They are always making new friends and acquaintances, and with these interchanging ideas and information.
Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even the lowest, which is not very low.
The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it, and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes.

A woman is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union, another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.
If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the social scale, he or she is welcome--if one of the richer (they do not like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or repute.
In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between the various strata of society that obtain in other lands.

Not only is that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are not touched by a consciousness of it.
Members of the lower strata, all well educated voters, can give instances of friends, or relatives, or acquaintances, who are higher up than themselves--have "made their way," have "risen in society," have "done well," are "well off." And this consciousness inspires in all but the very lowest classes an ambition to rise.
Because it is possible to rise, because others rise, the desire to be migrating upwards soon takes possession of members of all but the lowest or poorest class, or those heavily ballasted with a large or increasing family.
The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.
Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from financial status.

Those who are referred to as the better classes, are simply those who have got, or who have made, money.

All things, therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.
There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted.