1927 - Saunders, A. Tales of a Pioneer - IX. HARD TIMES IN NELSON IN 1844, p 51-59

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CHAPTER IX

HARD TIMES IN NELSON IN 1844

Hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance. --J. NEAL.

[This Chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on April 11th, 1898.]

WHEN, early in 1842, the New Zealand Company's immigrants demanded the fulfilment of the Company's promise to employ them, if required to do so, at twenty-four shillings a week, the Company's agent denied the responsibility. Whereupon the immigrants produced the printed circulars containing the promise, and marched through the town with clubs in their hands to show that they had the power to enforce their claims. In this way they not only compelled the recognition of their claim, but, like a badly-handled colt, they also learned the superiority of their own power, and compelled the New Zealand Company to employ stratagem where mere force must so evidently fail. The stratagem adopted was expensive and disastrous, both to the Company and to the immigrants.

The money the Company's agent was thus compelled to pay was handed to the men with a bad grace, bad judgment, and a bad result. To pay wages without any consideration of value received was as ruinous to the employer as it was demoralising to the employed. To pay a puny cripple for pick and shovel work the same wages as were paid to a strong, hard-fisted navvy, was to ensure that the ablest man in the gang would soon take care that he did no more than the weakest cripple, and the aggregate result soon proved that nothing useful could be expected from the whole force. In vain the Chief Surveyor advised the Company's agent to put all the men upon piece-work. Captain Wakefield only said:

"What could I find for them to do? I have the greatest difficulty to think of anything for them now."

And this in a country where roads, bridges, rivers,

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and public buildings were all demanding the hand of labour, and the community verging on starvation for want of cultivating the virgin soil.

Very few wealthy men had come to Nelson, and still fewer farmers with capital; but, if there had been ever so many, they could not have employed labour; as it was twelve months before the fifty-acre suburban sections were open for selection, and some five years before the hundred-and-fifty acre rural sections, paid for in 1841, could be found, and then only in what was soon to be altogether another province. But the Company's agent could, at any time, have occupied a large reserve, and have put the men he was obliged to pay, to work at growing the food that must necessarily be wanted by all classes. As soon as the fifty-acre sections had been selected, which was at the beginning of the year 1843, Captain Wakefield made another effort to force the men away from the employment of the Company. He at once gave a week's notice that, after the close of the following week, the wages would be reduced to eighteen shillings for married men, and sixteen shillings for single men.

When the Monday morning came upon which the reduction was to commence, which was the 18th of January, 1843, the streets of Nelson were paraded by the greater part of the men who were in the employment of the Company, or rather, in receipt of the Company's wages. Many of the best men had not joined the procession, and the conduct of the paraders was more aggressive and alarming than it had been on a former occasion, and many of them carried loaded guns. After parading the town, they assembled round a large stump, and listened to orators who advised them to go and break open the Company's store and help themselves, and to give notice to all the other holders of stores that they would do the same by them if their wages were not continued without abatement, according to the Company's printed promise. On the second day, this was agreed to; but, before the men started for the Company's store, one of their fellow-workers, previously unheard, mounted the stump, and said, in a calm, clear voice:

"You know well that, as one who had never handled a pick and shovel in my native country, I should never have come from Birmingham had I known that I must attempt such rough work here. You know that I have

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been as much deceived as any of you, and that I have helped you to prove the deception practised upon us; but is that any reason why we should injure, or allow the holders of property to be injured--many of whom have been even more deceived than ourselves? And, as to the Company, you are proposing to do just what they would like to see you do. Have they not, all along, wanted some excuse for not keeping their engagement with us, and what excuse could they have better than that which you now propose to give them? If you make it unsafe to bring property to Nelson, how are you going to live? The wild pigs are all killed or driven away. The quails are all caught by the dogs. No one has, so far, had any land that they could cultivate. We might catch an eel now and then, but we should soon eat all the wild cabbage, and what are our children to do? No one doubts your power to shut my mouth, or to take all the moveable property in Nelson; but what we want to do is to prove that we are as honest as we are strong, and that it will never be unsafe to import food for our use."

This speaker was John Perry Robinson, who, eleven years afterwards, was elected Superintendent of Nelson, and continued to hold that office, with constantly increasing satisfaction to all classes, for ten years, when he was drowned at the Buller.

"By George! he's right. I'll not go to the Port." said a powerful voice from a powerful frame. A dispute followed, a division took place, and only a small, desperate party went to the Port, which was about a mile distant. There Captain Wakefield met them as cheerfully as if they had come to make him a presentation. They told him they had come to break open the store, and he replied:

"Oh, you need not do that. Here is the key; you can take what you like. I have only been keeping the stores for you. It will save me a lot of trouble if you will take them and get more for yourselves. Of course you won't expect me to get any more?"

This was a good practical illustration of what their friend and comrade, J. P. Robinson, had just told them. They took a little time to consider, but soon gave back the key, and all hands returned next day to their work.

But their action was not without its consequences to themselves. Their resolution, although never acted on.

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had set its mark on their proceedings, and it was soon as well known in Australia as it was in Nelson. The usual vessels did not call at Nelson. The Company's stocks were lowered. No one wanted to hold or to leave stocks in Nelson, and many of the common comforts of life were soon scarce. Too conscious of their own strength and of the ridiculous incapacity of all the guardians of the peace in Nelson, some of these restless spirits seized on a well-dressed man named Valle, who had been appointed an overseer of their work, and ducked him in a deep ditch of clean water which they had dammed up for their own ablutions. Poor Mr Valle was not a hero. Although supposed to be a music master, his cries were far more piteous than melodious, and he evidently thought that he had very narrowly escaped with his life. He made the best of his way to the eccentric Police Magistrate, Mr Thompson, ten miles distant, and described the case as one of attempted murder. The Police Magistrate would have been most happy to assist Mr Valle; but he did not want a cold bath himself, and thought that it would lessen the dignity of his constables if they were sent back in the same drowned-rat condition that Mr Valle now presented. He thought it would be desirable to wait until one of H. M. ships came to New Zealand, and then perhaps the whole gang might be arrested. From causes, and with objects, not then foreseen, a British man-of-war did arrive in Nelson Harbour, much sooner than Mr Thompson could have expected; but, when it came, Mr Thompson and his constables were lying under the sods on the high banks of the Tua Marina; and a wiser head than Mr Valle's was in command of the "North Star" with her twenty-eight guns. The men Mr Valle would have so much liked to see captured had already been arrested in their follies by the potent hand of well-directed industry, and by their gratitude to, and respect for, a wiser controller of their energies. They were, however, soon to be punished for their past folly, without the aid of any man-of-war, by the stern, inevitable reprisals of those social, political, and economic laws which they had so unpardonably violated.

Very soon after Mr Valle's immersion came the Tua Marina tragedy, in which Captain Wakefield and several other leading men, the Police Magistrate, and all the constables of Nelson were killed. This threw the control of the men for a few weeks into the hands of

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Mr Tuckett, and then into the hands of Mr (afterwards Sir William) Fox who was now appointed the New Zealand Company's agent. Mr Tuckett at once put the men on piecework; but, after consulting with Mr Tuckett, Mr Fox, who probably knew more about the Company's financial condition and intentions than any one else, arranged a system of piecework under which the men could spend most of their time on land working for themselves, and yet do more for the Company than had ever been done under the day-dawdling system. The men were allowed to do what was called, or what was paid for as, a month's work as soon as they could, and were then permitted to work for themselves for the remainder of the month. The ablest men accomplished their month's work in four days, and many a ton of potatoes so soon to be so much needed, was procured by this indulgence, and many a good settler provided for for life on a well-kept farm. The men were allowed to make their own bargains, and to take land how and where they pleased; but, unless they did take land within a reasonable time, they were not to be employed. Under this system, indulgent as it was, these really good, although misguided, men soon showed that there was plenty of good working power in them, and Satan was no longer occupied in finding "mischief for idle hands to do." Mr Fox had the pleasure if seeing an entirely new spirit come over the majority of these rioters, and they ever afterwards treated him as their trusted friend and adviser.

On the lst of January, 1844, the first wheat harvest in Nelson was commenced on a small experimental farm which Captain Wakefield had employed a Mr Kerr, one of the Scotch labourers from the first immigrant ship, the "Fifeshire," to conduct on good fern land adjoining the small forest in the Waimea West district. If the same experiment had been made on flax land, a good crop might have been expected; but even the best fern land would grow very little upon the first furrow, or until the land had been thoroughly pulverised, so that the crop obtained was very little, if any, more than Mr Kerr's own large family could eat. A similar result was achieved on an adjoining farm worked by the Tytler brothers, who had not pickled their seed, so that their very small crop was also very smutty.

A fine Somerset farm labourer named Charles Best, although he obtained possession of his land much later,

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had been more successful. He had landed in Nelson from one of the early immigrant ships with three shillings and sixpence in his pocket, and, as he worked for the Company, he saved enough to buy two steers and a cow calf. With his Somerset experience, he soon went to work on a fifty-acre swamp section, which he rented with a purchasing clause, and thus grew wheat enough to secure his own bread and to cheer the heart of many a starving friend and neighbour in the days of trial.

Just as these very small crops had been secured, and just as a crop of 100,000 bushels of wheat would have been secured if Captain Wakefield had been as wise as Mr Best, the crash came. On Thursday, the men were told that the New Zealand Company was bankrupt, that the Union Bank would advance money enough to the bankrupt Company to pay the wages of the current week; but after that, all employment would cease...

What a change now came over the spirit of these once rebellious men! What a gulf seemed to open between those who had saved their earnings and spent their time and labour on land, and thus had their little crops to live upon, and those who had despised thrift, lived up to or beyond their weekly income, and expected the sun to shine forever.

Long afterwards, Mrs Best told me:

I need hardly say that Mrs Best, of Appleby, was soon the mistress of one of the best provided and most notoriously hospitable houses in the Province of Nelson, a house in which, long before you trod the soft carpets,

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or listened to the grand piano, you saw and appreciated the richly stored and brightly polished Somerset kitchen. And no man could exclaim with greater pathos and. greater sincerity than Mr Best:

Mrs Duncan, residing at Riwaka, who was one of my fellow-passengers in the "Fifeshire," says:

Her son wrote:

Mr Thomas Butler (afterwards a member of the Nelson Provincial Council) wrote:

Mr Butler was one of those compassionate individuals who, like Father Matthew, would give away his own bed, and who, at such a time, suffered far more from sympathy than from hunger. He would often go without his dinner to have the pleasure of giving it to a neighbour more hungry than himself. As a mechanic, he was a universal genius; so that,

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although brought up as a stonemason, he was a good carpenter, and even a good millwright. But what gave him most fame at this time was the taste and ingenuity with which he adorned the poor girls around him with fashionable and really very pretty and durable bonnets made from goats' or kids' skins, fringed with the skins of the goats' short tails.

I was, at this time, living about thirteen miles from the town of Nelson, near the south bank of the Wairoa river, on what was called the Teetotal Section. My nearest neighbour was Mr William Andrews, the grandfather of Mr George Andrews, who is now living at Ashburton. Mr William Andrews had very early distinguished himself as the largest proprietor of goats in the province, and could now be seen struggling at the end of a plough drawn by eighteen goats, who, however, never looked very happy at their task. He also had a windmill, in which he undertook to grind wheat; but, little wheat as there was to grind, the mill--like the goats, or like Lord John Russell, as described at that time by "Punch"--was "not strong enough for its work."

I usually drove once or twice a week across the river and over the half-made roads to the town of Nelson, in what was, at that time, the only two-horse cart in the province. I rarely made the journey without picking up some weary, foot-sore travellers, who could tell me a good deal about the privations of themselves and their neighbours, and the tale often ended with the production of my lunch bag, which was always emptied with much evident reluctance, so that I soon learned to provide more than one lunch bag for that journey.

Yet, taken as a whole, I very little regret passing through those days of privation either for myself or for my neighbours. There is so much to remember about them that is pleasant and instructive. No one who witnessed the scenes of those days could ever make the great mistake of supposing that valuable sympathy and self-denying generosity are either the privilege or the duty of the rich alone. The poor men and women who had grown only enough potatoes for themselves and their children seldom tried to forget that there were poorer, or weaker, or, it may be, less industrious neighbours who were not so well supplied as themselves. Not a crumb was wasted, not a rag was burned, not a

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ribbon was worn that would lessen their power to feed the hungry. Even the prodigals had enough to suffer for the present, and there was no need to reproach them for the past, as there was no temptation before them at the time being. Cases of concealed and patiently borne privation and distress--the starving mother resolved to feed her children though it should be at the cost of her own life, and the stricken father reproaching himself for the past--may be hidden even from the benevolent rich, but are sure to attract the first attention of the poor, who also know how delicately such cases must be handled if the anguish is really to be lessened and not aggravated.

But the extended existence of grinding privation had its softening and humanising effect, even upon those who were safely removed from any fear of the loss of their own daily comforts. Not a few good Samaritans were now discovered for the first time. In my road gossips I heard of many unparaded and unsuspected acts of efficient relief; nor do I remember a single instance in which the general poverty of the community was insulted or aggravated by any wanton display of wasted wealth. Neither men nor women were to be seen extravagantly dressed--any parade of wealth in such a community was instantly recognised as bad taste, and not a few well-to-do men took to wearing sack trousers and blue shirts, or the coarsest tweed cloth, with an evident wish to make their poorer neighbours feel that the coarsest dress implied no degradation. Dear old sunny Nelson never felt more dear or more homelike to me than when I was daily charmed with such indications--

It is difficult to say how far Sir George Grey's extremely economical and thoroughly successful seven years' government, which immediately followed upon these two years of struggling privation, were made so exceptionally happy and prosperous by the habits of thrift and the dread of ostentation which the two previous years' experience had burned so deeply into the memories of some of the members of his Executive Council. Nor could they be without their restraining influence upon the many other future public leaders of the Colony, who, during the hard times I have described, were residing in the Province of Nelson.