NEW ZEALAND 



4218 



NEW ZEALAND 



accounts and finances, the Washington Square 

 collegiate division and the women's law class. 



(3) In 1893 the medical school of the university 

 v<ras united with the Bellevue Hospital College, at 

 First Avenue anil Twenty-sixth Street. 



\ v. York American Veterinary Col- 

 lege is located at 141 West Fiit\ -fourth Street. 



Besides, there are university courses given in 

 various places which are designed to be ol 



rial benefit to pcopli- who cannot lake thr work 

 within the university walls. 



The tuition is about srj.~>. t \cept in the medi- 

 cal college, in which it is S200. In the various 

 libraries of the university there are 115,000 vol- 

 re about 450 instructors and 

 over 0,500 stud. 



FHE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND 



EW ZEALAND, ze'land, a lovely, 

 mountain-covered land of the South Seas, one 

 of the most prosperous and progressive of 

 countries, and the most lonely in situation of 

 any large body of land in the world. Its two 

 islands lie in the latitude of the southern half 

 of Chile, 1,200 miles east of Australia (two- 

 thirds as far away as Newfoundland is from Ire- 

 land), and more than 5,000 miles from any 

 other land except small islands and the ice- 

 bound Antarctic continent. New Zealand is 

 not so small as it appears to be from a casual 

 glance at the map. Its area is larger than that 

 of Great Britain, its mother country, for it con- 

 tains 103,861 square miles; it is almost exactly 

 as large as Colorado, but only two-fifths as 

 large as the Canadian province of Alberta. 



The People. Before the white man's day 

 New Zealand belonged to a brown race called 

 Maoris, or, as the word is spelled in old whal- 

 ing stories, Mowrees, who seem to have reached 

 there about five centuries ago from Samoa, 

 traveling the 1,600 miles in war canoes. Now, 

 however, the population is almost entirely 

 European, for of the 1,300,000 inhabitants 

 (1917) only 50,000 were Maoris. At the cen- 

 sus of 1911 there were also 12,598 Cook Island- 

 ers and 2,630 Chinese. Of the white people 

 seven in every ten were bora in the islands, 

 and nearly all the rest were immigrants from 

 the British Isles. 



Their Remarkable Laws. Placed as they are, 

 so remote from Old World influence New Zea- 

 land is exactly on the opposite side of the globe 

 from Spain the New Zealanders have won ad- 

 miration for their courage in adopting advanced 

 legislation. Many of their laws were at first 

 unnoticed or scoffed at in Europe and America ; 



soon other nations be^an to pass similar legis- 

 lation. 



In 1876 the government adopted its first land 

 tax, which was repealed three years later; but 

 in 1891 the measure was revived and is still in 

 force. It is succeeding in its purpose, which is 

 to break up large estates and make the land 

 available for settlers by a tax which increases 

 in rate as land holdings increase in value, in 

 effect freeing five-sixths of the landowners, and 

 those of the poorer classes, from all charges. The 

 tax is on land only, not on improvements, and 

 there is an especially heavy tax for absentee 

 owners. In 1892 the government adopted the 

 policy of purchasing estates from owners who 

 grumbled at taxes, and then, instead of selling 

 the lands so acquired, leased them in parcels 

 of 2,000 acres, or less, for 999 years. In 1907 

 and 1908 the longer-lease term gave way to one 

 of only sixty-six years, with right of renewal 

 at a new rate The tenant, if he wishes, may 

 pay the government as much as ninety per cent 

 of the price of his land, so as to reduce his rent, 

 but he cannot purchase it outright. (For dis- 

 cussion of the theories which prompted New 

 Zealand's action, see SINGLE TAX.) 



There has been public ownership of railroads 

 in New Zealand for over fifty years, and na- 

 tional ownership since 1870. An income tax 

 was adopted in 1891, the vote for Parliament 

 given to women (who had long before had mu- 

 nicipal franchise) in 1893, arbitration of labor 

 disputes was made compulsory in 1894, old age 

 pensions were granted in 1898, a universal 

 minimum wage was established in 1899, and 

 participation in strikes was declared an offense 

 punishable by fine in 1908. Among the institu- 

 tions created and owned by the government, 





