Serfdom to Salvation.

The present development of phormium fibre as a textile means good cheer for many homes whose bread-winners have been on “relief.” The new industry has opened a way to salvation from stagnation. More than a century ago the making of soft fibre from big sword-bladed leaves practically inflicted sentences of slavery on many Maoris. They were forced by their chiefs to toil long arduous hours in the production of fibre which was bartered for cannon muskets and gun-powder. In that delightful book, “Old New Zealand,” Judge Maning commented on the “hardship, overwork, exposure and semi-starvation” suffered by the flax-gangs. “When we reflect,” he wrote, “that a ton of cleaned flax was the price paid for two muskets, and at an earlier date for one musket, one can see at once the dreadful exertion necessary to obtain it. But supposing a man to get a musket for half a ton of flax, another half a ton would be required for ammunition; and, in consequence, as every man in a native hapu of, say, a hundred men was absolutely forced on pain of death to procure a musket at any cost, and at the earliest possible moment (for, if they did not procure them, extermination was their doom by the hands of those of their countrymen who had), the effect was that this small hapu or clan had to manufacture, spurred by the penalty of death, in the shortest possible time, one hundred tons of flax scraped by hand with a shell, bit by bit, morsel by morsel, half-quarter of an ounce at a time.”

The finely-wrought soft fibre was sold overseas at from £70 to £100 a ton (which would represent about £200 to £300 in New Zealand currency of to-day).