NEW ZEALAND 



4219 



NEW ZEALAND 



some of them more than forty years old, are 

 a farm to teach agriculture to the unemployed 

 (of which there are now very few), a life insur- 

 ance company and a fire insurance company 

 which compete with private corporations, a 

 Public Trustee's office for handling estates of 

 tsed persons, farmers' banks, collieries and 

 mill. 



The state also conducts the telegraphs and 

 telephone^, own- the rights to the cyanide proc- 

 ess (see GOLD; SILVER), has a monopoly on 

 cts and grades butter, 

 nd other exports, advances money 

 :> and builds houses for workmen or 

 lends money to them for building. In con- 

 ting railroads and other public works the 

 government allows cooperative contracting; 

 that is, a number of laborers may band to- 

 gether, undertake a contract and share tin 

 profits. All earnings of the railroads in excess 

 of three per cent are given back to the people 

 in concessions, such as free rides to school 

 children and free transportation of fertilizers. 



Th> Schools. As would be expected in such 

 an advanced land, education is well provided 

 for. All children between seven and fourteen 

 years of age must go to school, and there are 

 plenty of opportunities both for them and for 

 older students. The primary schools are di- 

 (1 by the Education Department, but there 

 are local boards and school committees. Hi^h 

 schools, technical day schools, schools of m 

 normal schools, art schools and industrial 

 schools are provided for the white children, 

 and there are over 100 day schools and board- 

 schools for the Maoris. There are four 

 colleges in the four largest cities, all of them 

 affiliated with the University of New Zealand, 

 which is supported by the government solely 

 as an examining institution. There is also an 

 It ura 1 college. 



Cities. In spite of the steady settle- 

 <t of the land sin-- tin- adoption of tin- land 

 tax and other mea.-un- to l>nak up the estates, 

 half the people of New Zealand live m town-. 

 and about font-tenth- of them in and about 

 th.- (oniniiinities of over 10,000 population, 

 these larger towns. Auck- 

 land, which with its suburbs has over 100,000 

 people, is the first of them, but Wellington, 



il, has 70,000, < rch 80,000 



Duncclin 65.000. The first two are on the nort h- 



> on the southern. 



The Land. One of 'New Zealand's leading 

 citizens. William Pember Reeves, has written 

 that among the sounds moot familiar t 



countrymen's ears are the hoarse brawling of 

 torrents and the deep roar of the surf of the 

 Pacific, borne miles inland on still nights. 

 Snow-capped and glacier-robed mountains, vol- 

 canoes and geysers and hot springs, rugged cliffs 

 and winding fiords make the country vastly 

 different from the Zeeland for which it was 

 named by its Dutch discoverers. Nowhere is 

 the sea more than sixty miles distant, for both 

 North Island and South Island, each of which 

 contains about half of the whole dominion, are 

 long and narrow. 



All of the volcanoes are in North Island, 

 which is the smaller of the two. Some of their 

 cones rise 9,000 feet above the sea, but between 

 them are only foothills, and the real mountain 

 runpe- are in South Island. Here, hugging the 



LATITUDE AND AREA : A COMPARISON 



In the above map New Zealand, which is In the 

 Southern hem: 

 spondlng latitudes In the Northern liemisj 



(me iii,. directions, as they properh 

 New Zealand, are reversed. The northern point 

 of N' is far south of the equator a 



Northern Mississippi Is north of i: 



nth of the equator than 



north of It. When It Is winter In 

 /alan. I it iv iumm< r in the Tnlto.1 S' 



.mil can. 1. 1... i.ut neither summer nor winter IK so 

 < In America. 



west shore, are the Southern Alp*, an unl>i< 



of majestic peaks perpetually clad in 

 white. East of them the land descends gently 

 to the Ma, 111 foothills and plain*. Four of the 

 is of North Island Me to its \ 



DM south 



end of South Island, though only 220 miles in 

 length, is said to discharge nearly as mn< h 

 water as the N 



