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.