House had been viewed in the most easy-going fashion. Vogel in his earlier years had adopted the ballot, and had set up a State Life Insurance Department, which has been successfully managed, and has now about ten millions assured in it. More interesting and valuable still was his establishment of the office of Public Trustee. So well has the experiment worked, that it may be said as a plain truth that in New Zealand, the best possible Trustee, the one least subject to accidents of fortune, and most exempt from the errors which beset man’s honesty and judgment, has been found by experience to be the State. The Public Trust Office of the Colony worked at first in a humble way, chiefly in taking charge of small intestate estates. Experience, however, showed its advantages so clearly, that it has now property approaching two millions’ worth in its care. Any owner of property, whether he be resident in the Colony or not, wishing to create a trust, may use the Public Trustee, subject, of course, to that officer’s consent. Any one who desires so to do may appoint him the executor of his will. Any one about to leave, or who has left the Colony, may make him his attorney. The Public Trustee may step in and take charge, not only of intestate estates, but of an inheritance where no executor has been named under the will, or where those named will not act. He manages and protects the property of lunatics. Where private trust estates become the cause of disputes and quarrels, between trustees and beneficiaries, the parties thereto may relieve themselves by handing over their burden to the public office. The Public Trustee never dies, never goes out of his mind, never leaves the Colony, never becomes disqualified, and never becomes that extremely disagreeable and unpleasant person–a trustee whom you do not trust. In addition to his other manifold duties he holds and administers very large areas of land reserved for the use of certain Maori tribes. These he leases to working settlers, paying over the rents to the Maori beneficiaries. Naturally, the class which has the most cause to be grateful to the Public Trust Office is that composed of widows and orphans and other unbusinesslike inheritors of small properties, persons whose little inheritances are so often mismanaged by private trustees or wasted in law costs.
Another reform carried out by Vogel had been the adoption of the Torrens system of land transfer. Henceforth under the Land Transfer Law, Government officers did nearly all the conveyancing business of the Colony. Land titles were investigated, registered, and guaranteed, and sales and mortgages then became as simple and almost as cheap as the transfer of a parcel of shares in a company.
Even earlier the legislature had done a creditable thing in being the first in the Empire to abolish the scandal of public executions.
1877 may be accounted the birth year of more militant and systematic reform.
Grey’s platform speeches in the summer of 1876-77 brought home the new Radicalism to the feelings of the mass of the electors, and to the number, then considerable, who were not electors. For the first time one of the Colony’s leaders appealed to the mass of the colonists with a policy distinctly and deliberately democratic. The result was awakening. Then and subsequently Grey advocated triennial parliaments, one man one vote, a land tax, and a land policy based upon the leasing of land rather than its sale, and particularly upon a restriction of the area which any one man might acquire. The definite views of the Radicals bore fruit at once in the session of 1877. It was necessary to establish a national system of education to replace the useful, but ill-jointed work done peacemeal by the Provinces. A bill–and not a bad bill–was introduced by Mr. Charles Bowen, a gentleman honourably connected with the founding of education in Canterbury. This measure the Radicals took hold of and turned it into the free, secular, compulsory system of primary school-teaching of which the Colony is to-day justly proud, and under which the State educates thirteen-fourteenths of the children of the Colony. Now, in 1898, out of an estimated population of about 780,000 all told, some 150,000 are at school or college. Of children between ten and fifteen years of age the proportion unable to read is but o.68. The annual average of attendance is much higher in New Zealand than in any of the Australian Colonies. The primary school system is excellent on its literary, not so excellent on its technical side. Nearly three-fourths of the Roman Catholic children do not take advantage of it. Their parents prefer to support the schools of their church, though without State aid of any kind. These, and a proportion of the children of the wealthier, are the only exceptions to the general use made of the public schools. It is not likely that any change, either in the direction of teaching religion in these, or granting money to church schools, will be made. Each political party in turn is only too eager to charge the other with tampering with the National system–a sin, the bare hint of which is like suspicion of witchcraft or heresy in the Middle Ages.
Grey gained office in 1877, but with a majority too small to enable him to carry his measures. Ballance, his treasurer, did indeed carry a tax upon land values. But its chief result at the time was to alarm and exasperate owners of land, and to league them against the Radicals, who after a not very brilliant experience of office without power fell in 1879. Thereafter, so utterly had Grey’s angry followers lost faith in his generalship, that they deposed him–a humiliation which it could be wished they had seen their way to forego, or he to forgive. Yet he was, it must be confessed, a very trying leader. His cloudy eloquence would not do for human nature’s daily food. His opponents, Atkinson and Hall, had not a tithe of his emotional power, but their facts and figures riddled his fine speeches. Stout and Ballance, lieutenants of talent and character, became estranged from him; others of his friends were enough to have damned any government. The leader of a colonial party must have certain qualities which Sir George Grey did not possess. He may dispense with eloquence, but must be a debater; whether able or not able to rouse public meetings, he must know how to conduct wearisome and complicated business by discussion; he must not only have a grasp of great principles, but readiness to devote himself to the mastery of uninteresting minds and unappetizing details; above all, he must be generous and considerate to lieutenants who have their own views and their own followers, and who expect to have their full share of credit and influence. In one word, he should be what Ballance was and Grey was not. Nevertheless, one of Grey’s courage, talent, and prestige was not likely to fail to leave his mark upon the politics of the country; nor did he. Though he failed to pass the reforms just mentioned, he had the satisfaction of seeing them adopted and carried into law, some by his opponents, some by his friends. Only one of his pet proposals seems to have been altogether lost sight of, his oft-repeated demand that the Governor of the Colony should be elected by the people.
The Grey Ministry had committed what in a Colonial Cabinet is the one unpardonable crime–it had encountered a commercial depression, with its concomitant, a shrunken revenue. When Hall and Atkinson succeeded Grey with a mission to abolish the land-tax, they had at once to impose a different but more severe burden. They also reduced–for a time–the cost of the public departments by the rough-and-ready method of knocking ten per cent. off all salaries and wages paid by the treasury, a method which, applied as it was at first equally to low and high, had the unpopularity as well as the simplicity of the poll-tax. That retrenchment and fresh taxation were unpleasant necessities, and that Hall and Atkinson more than once tackled the disagreeable task of applying them, remains true and to their credit.
Between 1880 and 1890 the colonists were for the most part resolutely at work adapting themselves to the new order of things–to lower prices and slower progress. They increased their output of wool and coal–the latter a compensation for the falling-off of the gold. They found in frozen meat an export larger and more profitable than wheat. Later on they began, with marked success, to organize co-operative dairy factories and send cheese and butter to England. Public affairs during the decade resolved themselves chiefly into a series of expedients for filling the treasury and carrying on the work of land settlement. Borrowing went on, but more and more slowly. Times did not soon get better.
In 1885 and 1886 the industrial outlook was perhaps at its worst. In 1887, Atkinson and Whitaker, coming again into power, with Hall as adviser, administered a second dose of taxation-cum-retrenchment. They cut down the salaries of the Governor and the ministers, and the size and pay of the elected chamber. They made efforts, more equitable this time, to reduce the cost of the public departments. They stiffened the property-tax, and for the second time raised the Customs Duties, giving them a distinctly Protectionist complexion. The broad result was the achievement of financial equilibrium. For ten years there have been no deficits in New Zealand. Apart from retrenchment, Atkinson had to rely upon the Opposition in forcing his financial measures through against the Free Traders amongst his own following. This strained his party. Moreover, in forming his cabinet in 1887 he had not picked some of his colleagues well. In particular, the absence of Mr. Rolleston’s experience and knowledge from the House and the government weakened him. Mr. Rolleston has his limitations, and his friends did the enemy a service when, after his return to public life in 1891, they tried to make a guerilla chief out of a scrupulous administrator. But he was a capable and not illiberal minister of lands, and his value at that post to his party may be gauged by what they suffered when they had to do without him. The lands administration of the Atkinson cabinet became unpopular, and the discontent therewith found a forcible exponent in an Otago farmer, Mr. John McKenzie, a gigantic Gael, in grim earnest in the cause of close settlement, and whose plain-spoken exposures of monopoly and “dummyism” not only woke up the Radicals, but went home to the smaller settlers far and wide. It may be that these things hastened the breaking-down of Sir Harry Atkinson’s health in 1890. At any rate fail it did, unhappily. His colleague, Sir Frederick Whitaker, was ageing palpably. Nor did Sir John Hall’s health allow him to take office.
[Illustration: THE HON. JOHN MACKENZIE
_By permission of_ Messrs. SAMPSON LOW]
With their _tres Magi_ thus disabled, the Conservative party began to lose ground. More than one cause, no doubt, explains how it was that up to 1891 the Liberals hardly ever had a command of Parliament equal to their hold upon the country. But the abilities of the three men just named had, I believe, a great share in holding them in check. Sir John Hall’s devotion to work, grasp of detail, and shrewd judgment were proverbial. He was the most businesslike critic of a bill in committee the House of Representatives ever had, and was all the more effective in politics for his studiously conciliatory manner. Astute and wary, Sir Frederick Whitaker was oftener felt than seen. But with more directness than Whitaker, and more fighting force than Hall, it was Atkinson who, from 1875 to his physical collapse in 1890, was the mainstay of his party. He carried through the abolition of the Provinces; he twice reorganized the finances; he was the protagonist of his side in their battles with Grey, Ballance, and Stout, and they could not easily have had a better. This chief of Grey’s opponents was as unlike him in demeanour and disposition as one man can well be to another. The two seemed to have nothing in common, except inexhaustible courage. Grey had been trained in the theory of war, and any part he took therein was as leader. Atkinson had picked up a practical knowledge of bush-fighting by exchanging hard knocks with the Maoris as a captain of militia. Grey was all courtesy; the other almost oddly tart and abrupt. Grey’s oratory consisted of high-pitched appeals to great principles, which were sometimes eloquent, sometimes empty. His antagonist regarded Parliament as a place for the transaction of public business. When he had anything to say, he said it plainly; when he had a statement to make, he made it, and straightway went on to the next matter. His scorn of the graces of speech did not prevent him from being a punishing debater. Theories he had–of a quasi-socialistic kind. But his life was passed in confronting hard facts. Outside the House he was a working colonist; inside it a practical politician. The only glory he sought was “the glory of going on,” and of helping the Colony to go on. When, with tragic suddenness, he died in harness, in the Legislative Council in 1892, there was not alone sincere sorrow among the circle of friends and allies who knew his sterling character, but, inasmuch as however hard he had hit in debate it had never been below the belt, his opponents joined in regretting that so brave and faithful a public servant had not been spared to enjoy the rest he had well earned.
[Illustration: SIR HARRY ATKINSON
_By permission of_ Messrs. SAMPSON LOW.]
What kind of an assembly, it may be asked, is the New Zealand Parliament which Atkinson’s force of character enabled him to lead so long, and which has borne undivided rule over the Colony since 1876? The best answer can be found in the story of the Colony, for the General Assembly, at all events, has never been a _faineant_ ruler. It has done wrong as well as right, but it has always done something. After the various false starts before referred to, it has, since getting fairly to work in 1856, completed forty-three years of talk, toil, legislation and obstruction. It may fairly be claimed that its life has been interesting, laborious and not dishonourable. It has exactly doubled in size since Governor Wynyard’s day. Old settlers say that it has not doubled in ability. But old settlers, with all their virtues, are incorrigible _laudatores temporis acti_. The industry of the members, the difficulties they had to cope with in the last generation, and the number and variety and novelty of the questions they have essayed to solve in this, are undoubted. Their work must, of course, be tested by time. Much of it has already borne good fruit, and any that does manifest harm is not likely to cumber the earth long. If laws in colonies are more quickly passed, they are also more easy to amend than in older countries.
The Lower House of a Colonial Parliament resembles, in most ways, the London County Council more than the House of Commons. But in New Zealand members have always been paid–their salary is now L240 a year. Farmers and professional men make up the largest element. The Labour members have never numbered more than half a dozen. At present there are five in each House. In the more important debates speeches are now limited to an hour, otherwise to half an hour. The length of speeches in committee must not exceed ten minutes. About twenty per cent. of the speaking is good; most of it is made with little or no preparation, and suffers–together with its hearers–accordingly. Bores are never shouted or coughed down–the House is too small, and nearly all the members are on friendly terms with each other. Until the adoption of the time limit business was in daily danger of being arrested by speeches of phenomenal length and dreariness. Anthony Trollope, who listened to a debate at Wellington in 1872, thought the New Zealand parliamentary bores the worst he had known. The discussions in Committee are often admirably businesslike, except when there is obstruction, as there frequently is. As elsewhere, special committees do much work and get little thanks therefor. As compared with the House of Commons, the debates would seem to lack dignity; as compared with the proceedings of the Sydney Parliament, they would have appeared models of decorum, at any rate until quite recently. No New Zealand debater would be held great in England, but seven or eight would be called distinctly good. The House supports a strong Speaker, but is disposed to bully weakness in the chair.
For the last thirty years the Maori race has returned four members to the House. They usually speak through an interpreter. In spite of that, when discussing native questions they often show themselves fluent and even eloquent. Outside local and private bills, nearly all important legislation is conducted by Government. Private members often profess to put this down to the jealousy and tyranny of Ministers, but the truth is that Parliament, as a whole, has always been intolerant of private members’ bills. There is no direct personal corruption. If the House were as free from small-minded jealousy and disloyalty as it is from bribery and idleness, it would be a very noble assembly. In character, the politicians have been at least equal to the average of their fellow-colonists. But party ties are much looser than in England. Members will sometimes support Governments for what they can get for their districts, or leave them because they have not been given a portfolio. Attempts to form a third party are incessant but unsuccessful. Ministries, if not strangled at the birth–as was the “Clean Shirt” Cabinet–usually last for three years. Since August, 1884, there have virtually been but two changes of the party in power. Reconstructions owing to death or retirement of a Premier have now and then added to the number of apparently new Cabinets. Of the seven or eight Ministers who make up a Cabinet, four or five are usually able and overworked men. The stress of New Zealand public life has told on many of her statesmen. Beside Governor Hobson, McLean, Featherston, Crosbie Ward, Atkinson and Ballance died in harness, and Hall had to save his life by resigning. Most of the Colony’s leaders have lived and died poor men. Parliaments are triennial, and about one-third of the constituencies are pretty certain to return new members at a general election. All the elections take place on one day, and if a member–even the leader of a party–loses his seat, he may be cut out for years. This is a misfortune, as experience is a quality of which the House is apt to run short. Block votes frequently prevent elections from being fought on the practical questions of the hour. The contests are inexpensive, and there is very little of the cynical blackmailing of candidates and open subsidising by members which jar so unpleasantly on the observer of English constituencies. Indeed, cynicism is by no means a fault of New Zealand political life. The most marked failings are, perhaps, the savagely personal character of some of its conflicts, and a general over-strained earnestness and lack of sense of proportion or humour. Newspapers and speeches teem with denunciations which might have been in place if hurled at the corruption of Walpole, the bureaucracy of Prussia, the finance of the _Ancien Regime_, or the treatment of native races by the Spanish conquerors of the New World. Nor is bitterness confined to wild language in or out of parliament. The terrible saying of Gibbon Wakefield, fifty years ago, that in Colonial politics “every one strikes at his opponent’s heart,” has still unhappily some truth in it. The man who would serve New Zealand in any more brilliant fashion than by silent voting or anonymous writing must tread a path set with the thorns of malice, and be satisfied to find a few friends loyal and a few foes chivalrous.
Chapter XXI
SOME BONES OF CONTENTION
“Now who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?”
During the ten years beginning in 1879 New Zealand finance was little more than a series of attempts to avert deficits. In their endeavours to raise the revenue required for interest payments on the still swelling public debt, and the inevitably growing departmental expenditure, various treasurers turned to the Customs. In raising money by duties they received support both from those who wished to protect local industries and from those who wished to postpone the putting of heavy taxation upon land. Sir Harry Atkinson, the treasurer who carried the chief protectionist duties, used to disclaim being either a protectionist or a free-trader. The net result of various conflicts has been a tariff which is protectionist, but not highly protectionist. The duties levied on New Zealand imports represent twenty-four per cent. of the declared value of the goods. But the highest duties, those on spirits, wine, beer, sugar, tea, and tobacco, are not intentionally protectionist; they are simply revenue duties, though that on beer has undoubtedly helped large and profitable colonial breweries to be established. English free-traders accept as an axiom that Customs duties cannot produce increased revenue and at the same time stimulate local manufactures. Nevertheless, under the kind of compromise by which duties of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five per cent. are levied on so many articles, it does come about that the colonial treasurer gets his revenue while, sheltered by the fiscal hedge, certain colonial manufactures steadily grow up. The factories of the Colony now employ some 40,000 hands, and their annual output is estimated at ten millions sterling. Much of this would, of course, have come had the Colony’s ports been free; but the factories engaged in the woollen, printing, clothing, iron and steel, tanning, boot, furniture, brewing, jam-making, and brick and tile-making industries owe their existence in the main to the duties. Nor would it be fair to regard the Colony’s protection as simply a gigantic job managed by the more or less debasing influence of powerful companies and firms. It was adopted before such influences and interests were. It could not have come about, still less could it last, were there not an honest and widespread belief that without duties the variety of industries needful to make a civilized and prosperous nation could not be attained in young countries where nascent enterprises are almost certain to be undercut and undersold by the giant capitalists and cheaper labour of the old world. Such a belief may conceivably be an economic mistake, but those who hold it need not be thought mere directors or tools of selfish and corrupt rings. The Colony will not adopt Free Trade unless a change comes over the public mind, of which there is yet no sign; but it is not likely to go further on the road towards McKinleyism. Its protection, such as it is, was the outcome of compromises, stands frankly as a compromise, and is likely for the present to remain as that.
So long as the Provinces lasted the General Assembly had little or nothing to do with land laws. When, after abolition, the management of the public estate came into the hands of the central authority, the regulations affecting it were a bewildering host. Some fifty-four statutes and ordinances had to be repealed. Nor could uniformity be substituted at once, inasmuch as land was occupied under a dozen different systems in as many different provincial districts. Only very gradually could these be assimilated, and it was not until the year 1892 that one land act could be said to contain the law on the subject, and to be equally applicable to all New Zealand. In the meantime the statute-books of 1877, 1878, 1883, 1885 and 1887 bore elaborate evidence of the complexity of the agrarian question, and the importance attached to it. On it more than on any other difference party divisions were based. Over it feelings were stirred up which were not merely personal, local, or sectional. It became, and over an average of years remained, the matter of chief moment in the Colony’s politics. Finance, liquor reform, labour acts, franchise extension may take first place in this or that session, but the land question, in one or other of its branches, is always second. The discussions on it roused an enduring interest in Parliament given to no other subject. The Minister of Lands ranks with the Premier and the Treasurer as one of the leaders in every Cabinet. Well may he do so. Many millions of acres and many thousands of tenants are comprised in the Crown leases alone. Outside these come the constant land sales, the purchases from the Maori tribes, and in recent years the buying back of estates from private owners, and the settlement thereof. These form most, though not all, of the business of the Minister of Lands, his officers, and the administrative district boards attached to his department. If there were no land question in New Zealand, there might be no Liberal Party. It was the transfer of the land from the Provinces to the central Parliament in 1876 which chiefly helped Grey and his lieutenants to get together a democratic following.
[Illustration: A NEW ZEALAND SETTLER’S HOME
Photo by WINCKLEMAN]
Slowly but surely the undying agrarian controversy passed with the Colony’s progress into new stages. In the early days we have seen the battle between the “sufficient price” of Gibbon Wakefield and the cheap land of Grey, the good and evil wrought by the former, the wide and lasting mischief brought about by the latter. By 1876 price had ceased to be the main point at issue. It was agreed on all hands that town and suburban lands parted with by the Crown should be sold by auction at fairly high upset prices; and that rural agricultural land should be divided into classes–first, second, and third–and should not be sold by auction, but applied for by would-be occupants prepared to pay from L2 to 10s. an acre, according to quality. More and more the land laws of the Colony were altered so as to favour occupation by small farmers, who were not compelled to purchase their land for cash, but permitted to remain State tenants at low rentals, or allowed to buy the freehold by gradual instalments, termed deferred payments. Even the great pastoral leaseholds were to some extent sub-divided as the leases fell in. The efforts of the land reformers were for many years devoted to limiting the acreage which any one person could buy or lease, and to ensuring that any person acquiring land should himself live thereon, and should use and improve it, and not leave it lying idle until the spread of population enabled him to sell it at a profit to some monopolist or, more often, some genuine farmer. As early as 1856 Otago had set the example of insisting on an outlay of 30s. an acre in improvement by each purchaser of public land. Gradually the limiting laws were made more and more stringent, and were partly applied even to pastoral leases. Now, in 1898, no person can select more than 640 acres of first-class or 2,000 acres of second-class land, including any land he is already holding. In other words, no considerable landowner can legally acquire public land. Pastoral “runs”–_i.e._, grazing leases–must not be larger than such as will carry 20,000 sheep or 4,000 cattle, and no one can hold more than one run. The attempts often ingeniously made to evade these restrictions by getting land in the names of relatives, servants, or agents are called “dummyism,” and may be punished by imprisonment–never inflicted–by fines, and by forfeiture of the land “dummied.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Many a good story is founded on the adventures of land-buyers in their endeavours to evade the spirit and obey the letter of land regulations. In 1891 a rhymester wrote in doggerel somewhat as follows of the experiences of a selector who “took up” a piece of Crown land–
“On a certain sort of tenure, which his fancy much preferred, That convenient kind of payment which is known as the ‘deferred.’
“Now the laws in wise New Zealand with regard to buying land, Which at divers times and places have been variously planned, Form a code that’s something fearful, something wonderful and grand.
“You may get a thousand acres, and you haven’t got to pay Aught but just a small deposit in a friendly sort of way.
“But you mustn’t own a freehold, and you mustn’t have a run, And you mustn’t be a kinsman of a squatter owning one;
“But must build a habitation and contentedly reside, And must satisfy the Land Board that you pass the night inside.
“For if any rash selector on his section isn’t found He is straightway doomed to forfeit all his title to the ground.”]
The political battles over the land laws of New Zealand during the sixteen years since 1882 have not, however, centred round the limitation of the right of purchase, or insistence on improvements, so much as round the respective advantages of freehold and perpetual leasehold, and round the compulsory repurchase of private land for settlement. Roughly speaking, the political party which has taken the name of Liberal has urged on the adoption of the perpetual lease as the main or sole tenure under which State lands should in the future be acquired. As a rule the party which the Liberals call Conservative has advocated that would-be settlers should be allowed to choose their tenure for themselves, and to be leaseholders or freeholders as they please. Then there have arisen, too, important questions affecting the perpetual lease itself. Should the perpetual leaseholders retain the right of converting at any time their leasehold into a freehold by paying down the cash value of their farm, or should the State always retain the fee simple? Next, if the State should retain this, ought there to be periodical revisions of the rent, so as to reserve the unearned increment for the public? Fierce have been the debates and curious the compromises arrived at concerning these debatable points. The broad result has been that the sale of the freehold of Crown lands, though not entirely prohibited, has been much discouraged, and that the usual tenure given now is a lease for 999 years at a rent of four per cent. on the prairie value of the land at the time of leasing. As this tenure virtually hands over the unearned increment to the lessee, it is regarded by the advanced land reformers with mixed feelings. From their point of view, however, it has the advantage of enabling men with small capital to take up land without expending their money in a cash purchase. Inasmuch, too, as transfers of a lease can only be made with the assent of the State Land Board for the district–which assent will only be given in case the transfer is to a _bona fide_ occupier not already a landowner–land monopoly is checked and occupancy for use assured. Meanwhile there is plenty of genuine settlement; every year sees many hundred fresh homes made and tracts reclaimed from the wilderness.
[Illustration: PICTON–QUEEN CHARLOTTE’S SOUND
Photo by HENRY WRIGHT.]
Quite as keen has been the fighting over the principle of State repurchase of private lands with or without the owner’s consent. It was a favourite project of Sir George Grey’s; but it did not become law until he had left public life, when it was carried by the most successful and determined of the Liberal Ministers of Lands, John McKenzie, who has administered it in a way which bids fair to leave an enduring mark on the face of the Colony. Under this law L700,000 has been spent in buying-forty-nine estates, or portions of estates, for close settlement. The area bought is 187,000 acres. A few of these have, at the time of writing, not yet been thrown open for settlement; on the rest 2,252 human beings are already living. They pay a rent equal to 5.2 per cent. on the cost of the land to the Government. Even taking into account interest on the purchase money of land not yet taken up, a margin remains in favour of the Treasury. Nearly 700 new houses and L100,000 worth of improvements testify to the genuine nature of the occupation. As a rule there is no difficulty in buying by friendly arrangement between Government and proprietor. The latter is commonly as ready to sell as the former to buy. The price is usually settled by bargaining of longer or shorter duration. Twice negotiations have failed, and the matter has been laid before the Supreme Court, which has statutory power to fix the price when the parties fail to agree. It must be remembered that as a rule large holdings of land mean something quite different in New Zealand from anything they signify to the English mind. In England a great estate is peopled by a more or less numerous tenantry. In New Zealand it is, as a rule, not peopled at all. Sheep roam over its grassy leagues, cared for by a manager and a few shepherds. Natural and proper as this may be on the wilder hills and poorer soils, it is easy to see how unnatural and intolerable it appears in fertile and accessible districts. In 1891 there were nearly twelve and a half million acres held in freehold. Of these rather more than seven millions were in the hands of 584 owners, none of whom held less than five thousand acres. In spite of land-laws, land-tax, and time, out of thirty-four million acres of land occupied under various tenures, twenty-one millions are held in areas of more than five thousand acres.
Much the largest of the estates purchased by the Government came into their hands in an odd way, and not under the Act just described. The Cheviot property was an excellent example of what the old cheap-land regulations led to. It was a fine tract of 84,000 acres of land, on which up to 1893 some forty human beings and about 60,000 sheep were to be found. Hilly but not mountainous, grassy, fertile, and lying against the sea-shore, it was exactly suited for fairly close settlement. Under the provisions of the land-tax presently to be described, a landowner who thinks the assessors have over-valued his property may call upon the Government to buy it at his own lower valuation. A difference of L50,000 between the estimate of the trustees who held the Cheviot estate and that of the official valuers caused the former to give the Government of the day the choice between reducing the assessment or buying the estate. Mr. McKenzie, however, was just the man to pick up the gauntlet thus thrown down. He had the Cheviot bought, cut up, and opened by roads. A portion was sold, but most leased; and within a year of purchase a thriving yeomanry, numbering nearly nine hundred souls and owning 74,000 sheep, 1,500 cattle, and 500 horses, were at work in the erstwhile empty tract. Four prosperous years have since added to their numbers, and the rent they pay more than recoups the Treasury for the interest on its outlay in the purchase and settlement.
In 1886, John Ballance, then Minister of Lands, made a courageous endeavour to place a number of workmen out of employment on the soil in what were known as village settlements. In various parts of the Colony blocks of Crown land were taken and divided into allotments of from twenty to fifty acres. These were let to the village settlers on perpetual lease at a rental equal to five per cent. on the prairie value of the land. Once in a generation there was to be a revision of the rental. The settlers, many of whom were quite destitute, were helped at first not only by two years’ postponement of their rent, but by small advances to each to enable them to buy seed, tools, food, and building material. Ballance was fiercely attacked in 1887 for his experiment, and his opponents triumphantly pointed to the collapse of certain of his settlements. Others, however, turned out to be successes, and by last accounts the village settlers and their families now number nearly five thousand human beings, occupying 35,000 acres in allotments of an average size of twenty-four acres. Most of them divide their time between tilling their land and working for wages as shearers, harvesters, or occasionally mechanics. Some L27,000 has been lent them, of which they still owe about L24,000. As against this the Government has been paid L27,000 in rent and interest, and the improvements made by the settlers on their allotments are valued at about L110,000, and form very good security for their debts to the Treasury. Of late years Mr. McKenzie has been aiding the poorer class of would-be farmers by employing them at wages to clear the land of which they afterwards become tenants. The money paid them is, of course, added to the capital value of the land.
For the last five years Liquor has disputed with Land the chief place in the public interest. It has introduced an element of picturesque enthusiasm and, here and there, a passion of hatred rarely seen before in New Zealand politics. It brought division into the Liberal Party in 1893, at the moment when the Progressive movement seemed to have reached its high-water mark, and the feeling it roused was found typified in the curious five years’ duel between Mr. Seddon and Sir Robert Stout, which began in 1893 and ended only with Sir Robert’s retirement at the beginning of the present year. It has strangely complicated New Zealand politics, is still doing so, and is the key to much political manoeuvring with which it might seem to have nothing whatever to do.
For many years total abstainers in New Zealand have grown in numbers. Though for the last thirty years drinking and drunkenness have been on the decline among all classes of colonists, and though New Zealanders have for a long time consumed much less alcohol per head than Britons do, that has not checked the growth of an agitation for total prohibition, which has absorbed within itself probably the larger, certainly the more active, section of temperance reformers.[1] In 1882 a mild form of local option went on to the statute-book, while the granting of licenses was handed over to boards elected by ratepayers. For the next ten years no marked result roused attention. Then, almost suddenly, the Prohibition movement was seen to be advancing by leaps and bounds. Two clergymen, the Rev. Leonard Isitt and the Rev. Edward Walker, were respectively the voice and the hand of the Prohibitionists. As a speaker Mr. Isitt would perhaps be the better for a less liberal use of the bludgeon, but his remarkable energy and force on the platform, and his bold and thorough sincerity, made him a power in the land. Mr. Walker had much to do with securing tangible results for the force which Mr. Isitt’s harangues aroused, and in which the Liberal Party was to a large extent enrolled. In 1893 the temperance leaders thought themselves strong enough to make sweeping demands of Parliament. Ballance, the Liberal Premier, had just died; his party was by many believed to be disorganized. In Sir Robert Stout, the Brougham of New Zealand public life, the Prohibitionists had a spokesman of boundless energy and uncommon hitting power in debate. He tabled a Bill briefly embodying their complete demands, and it was read a second time. Old parliamentary hands knew full well that the introduction of so controversial and absorbing a measure in the last session before a General Election meant the sacrifice for that year, at least, of most of the policy bills on labour, land, and other matters. But, whether it would or would not have been better to postpone Licensing Reform to a Parliament elected to deal with it, as matters came to stand, there was no choice. The Ministry tried to deal with the question on progressive, yet not unreasonable, lines. A Local Option Bill was passed, therefore, and nearly every other important policy measure, except the Female Franchise Bill, went by the board–blocked or killed in one Chamber or the other. The hurried Government licensing measure of 1893 had of course to be expanded and amended in 1895 and 1896. Now, though it has failed to satisfy the more thorough-going Prohibitionists, it embraces a complete and elaborate system of local option. Except under certain extraordinary conditions, the existing number of licenses cannot be increased. The licensing districts are coterminous with the Parliamentary electorates. The triennial licensing poll takes place on the same day as the General Election, thus ensuring a full vote. Every adult male and female resident may vote: (1) to retain all existing licenses; or (2) to reduce the number of licenses, and (3) to abolish all licenses within the district. To carry No. 3 a majority of three to two is requisite. No compensation is granted to any licensed house thus closed. Two local option polls have been held under this law. The first resulted in the closing of some seventy houses and the carrying of a total prohibition of retail liquor sales in the district of Clutha. Limited Prohibition has been the law in Clutha for some four years. The accounts of the results thereof conflict very sharply. In the writer’s opinion–given with no great confidence–the consumption of beer and wine there has been greatly reduced, that of spirits not very greatly. There is much less open drunkenness. In certain spots there is sly grog-selling with its concomitants of expense, stealthy drinking, and perjury. The second general Licensing Poll was held in December, 1896. Then for the first time it was taken on the same day as the Parliamentary elections. In consequence the Prohibitionist vote nearly doubled. But the Moderate vote more than trebled, and the attacking abstainers were repulsed all along the line, though they, on their side, defeated an attempt to recapture Clutha.
[Footnote 1: In 1884 the consumption of liquor among New Zealanders per head was–beer, 8.769 gallons; wine, 0.272 gallons; spirits, 0.999 gallons. The proportions had fallen in 1895 to 7.421 gallons of beer, 0.135 of wine, and 0.629 of spirits.]
The Prohibitionists are now disposed, it is believed, to make the fullest use in future of their right to vote for the reduction of the number of licensed houses. They still, however, object to the presence of the Reduction clause in the Act, and unite with the publicans in the wish to restrict the alternatives at the Local Option polls to two–total Prohibition and the maintenance of all existing licensed houses. They have also decided to oppose having the Licensing Poll on General Election day. Strongest of all is their objection to the three to two majority required to carry total and immediate Prohibition. These form the line of cleavage between them and a great many who share their detestation of the abuses of the liquor traffic.
[Illustration]
Chapter XXII
EIGHT YEARS OF EXPERIMENT
“For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a potter thumping his wet clay.”
In 1890 a new force came into the political field–organized labour. The growth of the cities and of factories in them, the decline of the alluvial and more easily worked gold-fields, and the occupation of the more fertile and accessible lands, all gradually tended to reproduce in the new country old-world industrial conditions. Even the sweating system could be found at work in holes and corners. There need be no surprise, therefore, that the labour problem, when engaging so much of the attention of the civilized world, demanded notice even in New Zealand. There was nothing novel there in the notion of extending the functions of the State in the hope of benefiting the community of the less fortunate classes of it. Already in 1890, the State was the largest landowner and receiver of rents, and the largest employer of labour. It owned nearly all the railways and all the telegraphs just as it now owns and manages the cheap, popular, and useful system of telephones. It entirely controlled and supported the hospitals and lunatic asylums, which it managed humanely and well. It also, by means of local boards and institutions, controlled the whole charitable aid of the country–a system of outdoor relief in some respects open to criticism. It was the largest trustee, managed the largest life insurance business, did nearly all the conveyancing, and educated more than nine-tenths of the children.
It will thus be seen that the large number of interesting experiments sanctioned by the New Zealand Parliament since 1890 involved few new departures or startling changes of principle. The constitution was democratic: it has simply been made more democratic. The functions of the State were wide; they have been made yet wider. The uncommon feature of the last eight years has been not so much the nature as the number and degree of the changes effected and the trials made by the Liberal-Labour fusion which gained power under Mr. Ballance at the close of 1890 and still retains office. The precise cause of their victory was the wave of socialistic, agrarian, and labour feeling which swept over the English-speaking world at the time, and which reached New Zealand.
[Illustration: THE HON. JOHN BALLANCE]
The oft-repeated assertion that the Australasian maritime strike of August, 1890, was not only coincident with the forming of Labour Parties in various colonies, but was itself the chief cause thereof, is not true Colonial Labour Parties have, no doubt, been influenced by two noted strikes, themselves divided by the width of the world. I mean the English dockers’ strike and our own maritime strike. But the great Thames strike may be said rather to have given a fillip to Colonial Trades Unionism, apart from politics altogether, than to have created any Party. As for the other conflict, though the utter rout of the colonial maritime strikers in 1890 undoubtedly sent Trades Unionists to the ballot-box sore and with a keen desire to redress the balance by gaining political successes, it was not the sole or the chief cause of their taking to politics. Before it took place New Zealand politicians knew the Labour organizations were coming into their field. The question was what they would do. The Opposition of 1889-90, though not without Conservative elements–the remnants of a former coalition–was mainly Radical. It had always supported Sir George Grey in his efforts to widen the franchise, efforts which in 1889 were finally crowned by the gain of one-man-one-vote. And in 1889 it choose as its head, John Ballance, perhaps the only man who could head with success a Liberal-Labour fusion. A journalist, but the son of a North Irish farmer, he knew country life on its working side. His views on the land question were not therefore mere theories, but part of his life and belief. Though not a single-taxer, he advocated State tenancy, as opposed to freehold, and his extension of village settlements had made him amongst New Zealand workmen a popular Lands Minister. Experience had made him a prudent financier, a humane temper made him a friend of the Maori. His views on constitutional reform were advanced, on liquor and education reactionary. In Labour questions apart from land settlement he took no special part. He was an excellent debater and a kindly, courteous, considerate chief. In Ballance and his followers in 1890 New Zealand Labour Organizations found a ready-made political Party from which they had much to hope. With it, therefore, they threw in their lot. The result showed the power the agrarian feeling of Unionism and of one-man-one-vote. In New Zealand, all the elections for the House of Representatives take place on one day. In 1890 the day was the 5th December. On the 6th it was clear enough that Ballance would be the Colony’s next Premier. His defeated opponents made a short delay, in order to commit the huge tactical mistake of getting the Governor to make seven additions to the Upper House. Then they yielded, and on 24th January, 1891, he took office.
Within his cabinet, he had the staunchest of lieutenants in Mr. John McKenzie aforesaid, whose burly strength combined with that of Mr. Seddon, now Premier, to supply the physical fighting force lacking in their chief. Mr. Cadman, another colleague, was an administrator of exceptional assiduity. But none of these had held office before, and outside his cabinet Ballance had to consolidate a party made up largely of raw material. Amongst it was a novel and hardly calculable element, the Labour Members. At the elections, however, no attempt had been made to reserve the Labour vote for candidates belonging exclusively to Trades Unions, or who were workmen. Of some score of Members who owed their return chiefly to the Labour vote, and who had accepted the chief points of the Labour policy, six only were working mechanics. Moreover, though the six were new to Parliament, several of their closest allies had been there before, and were old members of the Ballance Party. Not only, therefore, was a distinct Labour Party not formed, but there was no attempt to form one. For the rest, any feeling of nervous curiosity with which the artisan parliamentarians were at first regarded soon wore off. They were without exception men of character, intelligence, and common-sense. They behaved as though their only ambition was to be sensible Members of Parliament. As such, they were soon classed, and lookers-on were only occasionally reminded that they held a special brief.
Anything like a detailed history of the struggles which followed would be out of place here. Nor is it possible yet to sum up the results of changes, none of which are eight years old. A mere enumeration of them would take some space: a succinct description would require a fairly thick pamphlet. Some were carried after hot debate; some after very little. Some were resolutely contested in the popular chamber, and were assented to rather easily in the Upper House; others went through the Lower House without much difficulty, but failed again and again to run the gauntlet of the nominated chamber. The voting of some was on strict party lines: in other instances leading Opposition Members like Captain Russell frankly accepted the principle of measures. Some were closely canvassed in the newspapers and country; others were hardly examined outside Parliament. But, roughly speaking, the chief experiments of the last eight years not already dealt with many be divided into three sections. These relate to (1) Finance; (2) Constitutional Reform; (3) Labour. One of the first and–to a New Zealander’s eyes–boldest strokes delivered was against the Property Tax. This, the chief direct tax of the Colony, was an annual impost of 1d. in the L on the capital value of every citizen’s possessions, less his debts and an exemption of L500. Its friends claimed for this tax that it was no respecter of persons, but was simple, even-handed, and efficient. The last it certainly was, bringing as it did into the Treasury annually about as many thousands as there are days in the year. But inasmuch as different kinds of property are by no means equally profitable, and therefore the ability of owners to pay is by no means equal, the simplicity of the Property Tax was not by many thought equity. The shopkeeper, taxed on unsaleable stock, the manufacturer paying on plant and buildings as much in good years as in bad, bethought them that under an Income Tax they would at any rate escape in bad seasons when their income might be less or nothing. The comfortable professional man or well-paid business manager paid nothing on their substantial and regular incomes. The working-farmer settling in the desert felt that for every pound’s worth of improvements made by muscle and money he would have to account to the tax-collector at the next assessment. Nevertheless the Conservative politicians rallied round the doomed tax. It was a good machine for raising indispensable revenue. Moreover, it did not select any class of property-owners or any description of property for special burdens. This suited the landowners, who dreaded a Land Tax, for might not a Land Tax contain the germ of that nightmare of the larger colonial landowner–the Single Tax? It suited also the wealthy, who feared graduated taxation, and the lawyers, doctors, agents, and managing directors, whose incomes it did not touch. So when in the autumn the rumour went round that the Ballance Ministry meant to abolish the Property Tax and bring forward Bills embodying a Progressive Land Tax, and Progressive Income Tax, the proposal was thought to represent the audacity of impudence or desperation. When the rumour proved true, it was predicted that the farmers throughout the length and breath of the country would rise in wrath and terror, scared by the very name of Land Tax. Nevertheless Parliament passed the Bills, with the addition of a light Absentee Tax. The smaller farmers, at any rate, took the appeals of the Property Taxers with apathy, suspecting that under a tax on bare land values they would pay less than under a Property Tax which fell on land, improvements, and live stock as well. Since 1891, therefore, progression or graduation has been in New Zealand a cardinal principle of direct taxation.
Land pays no Income Tax, and landowners who have less than L500 worth of bare land value pay no Land Tax. This complete exemption of the very small land owners forms an almost insuperable barrier to the progress of singletaxers. On all land over L500 value 1d. in the L is paid. The mortgaged farmer deducts the amount of his mortgage from the value of his farm and pays only on the remainder. The money-lender pays 1d. in the L on the mortgage, which for this purpose is treated as land. An additional graduated tax begins on holdings worth, L5,000. At that stage it is an eighth of a penny. By progressive steps it rises until, on estates assessed at L210,000, it is 2d. Thus under the graduated and simple Land Tax together, the holders of the largest areas pay 3d. in the L, whilst the peasant farmers whose acres are worth less than L500 pay nothing. The owner who pays graduated tax pays upon the whole land value of his estate with no deduction for mortgage. The Graduated Tax brings in about L80,000 a year; the 1d. Land Tax about L200,000; the Income Tax about L70,000. The assessment and collection cause no difficulty. South Australia had a Land Tax before New Zealand; New South Wales has imposed one since. Both differ from New Zealand’s.
Income earners pay on nothing up to L300 a year. Between L300 and L1,300 the tax is 6d. all round; over L1,300 it rises to a shilling. Joint-stock companies pay a shilling on all income.
Another law authorizes local governing bodies to levy their rates on bare land values. Three times the Bill passed the Lower House, only to be rejected in the Upper. It became law in 1896. The adoption of the principle permitted by it is hedged about by various restrictions but some fourteen local bodies have voted in favour thereof.
The unexampled and, till 1895, continuous fall of prices in the European markets made it hard for colonial producers to make both ends meet. The cultivator found his land depreciated because, though he grew more than before, he got less for it. As the volume of produce swelled, so the return for it sank as by some fatal compensation. To pay the old rates of interest is for the mortgaged farmer, therefore, an impossibility. Various schemes for using the credit of the State to reduce current rates of interest have been before the public in more than one colony. The scheme of the New Zealand Government is contained in the Advances to Settlers Act, 1894. Under it a State Board may lend Government money on leasehold and freehold security, but not on urban or suburban land, unless occupied for farming or market-gardening. The loan may amount to three-fifths of the value of the security when freehold, and one-half when leasehold. The rate of interest charged is 5 per cent., but the borrower pays at the rate of 6 per cent. in half-yearly instalments, the extra 1 per cent. being by way of gradual repayment of the principal. Mortgagees must in this way repay the principal in 73 half-yearly instalments, provided they care to remain indebted so long. If able to wipe off their debts sooner, they can do so. The Act came into force in October, 1894. Machinery for carrying it out was quickly set up; applications for loans came in freely, and about a million has been lent, though the State Board, in its anxiety to avoid bad security, has shown a proper spirit of caution.
With one exception, the constitutional changes of the eight years may be dismissed in a very few words. The Upper Chamber, or Legislative Council of New Zealand, is nominative and not elective, nor is there any fixed limit to its numbers. Liable, thus, to be diluted by Liberal nominees, it is not so strong an obstacle to the popular will as are the Elective Councils of certain Australian Colonies. Prior to 1891, however, the nominations in New Zealand were for life. This was objected to for two reasons. A Councillor, who at the age of sixty might be a valuable adviser, might twelve years later be but the shadow of his former self. Moreover, experience showed that Conservatism was apt to strengthen in the nominated legislator’s mind with advancing years. So a seven years’ tenure has been substituted for life tenure. Then, again, in 1891 the Liberal majority in the Colony was scarcely represented in the Council at all. In important divisions, Government measures passed by decisive majorities in the popular Chamber could only muster two, three, four, or five supporters in the Council. This not only meant that a hostile majority could reject and amend as it pleased, but that measures were not even fairly debated in the Upper House. Only one side was heard. In 1892 the Ballance Ministry, therefore, asked the Governor to call twelve fresh Councillors. His Excellency demurred to the number. As there was about to be a change of Governors the matter stood over. The new Governor proved as unwilling as his predecessor. Ballance held that in this matter, as in others, the constitutional course was for the Governor to take the advice of his Ministers. His Excellency thought otherwise. By mutual consent the matter was referred to the Colonial Office, where Lord Ripon decided in favour of the Premier. Twelve new Councillors were nominated. Though this submission to the arbitration of the Colonial Office was attacked not only by colonial Conservatives but by Sir George Grey, it was highly approved of both by the Lower House and the mass of the electors, and was regarded as one of Ballance’s most important successes.
Another he did not live to see achieved. His Electoral Bill, wrecked twice in the Council, was only passed some months after his death. Under it the one-man-one-vote was carried to its complete issue by the clause providing for one man one registration; that is to say, that no voter could register on more than one roll. Consequently property-owners were not only cut down to one vote in one district at a general election, but were prevented from voting in another district at a by-election. The right to vote by letter was extended from seamen to shearers. But much the greatest extension of the franchise was the giving it to women. This was a curious example of a remarkable constitutional change carried by a Parliament at the election of which the question had scarcely been discussed. Labour, Land, and Progressive Taxation had been so entirely the ascendant questions at the General Election of 1890, that it came as a surprise to most to learn next year that the House of Representatives was in favour of women’s suffrage. Even then it was not generally supposed that the question would be settled. Sir John Hall, however, its consistent friend, brought it up in the House, and Ballance, an equally earnest supporter, at once accepted it. After that, the only doubts as to its becoming law sprang from the attitude of the Legislative Council, and from the scruples of certain persons who thought that so great a change should be definitely submitted to the constituencies. Feeling was both strengthened and exacerbated by the enthusiasm of the Prohibition lodges, some of whose members at the same time demanded that the Government should pass the measure, and emphatically assured every one that its passing would forthwith bring about the Government’s downfall and damnation. There is no doubt that many of the Ministry’s opponents believed this, and that to their mistake was due the escape of the Bill in the Council. It was passed on the eve of the General Elections by the narrowest possible majority. The rush of the women on to the rolls; the interest taken by them in the elections; the peaceable and orderly character of the contests; and the Liberal majority returned at two successive General Elections are all matters of New Zealand history.
Most of the women voters show as yet no disposition to follow the clergy in assailing the national system of free, secular, and compulsory education. They clearly favour temperance reform, but are by no means unanimous for total prohibition. On the whole, the most marked feature of their use of the franchise is their tendency to agree with their menkind. Families, as a rule, vote together, and the women of any class or section are swayed by its interests, prejudices, or ideals to just about the same extent as the males thereof. Thus, the friends and relatives of merchants and professional men, large landowners, or employers of labour, usually vote on one side; factory girls, domestic servants, wives of labourers, miners, artisans, or small farmers, on the other. Schoolmistresses are as decidedly for secular education as are schoolmasters. It is too soon to pronounce yet with anything like confidence on the results of this great experiment. We have yet to see whether female interest in politics will intensify or fade. At present, perhaps, the right of every adult woman to vote is more remarkable for what it has not brought about than for what it has. It has not broken up existing parties, unsexed women, or made them quarrel with their husbands, or neglect their households. It has not interfered with marriage, or society, or the fashion of dress. The ladies are not clamouring to be admitted to Parliament. They do less platform-speaking than Englishwomen do, though many of them study public affairs–about which, to say truth, they have much to learn. Observers outside the Colony need not suppose that New Zealand women are in the least degree either “wild,” or “new,” or belong to any shrieking sisterhood. Though one or two have entered learned professions, most of them are engaged in domestic duties. Those who go out into the world do so to work unassumingly as school teachers, factory hands, or household servants. As school teachers they are usually efficient, as domestic servants civil and hard-working, as factory hands neat, industrious, and moral. It is true that they are, without exception, educated to the extent of having had at least good primary school teaching. But though they read–clean, healthy English books–this, so far from making them inclined to favour frantic or immoral social experiments, should have, one may hope, just the opposite effect. Far from being a spectacled, angular, hysterical, uncomfortable race, perpetually demanding extravagant changes in shrill tones, they are, at least, as distinguished for womanly modesty, grace, and affection, as Englishwomen in any other part of the Empire.
There are some who connect the appearance of women in the political arena with the recent passing of an Infants’ Life Protection Act, the raising of the age of consent to fifteen, the admission of women to the Bar, the appointment of female inspectors to lunatic asylums, factories, and other institutions, improvements in the laws dealing with Adoption of Children and Industrial Schools, a severe law against the keepers of houses of ill-fame, and with the new liquor laws and the Prohibitionist movement which is so prominent a feature of New Zealand public life.
A handy volume issued by the Government printer contains most of the Labour Laws of New Zealand. They are now twenty-six in number, comprising Acts, amending Acts, and portions of Acts. Their aim is not the abolition of the wages system, but, as far as may be to make that system fair and tolerable, and in protecting the labourer to protect the fair employer. Some twenty of these laws have been passed during the last seven years. Of these an Employers’ Liability Act resembles Mr. Asquith’s ill-fated Bill. Worked in conjunction with a law for the inspection of machinery and a thorough-going system of factory inspection, it has lessened accidents without leading to litigation. It neither permits contracting-out nor allows employers to escape liability by means of letting out contracts.
A Truck Act declares the right of every wage-earner to be paid promptly, in full, in the current coin of the realm, and to be allowed to spend wages as they choose. Two more enactments deal with the earnings of the workmen of contractors and sub-contractors, make them a first charge on all contract money, give workers employed on works of construction a lien thereon, and compel a contractor’s employer to hold back at least one-fourth of the contract money for a month after the completion of a contract, unless he shall be satisfied that all workmen concerned have been paid in full. A Wages Attachment Act limits without entirely abolishing a creditor’s right to obtain orders of court attaching forthcoming earnings.
The Factories Act of 1894, slightly extended by an amending Act in 1896, consolidates and improves upon no less than four previous measures, two of which had been passed by the Ballance Government. As compared with similar European and American laws, it may fairly claim to be advanced and minute. Under its pivot clause all workshops, where two or more persons are occupied, are declared to be factories, must register, pay an annual fee, and submit to inspection at any hour of the night or day. A master and servant working together count as two hands. Inspectors have absolute power to demand such cubic space, ventilation, and sanitary arrangements generally as they may consider needful to preserve life and health. The factory age is fourteen; there are no half-timers; and, after a struggle, the Upper House was induced to pass a clause enforcing an education test before any child under fifteen should be allowed to go to factory work. This is but logical in a country wherein primary education is not only free, but compulsory. Children under sixteen must be certified by an inspector to be physically fit for factory life. Women and children under eighteen may not work before 7.45 a.m. or after 6 p.m., nor more than forty-eight hours per week. Whether time-workers or piece-workers, they are equally entitled to the half-holiday after 1 p.m. on Saturday. In the case of time-workers, this half-holiday is to be granted without deduction of wages. The rates of pay and hours of work in factories have to be publicly notified and returned to the inspectors. Overtime may be permitted by inspectors on twenty-eight days a year, but overtime pay must be not less than 6d. an hour extra. The factory-owners who send work out have to make complete returns thereof. All clothing made outside factories for sale is to be ticketed “tenement made,” and any person removing the ticket before sale may be fined. No home work may be sublet. A peculiar feature in the Act relates to the board and lodging provided on sheep stations for the nomadic bands of shearers who traverse colonies, going from wool-shed to wool-shed during the shearing season. The huts in which these men live are placed under the factory inspectors, who have power to call upon station-owners to make them decent and comfortable. The Act has clauses insisting on the provision of a separate dining-room for women workers, of fire-escapes, and protection against dangerous machinery. Girls under fifteen may not work as type-setters; young persons of both sexes are shut out of certain dangerous trades; women may not work in factories within a month after their confinement. Such are the leading features of the Factories Act. It is strictly enforced, and has not in any way checked the growth of manufactures in the colony.
The laws which regulate retail shops do not aim at securing what is known as early closing. A weekly half-holiday for all, employer and employed alike; a fifty-four hours’ working week for women and young persons; seats for shop girls, and liberty to use them; sanitary inspection of shops. These were the objects of those who framed the acts, and these have been attained. Under a special section merchants’ offices must close at 5 o’clock p.m. during two-thirds of each month. On the weekly half-holiday shops in towns must be closed at 1 o’clock, but each town chooses its own day for closing. Nearly all choose Wednesday or Thursday, so as not to interfere with the Saturday market-day of the farmers. Much feeling was stirred up by the passing of this Act, but it has since entirely died away.
Until 1894 the legal position of Trade Unionists in New Zealand was much less enviable than that of their brethren in England. The English Act of 1875 repealing the old Labour Conspiracy law and modifying the common law doctrine relating thereto, had never been enacted in New Zealand. The Intimidation law (6 George IV.) was still in force throughout Australasia; the common law doctrine relating thereto had not been in any way softened. Within the last few years Australian Trade Unionists had found the old English law unexpectedly hunted up for the purpose of putting them into gaol. Three short clauses and a schedule, passed in 1894, swept from the Statute-Book and the common law of New Zealand all laws and doctrines specially relating to conspiracy among members of Trades Unions who in future will only be amenable to such conspiracy laws as affect all citizens.
In New Zealand most domestic servants and many farm hands and gardeners are engaged through Servants’ Registry Offices. A law, passed in 1895, provides for the inspection of these, and regulates the fees charged therein. Office-keepers have to be of good character; have to register and take out a license; have to keep books and records which are officially inspected. They are not allowed to keep lodging-houses or to have any interest in such houses.
To certain students the most interesting and novel of the New Zealand labour laws is that which endeavours to settle labour disputes between employers and Trade Unions by means of public arbitration instead of the old-world methods of the strike and the lock-out. Under this statute, which was passed in 1894, the Trade Unions of the Colony have been given the right to become corporate bodies able to sue and be sued. In each industrial locality a Board of Conciliation is set up, composed equally of representatives of employers and workmen, with an impartial chairman. Disputes between Trade Unions and employers–the Act deals with no others–are referred first of all to these Boards. The exclusion of disputes between individuals, or between unorganized workmen and their masters, is grounded on the belief that such disputes are apt to be neither stubborn nor mischievous enough to call for State interference; moreover, how could an award be enforced against a handful of roving workmen, a mere nebulous cluster of units? At the request of any party to an industrial dispute the District Board can call all other parties before it, and can hear, examine, and recommend. It is armed with complete powers for taking evidence and compelling attendance. Its award, however, is not enforceable at law, but is merely in the nature of friendly advice. Should all or any of the parties refuse to accept it, an appeal lies to the Central Court of Arbitration, composed of a judge of the Supreme Court sitting with two assessors representing capital and labour respectively. The trio are appointed for three years, and in default of crime or insanity can only be removed by statute. Their court may not be appealed from, and their procedure is not fettered by precedent. No disputant may employ counsel unless all agree to do so. The decisions of this Court are binding in law, and may be enforced by pains and penalties. The arbitration law has been in active operation for about three years, during which time some thirty-five Labour disputes have been successfully settled. As a rule, the decisions of the Local Conciliation Boards are not accepted. Either some of the parties refuse to concur, or some of the recommendations are objected to by all those on one side or the other. In nearly all cases the awards of the Arbitration Court have been quietly submitted to. In three minor cases proceedings have been taken for penalties. Twice these have been dismissed on technical grounds. In the third instance a small penalty was imposed. All the important Labour disputes of the last three years have been brought before the tribunals set up under the Act. The only strike which has occurred and has attracted any attention during this period was by certain unorganized bricklayers working for the government. As the Act applied to neither side an attempt was made to settle the dispute by voluntary arbitration. Some of the men, however, refused to accept the arbitrators’ award, and lost their work. But of strikes by Trades Unions there have been none, and there should be none so long as the Act can be made to work.
As to the kind of questions arbitrated upon, they comprise most of the hard nuts familiar to students of the Labour problem. Among them are hours of labour, holidays, the amount of day wages, the price to be paid for piece-work, the proportion of apprentices to skilled artizans, the facilities to be allowed to Trade Union officials for interviews with members, the refusal of Unionists to work with non-Union men, and the pressure exerted by employees to induce workmen to join private benefit societies. A New Zealand employer, it may be mentioned, cannot take himself outside the Act of discharging his Union hands, or even by gradually ceasing to engage Union men, and then pleading that he has none left in his employ. A Union, whose members are at variance with certain employers in a trade, may bring all the local employees engaged in that trade into court, so that the same award may be binding on the whole trade in the district.
Most of the references have been anything but trivial affairs, either as to the numbers of workmen concerned, or the value of the industries, or importance of the points in dispute. It is wrong to suppose that the operation of the Act is confined to industries protected by high customs duties, or to workers in factories. It may be applied wherever workers are members of legally constituted bodies, set up either under the Trade Union Act, or under the Arbitration Statute itself. Unions who want to make use of it, register under it; and some eighty have already done so. Trade Unions who do not specially register may nevertheless be brought before the Arbitration Court by the employers of their members. So far the Act has met with a remarkable measure of success. The Trade Unions are enthusiastic believers in it,–rather too enthusiastic, indeed, for they have shown a tendency to make too frequent a use of it. Some of their officials, too, would do well to be more brief and businesslike in the conduct of cases. On the other hand, employers in most of the localities have made a serious mistake in refusing to elect representatives for the local Conciliation Boards, and thus forcing the Government to nominate members. This has weakened the Boards, has hindered them from having the conciliatory character they ought to have, and has led in part to the frequent appeals to the Central Court of which the employers themselves complain. The lawyers claim to have discovered that the penalty clauses of the Act are badly drafted, and some of them assert that unless these are amended, they will be able to drive a coach and six through the statute. No doubt technical amendments will be required from time to time. What is still more requisite is an understanding between the more reasonable leaders on both sides of industry, by which arrangements may be made for the more effectual and informal use of the Conciliation Boards. Meanwhile it savours of the absurd to talk and write–as certain fault-finders have done–as though every arbitration under the Act were a disturbance of industry as ruinous as a prolonged strike. Other critics have not stickled to assert that it has mischievously affected the volume of the Colony’s industries, a statement which is simply untrue. It is the reviving prosperity of the Colony during the last three years which has led the Trade Unions to make so much use of the Act. In place of striking on a rising market, as they do in other countries, they have gone to arbitration. Public opinion in New Zealand has never been one-sided on the question. It has all along been prepared to give this important experiment a fair trial, and is quite ready to have incidental difficulties cured by reasonable amendment.
The Shipping and Seamen’s Act, 1894, and the amending Acts of the two following years, mitigate the old-fashioned severity of punishments for refusal of duty, assaults on the high seas, and other nautical offences. The forecastle and the accommodation thereof become subject to the _fiat_ of the Government inspector, as are factories on shore. Regular payment of wages is stipulated for, overcrowding amongst passengers is forbidden. Complete powers are given to the marine authorities to enforce not only a full equipment of life-boats and life-saving appliances, but boat-drill. Deck loading is restricted, and the Plimsoll mark insisted on. But the portion of the Act which gave rise to the intensest opposition was the proviso by which all sailing vessels are obliged to carry a certain complement of able seamen and ordinary seamen, according to their tonnage, while steamers must carry a given number of able seamen, ordinary seamen, firemen, trimmers, and greasers, according to their horse-power. Foreign vessels, while engaging in the New Zealand coasting-trade, have to pay their crews the rate of wages current on the coast. Parliament was warned that the passing of this Act would paralyze the trade of the Colony, but passed it was–with certain not unreasonable amendments–and trade goes on precisely as before.
In 1891, moreover, the colonial laws relating to mining generally, and to coal-mining especially, were consolidated and amended. An interesting feature in the New Zealand Coal Mines’ Act is the provision by which mine-owners have to contribute to a fund for the relief of miners or the families of miners in cases where men are injured or killed at work. Every quarter the owners have to pay a halfpenny per ton on the output, if it be bituminous coal; and a farthing a ton, if it be lignite. Payment is made into the nearest Post Office Savings Bank and goes to the credit of an account called “The Coal Miners’ Relief Fund.” From 1891 mineral rights are reserved in lands thereafter alienated by the Crown.
Most of the Labour laws are watched and administered by the Department of Labour, a branch of the public service created in 1891. It costs but L7,000 or L8,000 a year, much of which is recouped by factory fees and other receipts. It also keeps labour statistics, acts as a servants’ registry office, and by publishing information, and by shifting them from congested districts, endeavours to keep down the numbers of the unemployed. In this, though it is but a palliative, it has done useful and humane work, aided–so far as the circulation of labour goes–by the State-owned railways.
[Illustration:
TE WAHAROA HENARE KAIHAU, M.H.R. HON. JAMES CARROLL, M.H.R RIGHT HON. R.J. SEDDON (_Premier_) MAHUTA (_The Maori “King”_)
Photo by_ BEATTIE & SANDERSON, Auckland.]
From what has gone before, readers will readily understand that the New Zealand Government has usually in its employ several thousand labourers engaged in road-making, bridge-building, draining, and in erecting and repairing public buildings. To avoid the faults of both the ordinary contract and the day-wage system, a plan, clumsily called The Co-operative Contract System, has been adopted by the present Premier, Mr. Seddon. The work is cut up into small sections, the workmen group themselves in little parties of from four to eight men, and each party is offered a section at a fair price estimated by the Government’s engineers. Material, when wanted, is furnished by the Government, and the tax-payer thus escapes the frauds and adulteration of old contract days. The result of the system in practice is that where workmen are of, at any rate, average industry and capacity, they make good, sometimes excellent, wages. In effect they are groups of piece-workers, whose relation with each other is that of partners. Each band elects a trustee, with whom the Government officials deal. They are to a large extent their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor’s foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making estimates of the price to be paid for work, make mistakes, and men will earn extravagantly high wages, or get very poor returns. But as the sections are small, this does not last for long, and the balance is redressed. After some years’ experience, it seems fairly proved that the average of earnings is not extravagant, and that the taxpayer loses nothing by the arrangement as compared with the old contract system, while the change is highly popular with workmen throughout the Colony.
Those who know anything of politics anywhere, will not need to be told that the changes and experiments here sketched have been viewed with suspicion, alarm, contempt, or anger, by a large class of wealthy and influential New Zealanders. It is but fair that, in a sketch like this, some emphasis should be laid upon their dissent and protests. Into the personal attacks of which very much of their criticism has consisted this is not the place to enter. A summary of the Conservative view of the progressive work ought, however, to have a place. Disqualified as I might be thought to be from attempting it, I prefer to make use of an account written and published in 1896 by an English barrister, who, in the years 1894-95, spent many months in the Colony studying with attention its politics and public temper. As his social acquaintanceships lay chiefly among the Conservatives, he had no difficulty in getting frank expressions of their views. In the following sentences he sums up the more moderate and impersonal of these, as he heard and analysed them:–
“… It must not be supposed that the Conservatives of New Zealand, any more than those of the mother country, are apologists for ‘sweating.’ Indeed, as Mr. Reeves himself has acknowledged, the labour legislation with which he is associated was inaugurated by the Government’s predecessors, and in carrying his Bills he had the cordial support of Captain Russell, the leader of the Opposition. At the same time it is urged that this protective legislation has been carried to an unreasonable extent, and people allege, no doubt with a certain amount of exaggeration, that they feel themselves regulated in all the relations of life. The measure which has created the most irritation seems to be the Shop Assistants Act. Employers say that Mr. Reeves has made every man ‘a walking lawsuit,’ and that they are chary of having one about their premises. Moreover, this constant succession of labour laws, and the language of some of their supporters, have created, so they say, in the minds of the working classes the impression that the squatters, manufacturers, and the classes with which they associate, are tyrants and oppressors, and their lives are embittered by the feeling that they are regarded as enemies of the people. Further, they say that the administrative action of the Government tends to keep up the price of labour, that the price of labour is unreasonably high, and that this fact, coupled with the necessity of keeping all the provisions of the labour laws in mind, and the spirit which they have generated, makes them disinclined to employ labour in the improvement of their lands. As to the Government’s land policy, while it is admitted that small settlers are desirable, it is not admitted that large properties are necessarily a curse. What is resented more fiercely than anything else is the fact that they are liable to have their own properties appropriated at the arbitrary will of the Minister of lands, and though the Government promises to work the law reasonably, neither this nor any other of their declarations is regarded with confidence. It is asserted that the Government is flooding the country with incompetent settlers, who imagine that anyone can get a living out of the land; that the resumed properties have been purchased and cut up in such a way that a cry for a reduction of rents will soon become inevitable, and that the Cheap Money Scheme has created a class of debtors, who, in conceivable circumstances, might be able to apply effectual political pressure for the reduction of their interest. In point of fact they do not share the Progressist idea, that much can be done by legislation to ameliorate the condition of the masses of the population, nor do they see that in a country like New Zealand, where labour is dear, food cheap, and the climate mild and equable, their condition need necessarily be so deplorable. They still cherish the old theories of individualism. The humanitarian ideals of Mr. Reeves, not being idealists, they regard with little interest. What they see is the Government of their Colony, which they had been accustomed to control, in the hands of men whose characters they despise or detest, and the House of Representatives, which was once the most dignified and distinguished assembly in the Colonies, now become (in their circle at any rate) a byword of reproach–full of men who vote themselves for a three months’ session salaries which many of them would be unable to earn in any other walk of life.”
Despite the Socialistic tendency of the Acts thus denounced, it must not be thought that there is any strong party of deliberate State Socialists in the Colony at all corresponding to the following of Bebel and Liebknecht in Germany, or even the Independent Labour Party in England. There is not. The reforms and experiments which show themselves so many in the later chapters of the story of New Zealand have in all cases been examined and taken on their merits, and not otherwise. They are the outcome of a belief which, though much more boldly trusted and acted upon by the Progressives than by the Conservatives, is not now the monopoly of one political party. The leaders of the rival parties, the robust Mr. Seddon and the kindly Captain Russell, both admit one main principle. It is that a young democratic country, still almost free from extremes of wealth and poverty, from class hatreds and fears and the barriers these create, supplies an unequalled field for safe and rational experiment in the hope of preventing and shutting out some of the worst social evils and miseries which afflict great nations alike in the old world and the new.
To sum up the experiments themselves, it may be said that the Colony has now reached the stage when the State, without being in any way a monopolist, is a large and active competitor in many fields of industry. Where it does not compete it often regulates. This very competition must of course expose it to the most severe tests and trials. Further progress will chiefly depend on the measure of success with which it stands these, and on the consequent willingness or unwillingness of public opinion to make trial of further novelties.
Chapter XXIII
THE NEW ZEALANDERS
“No hungry generations tread thee down.”
Some 785,000 whites, browns, and yellows are now living in New Zealand. Of these the browns are made up of about 37,000 Maoris and 5,800 half-castes. The Maoris seem slowly decreasing, the half-castes increasing rather rapidly. 315,000 sheep, 30,000 cattle, many horses, and much land, a little of which they cultivate, some of which they let, support them comfortably enough. The yellows, some 3,500 Chinese, are a true alien element. They do not marry–78 European and 14 Chinese wives are all they have, at any rate in the Colony. They are not met in social intercourse or industrial partnership by any class of colonists, but work apart as gold-diggers, market-gardeners, and small shop-keepers, and are the same inscrutable, industrious, insanitary race of gamblers and opium-smokers in New Zealand as elsewhere. At one time they were twice as numerous. Then a poll-tax of L10 was levied on all new-comers. Still, a few score came in every year, paying the tax, or having it paid for them; and about as many went home to China, usually with L200 or more about them. In 1895 the tax was raised to L50, and this seems likely to bring the end quickly. Despised, disliked, dwindling, the Chinese are bound soon to disappear from the colony.
Of the 740,000 whites, more than half have been born in the country, and many are the children, and a few even the grandchildren, of New Zealand-born parents. An insular race is therefore in process of forming. What are its characteristics? As the Scotch would say–what like is it? Does it give any signs of qualities, physical or mental, tending to distinguish it from Britons, Australians, or North Americans? The answer is not easy. Nothing is more tempting, and at the same time more risky, than to thus generalize and speculate too soon. As was said at the outset, New Zealand has taken an almost perverse delight in upsetting expectations. Nevertheless, certain points are worth noting which may, at any rate, help readers to draw conclusions of their own.
The New Zealanders are a British race in a sense in which the inhabitants of the British Islands scarcely are. That is to say, they consist of English, Scotch, and Irish, living together, meeting daily, intermarrying, and having children whose blood with each generation becomes more completely blended and mingled. The Celtic element is larger than in England or in the Scottish lowlands. As against this there is a certain, though small, infusion of Scandinavian and German blood; very little indeed of any other foreign race. The Scotch muster strongest in the south and the Irish in the mining districts. In proportion to their numbers the Scotch are more prominent than other races in politics, commerce, finance, sheep farming, and the work of education. Among the seventy European members of the New Zealand House of Representatives there is seldom more than one Smith, Brown, or Jones, and hardly ever a single Robinson; but the usual number of McKenzies is three. The Irish do not crowd into the towns, or attempt to capture the municipal machinery, as in America, nor are they a source of political unrest or corruption. Their Church’s antagonism to the National Education system has excluded many able Catholics from public life. The Scandinavians and Germans very seldom figure there. Some 1,700 Jews live in the towns, and seem more numerous and prominent in the north than in the south. They belong to the middle class; many are wealthy. These are often charitable and public-spirited, and active in municipal rather than in parliamentary life.
[Illustration: MAORIS CONVEYING GUESTS IN A CANOE
Photo by Beattie & Sanderson, Auckland.]
Among the Churches the Church of England claims 40 per cent. of the people; the Presbyterians 23 per cent.; other Protestants, chiefly Methodists, 17 per cent.; and Catholics 14. Methodists seem increasing rather faster than any other denomination. Though the National School system is secular, it is not anti-Christian. 11,000 persons teach 105,000 children in Sunday-schools. In the census returns about two per cent. of the population object or neglect to specify their religion; only about one per cent. style themselves as definitely outside the Christian camp.
The average density of population throughout the Colony’s 104,000 square miles is somewhat less than eight to the mile. Two-thirds of the New Zealanders live in the country, in villages, or in towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants. Even the larger towns cover, taken together, about seventy square miles of ground–not very cramping limits for a quarter of a million of people. Nor is there overcrowding in houses; less than five persons to a house is the proportion. There are very few spots in the towns where trees, flower gardens, and grass are not close at hand, and even orchards and fields not far away. The dwelling-houses, almost all of wood, seldom more than two storeys high, commonly show by their shady verandahs and veiling creepers that the New Zealand sun is warmer than the English. Bright, windy, and full of the salt of the ocean, the air is perhaps the wholesomest on earth, and the Island race naturally shows its influence. Bronzed faces display on every side the power of sun and wind. Pallor is rare; so also is the more delicate pink and white of certain English skins. The rainier, softer skies of the western coasts have their result in smoother skins and better complexions on that side of the Islands than in the drier east. On the warm shores of Auckland there are signs of a more slightly-built breed, but not in the interior, which almost everywhere rises quickly into hill or plateau. Athletic records show that the North Islanders hold their own well enough against Southern rivals. More heavily built as a rule than the Australians, the New Zealanders have darker hair and thicker eyebrows than is common with the Anglo-Saxon of Northern England and Scotland. Tall and robust, the men do not carry themselves as straight as the nations which have been through the hands of the drill-sergeant. The women–who are still somewhat less numerous than the males–are as tall, but not usually as slight, as those of the English upper classes. To sum up, the New Zealand race shows no sign of beating the best British, or of producing an average equal to that best; but its average is undoubtedly better than the general British average. The puny myriads of the manufacturing towns have no counterpart in the Colony, and, if humanitarian laws can prevent it, never should. The birth-rate and death-rate are both strikingly low: the latter, 9.14 per 1,000, is the lowest in the world. The birth-rate has fallen from 37.95 in 1881 to 25.96 in 1897. The yearly number of births has in effect remained the same for sixteen years, though the population has grown thirty per cent. larger in the period. The gain by immigration is still appreciable, though not large.
Their speech is that of communities who are seldom utterly illiterate, and as seldom scholarly. I have listened in vain for any national twang, drawl, or peculiar intonation. The young people, perhaps, speak rather faster than English of the same age, that is all. On the other hand, anything like picturesque, expressive language within the limits of grammar is rarely found. Many good words in daily use in rural England have been dropped in the Colony. Brook, village, moor, heath, forest, dale, copse, meadow, glade are among them. Young New Zealanders know what these mean because they find them in books, but would no more think of employing them in speaking than of using “inn,” “tavern,” or “ale,” when they can say “hotel,” “public-house,” or “beer.” Their place is taken by slang. Yet if a nation is known by its slang, the New Zealanders must be held disposed to borrow rather than to originate, for theirs is almost wholly a mixture of English, American, and Australian. Most of the mining terms come from California; most of the pastoral from Australia, though “flat” and “creek” are, of course, American. “Ranche” and “gulch” have not crossed the Pacific; their place is taken by “run” and “gulley.” On the other hand, “lagoon” has replaced the English “pond,” except in the case of artificial water. Pasture is “feed,” herd and flock alike become “mob.” “Country” is used as a synonym for grazing; “good country” means simply good grazing land. A man tramping in search of work is a “swagman” or “swagger,” from the “swag” or roll of blankets he carries on his back. Very few words have been adopted from the vigorous and expressive Maori. The convenient “mana,” which covers prestige, authority, and personal magnetism; “whare,” a rough hut; “taihoa,” equivalent to the Mexican _manana_; and “ka pai,” “’tis good,” are exceptions. The South Island colonists mispronounce their beautiful Maori place-names murderously. Even in the North Island the average bushman will speak of the pukatea tree as “bucketeer,” and not to call the poro-poro shrub “bull-a-bull” would be considered affectation. There is or was in the archives of the Taranaki Farmers’ Club a patriotic song which rises to the notable lines–
“And as for food, the land is full
Of that delicious bull-a-bull!”
In Canterbury you would be stared at if you called Timaru anything but “Timmeroo.” In Otago Lake Wakatipu becomes anything, from “Wokkertip” to “Wackatipoo”; and I have heard a cultured man speak of Puke-tapu as “Buck-a-tap.”
The intellectual average is good. Thanks in great part to Gibbon Wakefield’s much-abused Company, New Zealand was fortunate in the mental calibre of her pioneer settlers, and in their determined efforts to save their children from degenerating into loutish, half-educated provincials. Looking around in the Colony at the sons of these pioneers, one finds them on all sides doing useful and honourable work. They make upright civil servants, conscientious clergymen, schoolmasters, lawyers, and journalists, pushing agents, resourceful engineers, steady-going and often prosperous farmers, and strong, quick, intelligent labourers. Of the “self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control” needful to make a sound race they have an encouraging share. Of artistic, poetic, or scientific talent, of wit, originality, or inventiveness, there is yet but little sign. In writing they show facility often, distinction never; in speech fluency and force of argument, and even, sometimes, lucidity, but not a flash of the loftier eloquence. Nor has the time yet arrived for Young New Zealand to secure the chief prizes of its own community–such posts and distinctions as go commonly to men fairly advanced in years. No native of the country has yet been its Prime Minister or sat amongst its supreme court judges or bishops. A few colonial-born have held subordinate Cabinet positions, but the dozen leading Members of Parliament are just now all British-born. So are the leading doctors, engineers, university professors, and preachers; the leading barrister is a Shetlander. Two or three, and two or three only, of the first-class positions in the civil service are filled by natives. On the whole, Young New Zealand is, as yet, better known by collective usefulness than by individual distinction.
The grazing of sheep and cattle, dairying, agriculture, and mining for coal and gold, are the chief occupations. 47,000 holdings are under cultivation. The manufactures grow steadily, and already employ 40,000 hands. A few figures will give some notion of the industrial and commercial position. The number of the sheep is a little under 20,000,000; of cattle, 1,150,000; of horses, 250,000. The output of the factories and workshops is between L10,000,000 and L11,000,000 sterling a year; the output of gold, about L1,000,000; that of coal, about 900,000 tons. The export of wool is valued at L4,250,000. Among the exports for 1897 were: 2,700,000 frozen sheep and lambs; 66,000 cwt. cheese, and 71,000 cwt butter; L433,000 worth of kauri gum; L427,000 worth of grain. The exports and imports of the Colony for the year 1897 were a little over L10,000,000 and L8,000,000 sterling respectively. It would appear that, taking a series of years, about three-quarters of the Colony’s trade has been with the mother-country, and nearly all the remainder with other parts of the Empire. The public debt is about L44,000,000; the revenue, L5,000,000. The State owns 2,061 miles of railway.
[Illustration: A RURAL STATE SCHOOL
Photo by BEATTIE & SANDERSON, Auckland.]
Socially the colonists are what might be expected from their environment. Without an aristocracy, without anything that can be called a plutocracy, without a solitary millionaire, New Zealand is also virtually without that hopeless thing, the hereditary pauper and begetter of paupers. It may be doubted whether she has a dozen citizens with more than L10,000 a year apiece. On the other hand, the average of wealth and income is among the highest in the world.
Education is universal. The lectures of the professors of the State University–which is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges in five different towns–are well attended by students of both sexes. The examiners are English; the degrees may be taken by either sex indifferently. Not two per cent. of the Colony’s children go to the secondary schools, though they are good and cheap. It is her primary education that is the strength and pride of New Zealand. It is that which makes the list of crimes light. Criminals and paupers are less often produced than let in from the outside. The regulations relating to the exclusion of the physically or mentally tainted are far too lax, and will bring their own punishment. The colonists, honestly anxious that their country shall in days to come show a fine and happy race, are strangely blind to the laws of heredity. They carelessly admit those whose children to the third and fourth generation must be a degrading influence. On the other hand, the Colony gains greatly by the regular and deliberate importation of English experts. Every year a small but important number of these are engaged and brought out. They vary from bishops and professors to skilled artizans and drill-instructors; but whatever they are, their quality is good, and they usually make New Zealand the home of their families.
With wealth diffused, and caste barriers unknown, a New Zealander, when meeting a stranger, does not feel called upon to act as though in dread of finding in the latter a sponge, toady, or swindler. Nor has the colonist to consider how the making of chance acquaintances may affect his own social standing. In his own small world his social standing is a settled thing, and cannot be injured otherwise than by his own folly or misconduct. Moreover, most of the Islanders are, or have been, brought face to face with the solitude of nature, and many of all classes have travelled. These things make them more sociable, self-confident, and unsuspicious than the middle classes of older countries. Such hospitality as they can show is to them a duty, a custom, and a pleasure.
The Islanders are almost as fond of horses and athletics as their Australian cousins. They are not nearly such good cricketers, but play football better, are often good yachtsmen, and hold their own in rowing, running, jumping, and throwing weights. Fox-hunting is a forbidden luxury, as the fox may not be imported. But they have some packs of harriers, and ride to them in a way which would not be despised in the grass counties at Home. There are fair polo teams too. They are just as fond of angling and shooting as the race elsewhere. Capital trout-fishing, some good deer-shooting, and a fine supply of rabbits, hares, and wild ducks help to console the sportsman for the scarcity of dangerous game. As might be expected in an educated people passionately fond of out-door exercises, well fed and clothed, and with sun and sea air for tonics, drink is not their national vice. Gambling, especially over horse races, has more claim to that bad eminence. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the land rings with denunciations of drink, while comparatively little has until quite lately been said against gambling.
Of colonial art there is not much to be said. Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings. Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, reading, and flower gardening are the three chief refining pastimes. The number and size of the musical societies is worthy of note. So are the booksellers’ shops and free libraries. The books are the same as you see in London shops. There is no colonial literature. As for flowers, New Zealanders promise to be as fond of them as the Japanese. There is a newspaper of some description in the Islands to about every 1,500 adults. Every locality may thus count upon every item of its local news appearing in print. The Colonists who support this system may be assumed to get what they want, though, of course, under it quality is to some extent sacrificed to number. As a class the newspapers are honest, decent, and energetic as purveyors of news. Every now and then public opinion declares itself on one side, though the better known newspapers are on the other. But on the average their influence is not slight. There is no one leading journal. Of the four or five larger morning newspapers, the _Otago Daily Times_ shows perhaps the most practical knowledge of politics and grasp of public business. It is partisan, but not ferociously so, except in dealing with some pet aversion, like the present Minister of Lands. You may read in it, too, now and then, what is a rarity indeed in colonial journalism–a paragraph written in a spirit of pure, good-natured fun.
The working classes are better, the others more carelessly, dressed than in England. The workpeople are at the same time more nomadic and thriftier. Amongst the middle classes, industrious as they are, unusual thrift is rare. Their hospitality and kindliness do not prevent them from being hard bargainers in business.
Compared with the races from which they have sprung, the Islanders seem at once less conventional, less on their guard, and more neighbourly and sympathetic in minor matters. In politics they are fonder of change and experiment, more venturesome, more empirical, law-abiding, but readier to make and alter laws. Hypercritical and eaten up by local and personal jealousies in public life, they are less loyal to parties and leaders, and less capable of permanent organization for a variety of objects. They can band themselves together to work for one reform, but for the higher and more complex organization which seeks to obtain a general advance along the line of progress by honourable co-operation and wise compromise, they show no great aptitude. In politics their pride is that they are practical, and, indeed, they are perhaps less ready than Europeans to deify theories and catchwords. They are just as suspicious of wit and humour in public men, and just as prone to mistake dulness for solidity. To their credit may be set down a useful impatience of grime, gloom, injustice, and public discomfort and bungling.
In social life they are more sober and more moral, yet more indifferent to the opinion of any society or set. Not that they run after mere eccentrics; they have a wholesome reserve of contempt for such. British in their dislike to take advice, their humbler position among the nations makes them more ready to study and learn from foreign example. Though there is no division into two races as in London, it would be absurd to pretend that social distinctions are unknown. Each town with its rural district has its own “society.” The best that can be said for this institution is that it is not, as a rule, dictated to by mere money. It is made up of people with incomes mostly ranging from L500 to L2,000, with a sprinkling of bachelors of even more modest means. Ladies and gentlemen too poor to entertain others will nevertheless be asked everywhere if they have either brightness or intellect, or have won creditable positions. You see little social arrogance, no attempt at display. Picnics, garden parties, and outings in boats and yachts are amongst the pleasanter functions. A yacht in New Zealand means a cutter able to sail well, but quite without any luxury in her fittings. The indoor gatherings are smaller, more kindly, less formal, less glittering copies of similar affairs in the mother country.
Brilliant talkers there are none. But any London visitor who might imagine that he was about to find himself in a company of clownish provincials would be much mistaken. A very large proportion of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often pleasant and interesting talkers, refreshingly free from mannerism or self-consciousness.
They both gain and lose by being without a leisured class; it narrows their horizon, but saves them from a vast deal of hysterical nonsense, social mischief and blatant self-advertising. Though great readers of English newspapers and magazines, and much influenced thereby in their social, ethical, and literary views, their interest in English and European politics is not very keen. A cherished article of their faith is that Russia is England’s irreconcileable foe, and that war between the two is certain. Both their geographical isolation and their constitution debar them from having any foreign policy. In this they contentedly acquiesce. Loyal to the mother country, resolved not to be absorbed in Australia, they are torpid concerning Imperial Federation. Their own local and general politics absorb any interest and leisure not claimed by business and pastimes. Their isolation is, no doubt, partly the cause of this. It takes their steamers from four to six days to reach Australia, and nearly as long to travel from one end of their own land to the other. Most of them can hardly hope to see Europe, or even Asia or America, or any civilized race but their own. This is perhaps the greatest of their disadvantages. Speedier passage across the oceans which divide them from the rest of the human race must always be in the forefront of their aims as a nation.
Industrious, moral, strong, it is far too soon to complain of this race because it has not in half a century produced a genius from amongst its scanty numbers. Its mission has not been to do that, but to lay the foundations of a true civilization in two wild and lonely, though beautiful, islands. This has been a work calling for solid rather than brilliant qualities–for a people morally and physically sound and wholesome, and gifted with “grit” and concentration. There is such a thing as collective ability. The men who will carve statues, paint pictures, and write books will come, no doubt, in good time. The business of the pioneer generations has been to turn a bloodstained or silent wilderness into a busy and interesting, a happy, if not yet a splendid, state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about New Zealand are numerous enough. A critic need not be fastidious to regret that most of them are not better written, useful and interesting as they are in the mass. Every sort of information about the country is to be got from them, but not always with pleasure or ease. To get it you must do a good deal of the curst hard reading which comes from easy writing. And even then, for the most part, it is left to your own imaginative power to see–
“The beauty, and the wonder, and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades, Changes, surprises.”
The undoubted and agreeable exceptions, too, require in you some knowledge of the Islands, if they are to be enjoyed. How is that knowledge to be obtained? A hard-headed student with a hearty appetite for facts might, of course, start with F.J. Moss’s careful and accurate school history and the latest Government Year Book in his hand, and would soon be well on his way. Those who like easier paths to knowledge may try Edward Wakefield’s “New Zealand After Fifty Years,” or Gisborne’s “Colony of New Zealand.” When one comes to periods, districts, or special subjects, the choice is much wider.
To begin at the beginning; “Tasman’s Log” is little but dry bones; of Cook and Crozet I have written elsewhere. Of the writers who tell of Alsatian days, none is worth naming in the same breath with Maning. Personally I like Polack and Savage the best of them, despite the lumbering pretentiousness and doubtful veracity of the former. Earle and Major Cruise are more truthful than readable–conditions which are exactly reversed in the case of Rutherford. If, as is said, Lord Brougham helped to write Rutherford’s narrative, he did his work very well; but after the exposure of its “facts” by Archdeacon W.L. Williams, it can only be read as the yarn of a runaway sailor, who had reasons for not telling the whole truth, and a capacity and knowledge of local colour which would have made him a capital romance-writer, had he been an educated man. As a picture of the times, Rutherford’s story in the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge” will always, however, be worth reading.
The missionaries have not been as fortunate in their chroniclers as they deserve. The tumid cant of Nicholas is grotesque enough to be more amusing than the tract-and-water style of Yate and Barret Marshall, or the childishness of Richard Taylor. Much better in every way are Buller’s (Wesleyan) “Forty Years In New Zealand,” and Tucker’s “Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn.”
Among the descriptions of the country as it was when the colonists found it, Edward Shortland’s account of the whalers and Maoris of the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield’s of the founding of the New Zealand Company’s settlements, Dieffenbach’s travels, and Bidwill’s unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest to read.
On the Maoris, their myths, legends, origin, manners, and customs, William Colenso is admittedly the chief living authority. For his views it is necessary to go to pamphlets, and to search the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, where much other good material will also reward the seeker. To John White’s ill-jointed but invaluable compilation “The Ancient History of the Maori,” every student henceforth will have to turn. The selections therein from the papers of Stack on the South Island Maoris, from Travers’ “Life of Te Rauparaha,” and Wilson’s “Story of Te Waharoa,” are less stony than the more genealogical portions. Sir George Grey’s collection of the historical and legendary traditions of the race has not been superseded. Messrs. Percy Smith and Edward Tregear edit the valuable journal of the Polynesian Association; the former has made a special study of the origin and wanderings of the Maori race, the latter has produced the Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary. General Robley has written the book on Maori tattooing; Mr. Hamilton is bringing out in parts what promises to be a very complete and worthily illustrated account of Maori art.
As narratives of the first twenty years of the Colony two books stand out from among many: Thomson’s “Story of New Zealand,” and Attorney–General Swainson’s “New Zealand and its Colonization.” It would not be easy to find a completer contrast than the gossipy style of the chatty army medico and the dry, official manner of the precise lawyer, formerly and for upwards of fifteen years Her Majesty’s Attorney-General for New Zealand, as he is at pains to tell you on his title-page. But Swainson’s is the fairest and most careful account of the time from the official, philo-Maori and anti-Company side, and may be taken as a safe antidote to Jerningham Wakefield, Sir W.T. Power, Hursthouse, and others. A comparison with Rusden, when the two are on the same ground, shows Swainson to be the better writer all round. Of Rusden’s “History of New Zealand” no one doubts the honest intent. The author, believing the Maori to be a noble, valiant, and persecuted race, befriended by the missionaries and those who took missionary advice, and robbed and cheated by almost all others, says so in three long, vehement, sincere, but not fascinating volumes, largely composed of extracts from public papers and speeches. Sweeping condemnation of the Public Works policy, of Radical reforms, and recent Socialistic experiments, complete his tale. The volumes have their use, but are not a history of New Zealand.
Of early days in the pastoral provinces we get contemporary sketches by Samuel Butler, L.J. Kennaway, Lady Barker, and Archdeacon Paul. Butler’s is the best done picture of the country, Kennaway’s the exactest of the settlers’ every-day rough-and-tumble haps and mishaps, and Lady Barker’s the brightest. One of the volumes of General Mundy’s “Our Antipodes” gives a nice, light sketch of things as they were in the North Island in the first years of Governor Grey. Dr. Hocken’s recent book has at once become the recognised authority on the first years of Otago, and also has interesting chapters on the South Island before settlement. Fitzgerald’s selections from Godley’s writings and speeches is made more valuable by the excellent biographical sketch with which it opens. Dr. Richard Garnett’s admirable “Life of Gibbon Wakefield” is the event of this year’s literature from the point of view of New Zealanders.
Of the books on the Eleven Years’ War from 1860 to 1871, Sir William Fox’s easily carries away the palm for vigour of purpose and performance. Sir William was in hot indignation when he wrote it, and some of his warmth glows in its pages. It is a pity that he only dealt with the years 1863-65. Generals Carey and Alexander supply the narrative of the doings of the regulars; Lieutenant Gudgeon that of the militia’s achievements. General Carey handles the pen well enough; not so his gallant brother-soldier. Of Gudgeon’s two books I much prefer the Reminiscences, which on the whole tell more about the war than any other volume one can name. Sir John Gorst describes the King Movement and his own experiences in the King’s country. Swainson takes up his parable against the Waitara purchase.
Gisborne’s “Rulers and Statesmen of New Zealand,” though not a connected history, is written with such undoubted fairness and personal knowledge, and in so workmanlike, albeit good–natured, a way, as to have a permanent interest. Most of the many portraits which are reproduced in its pages are correct likenesses, but it is the pen pictures which give the book its value.
Of volumes by travellers who devote more or less space to New Zealand, the most noteworthy are Dilke’s brilliant “Greater Britain,” the volumes of Anthony Trollope, and Michael Davitt, and Froude’s thoughtful, interesting, but curiously inaccurate “Oceana.” Mennell’s serviceable “Dictionary of Australasian Biography” gives useful details concerning the pioneer colonists.
Scientific students may be referred to the Works of Hooker and Dieffenbach, to Von Haast’s “Geology of Canterbury and Westland,” Kirk’s “New Zealand Forest Flora,” Sir Walter Buller’s “Birds of New Zealand,” Hudson’s “New Zealand Entomology,” and to the papers of Hector, Hutton and Thompson.
Dr. Murray Moore has written, and written well, for those who may wish to use the country as a health resort.
Mountaineers and lovers of scenery should read Green’s “High Alps of New Zealand,” and T. Mackenzie’s papers on West Coast Exploration. Mannering Fitzgerald and Harper are writers on the same topic. Murray’s guide book will, of course, be the tourist’s main stay. Delisle Hay’s Brighter Britain deals in lively fashion with a settler’s life in the bush north of Auckland and in the Thames goldfields. Reid and Preshaw have written of the Westland gold-seekers; Pyke of the Otago diggings. Domett’s “Ranolf and Amohia” is not only the solitary New Zealand poem which has achieved any sort of distinction, but is also an interesting picture of Maori life and character.
The Official Year-Book is a mass of well-arranged information, and the economic enquirer may be further referred to Cumin’s “Index of the Laws of New Zealand,” and to the numerous separate annual reports of the Government offices and departments. Historical students must, of course, dive pretty deeply into the parliamentary debates and appendices to the journals of the House of Representatives, into the bulky reports and correspondence relating to New Zealand published in London by the Imperial authorities, and into the files of the larger newspapers The weekly newspapers of the Colony are especially well worth consulting. For the rest, Collier’s New Zealand Bibliography (Wellington), and the library catalogues of the N.Z. Parliament and of the Royal Colonial Institute, London, are the best lists of the books and pamphlets on New Zealand.
[Illustration: Map showing