Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/90

 about as many different forms of taxation as any other country. New Zealand has tried more experiments than we have, but gets no better results from its laws than we get. It is attacking the trusts, just as we are doing, and the trusts continue to flourish; there are some things you can't do by law, and New Zealand can't accomplish the impossible any more than we can. I hear that compulsory arbitration worked for a time, as I hear that a week, or month, or year, before I came, the geysers shot three hundred feet in the air; but it is positively known that the country now has as many and as ridiculous strikes as any other, and the best geysers have done only twenty or thirty feet in my presence. The New Zealand railroads are primitive compared with ours, and their rates higher; yet they have government ownership, which many Americans say would solve the railroad problem. New-Zealanders do not say their methods are better than ours; on the contrary, they regard the United States with a great deal of respect, and know that we are far in the lead. New-Zealanders have the same respect for the United States that you find in Kansas City for Chicago; we are the Big Boy in the family of nations, and nobody seriously disputes it. Some foreigners make fun of us, because they are envious, but the New-Zealanders do not Men are about the same everywhere: the native who today drove me to see a wonderful rapids in a river, said he knew the best fishing-hole in the entire stream, and wanted me to remain over tomorrow, and go fishing with him. But I do not intend to do it; I have no confidence in tips—particularly fishing tips. The same native, in show