Chapter V. Possibilities of the Future of New Zealand Under New Conditions.

Having considered the past social history of New Zealand, the probable events of its future, and the capacity for usefulness, especially in this colony, of the joint stock and co-operative principles, I propose now to forecast the possible lines upon which an altered social and economic system will carry us, and the results—social and moral—which may be attained. Here again, no doubt, arises the possibility of dreams and of hopes to remain unfulfilled. Yet beholding the wonderful success which has attended co-operation when only partially applied; seeing, as the unprejudiced mind must see, the vast capabilities of that principle on an extended scale; remembering that no previous age has possessed one tittle of our knowledge or power, of applied art and mechanical contrivance; taking into consideration the advantages we possess in great areas of unoccupied fertile land, of climate, and of easy access to the sea, the great highway of the nations; adding to all these the intelligence and enterprise of our community, the marvellous ease, certainty, swiftness, and economy of communication with other countries which we now enjoy, and which open to us the practically illimitable markets of the world; and last, but not least, recognising the fact that should the plans here proposed be approved by public opinion in England, we should be enabled to obtain not only a market for our goods, but colonists and money, almost without limit; it is not improbable that, under such circumstances, an alteration in our social economy which would make producers, capitalists, and consumers partners in the surplus wealth which they created might produce in this colony a state of prosperity hitherto unexampled.

The immediate result of the adoption of this system would be the cheapening of all those commodities which are necessary and convenient for human life and enjoyment.

Consider for a moment the price of food in New Zealand—taking articles such as meat, broad, cheese, milk, and vegetables. page 29 The price of meat sold retail to the consumer is nearly three times the amount that the producer receives. Milk is sold throughout the country districts to the cheese factories at 4d. per gallon, sometimes less; it is retailed in the town at 4d. or 5d. a quart. The retail price of bread and vegetables, of butter and cheese, is far higher than the same things could be supplied for on the co-operative principle, although a profit remained on their sale.

So in the case of commodities imported from other countries, and sold in the stores which would be established under this system. A substantial saving could be effected, and yet a considerable margin left for profit. The cost of living would be reduced, and wages and salaries, in the ease of every individual who chose to take advantage of this system, be made more available for the comforts of life.

That this would be a great boon to the community few would care to deny, for if 20 or 25 per cent, can be taken off the cost of subsistence, it means that wages and salaries would be increased by at least that amount.

Under such conditions employment would be plentiful and constant. Fresh markets being opened in other countries for our produce, and production being constantly directed towards the supply of wants constantly arising as long, at any rate, as any land of ordinary fertility could be occupied, or manufactures or commerce carried on, labour would be always required. Products which we in New Zealand are able to raise, for the raising of which we possess almost unrivalled advantages, must ever find a ready sale in the older countries, especially when those products consist of the necessaries of life. Perhaps no country in the world is better adapted than New Zealand for dairy purposes. For dairy produce, in many parts of the world, there exists a demand practically without limit.

Science now affords us means of transmission, such as ten years ago was impossible and unthought of. Fruit of all sorts can be cultivated amongst, us in abundant quantities and at comparatively little cost. This will, upon an organised system and upon a large scale, give employment, both in the garden and in the factory, to a vast amount of labour and produce returns of gold. The soil and climate of this colony will produce root-crops in immense quantities. These, indeed, we could not export, but we could turn them into cheese and butter, bacon and ham, and beef and mutton. Thus labour would be employed and capital invested.

Under this system also, while producing crops and materials for local use and sale, and for exportation; while employing labour upon reproductive work, great areas of waste lands, obtained at a email price or on easy terms of partnership as to profits, would be, by labour and by the investment of capital, made more and more valuable from year to year. Lands obtained thus, at a few shillings per acre, would not only be made to produce the various articles of page 30 commerce, but would become a large and integral part of the wealth of the association.

Population would necessarily increase, towns and villages would arise upon the lands of the society, and its wealth, under management of ordinary care and ability, would increase beyond calculation.

As occasion arose manufactures, especially for local wants, would be established, in which the material arising from the lands of the association, or from its flocks and herds, would be converted to the purposes of ordinary social life. Nor can it be doubted that, under proper representations and with evidence of the beneficial effects arising from this plan, but that we should obtain the assistance and co-operation of the greatest and the wisest, and the best minds and hearts in the United Kingdom. In the working of a plan likely to produce such happy results all might join.

Unless the accounts which we receive from Great Britain are untrue, there exists at Home, amongst politicians of all sides and shades of politics, amongst business men, and that great philanthropic part of the English people, which has, as a sort of corporate name, the title of "Exeter Hall," among the different churches, and writers of all classes of opinion, an earnest and intense desire to to develope some plan by which, in the present and the future the millions of working people now living in a condition of want and anxiety, dreadful to contemplate, may be not merely relieved, but by the exercise of their own honest toil, made independent and self-supporting.

What a boundless prospect does this open to New Zealand. Workers by thousands, accompanied by money, amply sufficient to place them upon the waste lands and enable them there to earn an abundant living. Workers not coming hero to enter into competition in the labour market, but to become producers of national wealth, to provide cheap food, and to open a thousand avenues to industry. Nor must we forget that there are in England extensive organisations, trades unions, friendly societies, co-operative associations, all whoso sympathies and assistance we should probably obtain, and with whom without doubt we should open valuable business relations. For behind and beneath all other advantages there would remain the foundation fact that each labourer would receive not only his wages, but his proportionate share of the profits of the association's commerce, and of the increasing value of the lands and other properties of the association; that each purchaser would receive his goods, and in addition a proportionate share of the profits and the increased value; while the capitalist would receive the interest on his money and his share of the profits and increased value.

Under such conditions want and poverty would become almost unknown; men would grow in self-respect and independence; the struggles between labour and capital would cease, for such a vast page 31 power would speedily grow up under tills system as would, in the interest of the community and of labour and capital combined, repress all antagonism between these two potent factors of a nation's prosperity.

Under this system the dreams of Utopian philosophers would be practically realised, for it is unquestionable that when once the struggle with want and poverty ceases; when there exists among all classes, from the highest to the lowest, a consciousness that equal rights, socially as well as politically, are enjoyed by all; when the industrial classes know that they are creating wealth for themselves and not for strangers and oppressors, and that they, by virtue of their labour, have an interest and a property in that earth which God has given to the children of men; when they know that they and millions of their fellow workers have a right to sit under their own vine and their own fig-tree, none daring to make them afraid—then there will arise within them a moral life that never before had any shadow of existence.

It may perhaps be objected that thus to produce a partnership between producer and consumer would detrimentally affect a large portion of the community, such as storekeepers, agents, and others, who now form that class which is usually designated "middle men." To that objection many answers may be given. The first answer which naturally suggests itself is, that if the middle men as a class are not necessary to the carrying on of the affairs of the community, then, as a costly and unnecessary burden, they must be dispensed with. Is it necessary, is it advisable, is it just that the artisan and underpaid clerk or struggling widow should pay 5d. per lb. for meat, while the producer received less than 2d.? Is it necessary, or wise, or just that the producer should be ruined by low prices, that middle men may grow wealthy by selling articles to the consumer at such a price as leaves to him, the middle man between the two, the real value of the thing itself?

I am a lawyer, and I have been accustomed for a quarter of a century to hear the stale old joke about the lawyers eating the oysters and giving the shells to their clients. But after years of observation, after years of reading and of thought, I declare it to be my conviction that all the monies taken by the whole body of lawyers in New Zealand from their clients in any one year, beyond fees, fairly earned as compensation for work done, would not mount up to one-half the sum which half a dozen big mercantile houses take from the public in the same period of time.

Whose mansions are the largest? Whose equipages the best appointed? Whose bank accounts the biggest? Whose wealth the most swiftly increasing? Why I venture to say that any dozen of the largo mercantile houses in any of the principal cities in the colony, would, as far as money is concerned, out-weigh all the lawyers in New Zealand.

If, therefore, it be not necessary for the producers and consumers, page 32 the toilers and wealth creators of the community that the middle man should still exist, why should such a burden be continued upon the shoulders of the people?

But there is another answer. Under the system which I propose there would be work for all, and work not only of one description, but of all descriptions. So great would be the impetus given to production and commerce, so manifold would be the duties claiming performance in a community rapidly increasing in numbers and prosperity, that for each person whose business would be so injured as to compel him to desist, employment would be afforded to hundreds.

In many cases it would be beneficial to the small traders and persons who dabble in commissions to give up a life of uncertainty and of ceaseless worry and anxieties for employment at a certain income and an equal certainty of receiving a portion of the wealth continually growing around him.

One of the most beneficial results from this system would arise from the total change which would be effected in the relations between human labour and the labour of machines. Hitherto all improvement in machinery, especially labour-saving machinery, whether in the field or the factory, whether on sea or land, has had one invariable effect—while it increased production it oppressed the labouring class. Under this system that would be totally altered. As the labourer would share in the sum total of the wealth produced, it would be to his advantage, as well as to the advantage of the capitalist, that the most complete machinery that the human mind could invent or human wealth could purchase, should he procured and used.

All experience teaches us that combined labour is, beyond comparison, more valuable than that of individuals. Tasks impossible to the unaided efforts of the solitary settler, become easy and trivial to the united strength and skill of numbers. Nor is it from this alone that organised toil is superior. When men work, each in his own little groove, they waste time, and effort, and money in every way. Fifty men working together can accomplish five times as much as the same number working separately. The many advantages of organised labour are so well known in these days that perhaps it is unnecessary to dwell upon the point. It may be sufficient to indicate the fact that under the system here proposed, a greater and more complete system of industry in all its branches could be attained that has as yet been seen. One of the greatest hindrances to emigration from the United Kingdom, or the Continent of Europe, is found in the fear which fills men's minds at the prospect of leaving their present homos and friends to go out to they know not what. The unknown almost always inspires anxiety, and very often fear. To land upon a foreign shore—a stranger in a strange land—has in it something depressing, and indeed terrible, to the mind. The fear and uncertainty which surrounds the future page 33 in the new land deters tens of thousands from leaving the old. And these feelings must be of course intensified when a man has others, perhaps helpless children, dependent upon him.

Then there are great numbers who would cast their lot amongst their fellow countrymen in the colonies, but they are unable from want of means. It will be obvious that under the co-operative scheme proposed, these and many other difficulties of like nature would be removed. It is difficult to place a limit to the benefits this colony and its people will receive when the system here advocated shall have risen into complete action. Labour and capital, flowing like a great river, will come to us, bringing with them a prosperity beyond calculation. Lands now waste and desolate, and lands now unprofitably held, will, under systematic cultivation, with ample labour and ample means, become a garden. Manufactures of all sorts will be established. Commerce with Europe, with the Islands, with the great and populous Eastern nations, would fill our harbours with shipping and our marts with trade. Wealth would accumulate, while men would not decay, but live to enjoy the prosperity which they were helping to create. Monopolies would be silently superseded. The dreadful competition and struggle for life which now saps our commercial morality and sets class against class, capital against labour, and each man against his neighbour, would be modified to a healthy emulation in which all would join. Prosperity would be built upon a sound and healthy foundation. Inducements to dishonesty would in a great measure cease. Capital would no longer desire to wring the last hours of toil from labour, nor labour strive to extort the extreme possibility of reward from capital. A sense of justice would pervade the whole community; want would become rare, poverty diminish, and crime decrease.

These may be called Utopian dreams. We shall see.

Having traced the theory of my proposals, I do not intend them to rest in abstract existence So satisfied am I that they contain the germ of a new and better social condition for mankind, that having obtained the assent and assistance of many of my fellow citizens and neighbours, I have reduced the matter to a concrete form. "The New Zealand Co-operative Land and Labour Company," based entirely upon the principles laid down in the preceding pages, has been registered under the Joint Stock Companies Act, and is about to start into the business of life without further delay. The registered capital is £20,000, but it is provided in its articles of association that the capital shall be increased from to time time without limit. All who desire can at any time purchase shares from the Company; all who purchase its productions, and all who labour for it for payment, will, by virtue of such purchasing and such labour, be entitled to share in its profits and the increased value of its property. As the first members will be laying foundations of wealth, that others as time goes on may come in and share, they will be entitled to preferential page 34 dividends over later shareholders; while the labourer and consumer receive wages and goods respectively, and then their shares of profit and value, the investor of capital will receive interest upon his shares and a share also in profit and value—each participating in proportion to the amount in value contributed by him. Yearly cash profits will be distributable as in ordinary joint stock companies, while the increasing value of the company's properties of all kinds, will every third year be valued and distributed in shares—such shares to be inalienable for a period of ten years. Local directors will be appointed in all large centres of population.

In this effort for the good of men I call upon all to assist. To the ministers of the Gospel of Christ I appeal in the name of their Master, and of His suffering creatures. To the churches, now to so great an extent idle and unfruitful, I commend a practical plan for the alleviation of misery, the elevation of the multitudes in social and moral happiness and in temporal prosperity, and the performance of that duty which Christ laid down as the second great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." To the philanthropist, the statesman, and the patriot I appeal in the name of humanity and of patriotism. To all in the names of justice and of mercy.

The International Society, founded and formulated by Karl Marx—before which the monarchs of Europe trembled—shattered by the Paris Commune and rent asunder at the Hague, was the first attempt to join all men together by one common bond of self-interest for the purpose of asserting the rights of men as against the domination of capital and oppression. That failed because it admitted violence and destruction. The redemption of men from the present oppressive social conditions, must be founded upon the diametrically opposite principles—peaceful and increased production of wealth and the means of subsistence, and a just distribution of that wealth among all who help to create it.