who decided in favour of compulsory military service, though not until many thousands of young men had already volunteered and gone overseas. In Australia, conscription was defeated by the voters of the Commonwealth.
I recently visited Invercargill, the town farthest south on this side of the world. It is the bottom city of the Pacific, far below the latitude of Cape Town, at the tip of Africa, and almost as far south as Punta Arenas at the tail of South America. It is at the extreme south of New Zealand, and as nice a little city of fifteen thousand people as you will find anywhere. The town is as well built as any of the same size in the United States. It has water works, good schools, a public library, and a beautiful park, upon the waters of which swim half-a-dozen jet-black swans.
Walking through the streets, I stopped at an agricultural implement store. It was filled with farming machinery, and I noticed that at least half of the stock was American. There were several Chicago drills, two Ohio harvesters, and some Illinois ploughs. I talked with the proprietor. He said he had a good sale for American reapers, and all sorts of American farming tools, but that the British and Canadians are trying to crowd us out of the market. Said he:
“One of your chief competitors is Canada. The Canadian firms will sell on longer time, and we can get better prices for their goods on that account. We have to give a discount for cash, and cash sales are much harder to make.”
On the same street I saw American bicycles in a shop window, and farther up, American handsaws. At present most of the cottons sold here come from England, but the people are beginning to buy our print goods. I saw some in a Wellington dry-goods store and asked the merchant where he got them. He replied that he had given an American firm a trial order, and that they were selling well. He showed me his invoice. It was for eight thousand dollars, and this he called a trial order. Most firms in the United States would consider it a pretty good one. But this part of the world is so far away that the merchants must buy a whole season’s stock in one consignment. And there is no chance for a re-order.
Coconuts are common to all the islands of the South Seas, and provide the chief source of income. Niuafoou, an outlying island of the Tongas, is said to grow the largest in the world.
Rubber growing is proving profitable in the Fijis, and nurseries have been established for raising the young trees. The Fijian’s inborn dislike of work has often made it necessary to import labour for the plantations.