To a social student, however, the most interesting and, on the whole, most cheering aspect of town life is supplied by the work-people. They are worth watching as they go to their shops and factories between eight and nine in the morning, or when, after five in the afternoon, they pour into the streets with their work done and something of the day yet left to call their own. The clean, well-ventilated work-rooms are worth a visit certainly. But it is the men and women, youths and girls themselves who, to any one acquainted with factory hands in the Old World, seem the best worth attention. Everywhere you note a decent average of health, strength, and contentment. The men do not look stunted or deadened, the women pinched or sallow, the children weedy or underfed. Most of them seem bright and self-confident, with colour in their faces and plenty of flesh on their frames, uniting something of English solidity with a good deal of American alertness. Seventy thousand hands—the number employed in our factories and workshops—may seem few enough. But forty years ago they could not muster seven thousand, and the proportional increase during the last twelve years has been very rapid. To what extent their healthy and comfortable condition is due to the much-discussed labour laws of New Zealand is a moot point which need not be discussed here. What is certain is that for many years past the artisans and labourers of the colony have increased in numbers, while earning higher wages and working shorter hours than formerly. At the same time the employers as a body have prospered as they never prospered before, and this prosperity shows as yet no sign of abatement. That what is called the labour problem has been solved in New Zealand no sensible man would pretend. But at least the more wasteful and ruinous forms of industrial conflicts have for many years been few and (with two exceptions) very brief, a blessing none too common in civilised communities. As a testimony to the condition of the New Zealand worker I can hardly do better than quote the opinion of the well-known English labour leader, Mr. Keir Hardie. Whatever my readers may think of his opinions—and some of them may not be among his warm admirers—they will admit that he is precisely the last man in the Empire likely to give an overflattering picture of the lot of the labourer anywhere. His business is to voice the grievances of his class, not to conceal or suppress them. Now, Mr. Hardie, after a tour round the Empire, deliberately picks out New Zealand as the most desirable country for a British emigrant workman. The standard of comfort there appears to him to be higher than elsewhere, and he recognises that the public conscience is sensitive to the fair claims of labour.
[CHAPTER II]
COUNTRY LIFE
When all is said, however, it is not the cities which interest most the ordinary visitors to New Zealand. They may have a charm which it is no exaggeration to call loveliness, as Auckland has; or be finely seated on hill-sides overlooking noble harbours, as Wellington and Dunedin are. They may have sweetly redeeming features, like the river banks, public and private gardens, and the vistas of hills and distant mountains seen in flat Christchurch. They may be pleasant altogether both in themselves and their landscape, as Nelson is. But after all they are towns, and modern towns, whose best qualities are that they are wholesome and that their raw newness is passing away. It is to the country and the country life that travellers naturally turn for escape into something with a spice of novelty and maybe a touch of romance. Nor need they be disappointed. Country life in the islands varies with the locality and the year. It is not always bright, any more than is the New Zealand sky. It is not always prosperous, any more than you can claim that the seasons are always favourable. But, on the whole, I do not hesitate to say, that to a healthy capable farmer or rural worker the colony offers the most inviting life in the world. In the first place, the life is cheerful and healthy; in the next place, the work, though laborious at times, need not be killing; and then the solitude, that deadly accompaniment of early colonial life, has now ceased to be continuous except in a few scattered outposts. Moreover—and this is important—there is money in it. The incompetent or inexperienced farmer may, of course, lose his capital, just as a drunken or stupid labourer may fail to save out of his wages. But year in, year out, the farmer who knows his business and sticks to it can and does make money, improve his property, and see his position grow safer and his anxieties less. Good farmers can make profits quite apart from the very considerable increment which comes to the value of land as population spreads. Whatever may be said of this rise in price as a matter of public policy, it fills the pockets of individuals in a manner highly satisfactory to many of the present generation.
NELSON
One of the most cheerful features in New Zealand country life, perhaps, is the extent to which those who own the land are taking root in the soil. Far the greater part of the settled country is in the hands of men and families who live on the land, and may go on living there as long as they please; no one can oust them. They are either freeholders, or tenants of the State or public bodies. Such tenants hold their lands on terms so easy that their position as working farmers is as good as or better than that of freeholders. As prospective sellers of land they may not be so well placed; but that is another story. Anyway, rural New Zealand is becoming filled with capable independent farmers, with farms of all sizes from the estate of four thousand or five thousand acres to the peasant holding of fifty or one hundred. Colonists still think in large areas when they define the degrees of land-holding and ownership.
