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.