The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42
Plain Talks To Young Men. I.—Out of Work
Plain Talks To Young Men. I.—Out of Work.
Why stand ye here all the day idle?—
Matthew xx. 6.
That many are out of work is patent to all; few are aware how far this extends, and how deeply it is eating into the happiness of their neighbours; none can estimate fully the numbers of the unemployed. For myself, I had a very hazy notion of the matter. I was surprised on enquiry to find how widely the distress was spread, and how difficult it was to combine the facts into some defined summary. My description therefore must be taken only for what it is worth—a rough outline merely; but as such, it will be the first general account that I have seen in the city—perhaps the first that you hare heard. The requirements of our population may be roughly divided into five heads:—Food, clothes, houses, machinery, and luxuries. I think that general depression will affect the allied trades in the reverse order; luxuries will be touched first and food last For a long time books have been in small demand except for schools and professors. There are several jewellers quite unemployed, or only in part; the watchmakers are nearly all engaged; this is not from briskness of trade—they have cleared out. There is hardly a foundry whose hands are not reduced one-half—many two-thirds; and short time must be counted in measure. There are ninety compositors in the City. Of these only sixty are in regular work, twenty work quarter-time, and ten do nothing. According to the census, there are over 9000 in the building trade of New Zealand. From this I calculate there would be about 900 in Dunedin—600 of whom are builders, joiners, and carpenters; the remainder are brick-layers, masons, plasterers, &c. This is very nearly the same estimate of numbers given me by Mr. Thorn, of the Amalgamated Society. He also informs me that half their men are out of work. And, by a rough reckoning, I conclude that fifty able average men are unemployed; that as many "half-inch" men are in the same condition; and that a hundred of good men may be making an average of 60s. per week; that a hundred of "new chums" and "half-inch men" are making 25s. to 35s. per week; and the remaining two hundred of all sorts are distributed in other labour. Current wages have fallen to a maximum of £3 a week. The other allied trades are worse off. Wages have dropt from 12s. a day to 18s. a week, and the employment to but little more than a third of two years since. Take this building class all round, and I fear there is no day when there are not three hundred doing nothing; that the work is about half what it was, and the money being spent on buildings per week is nearer one-third than one-half. Indeed you may take it as an axiom that the weekly fund expended in wages among the mechanics and artizans is about one-half all round. It is the same with labourers. But again, I must caution you that the estimates are only tentative and approximate. The shoe trade is very bad. The tanners have had to relieve their stocks by exportation; the shops are being closed. I counted several lately in George street alone. The factories employ only about half the men. Just now there is a spurt in heavy work for the winter, and wages run nearly as in good times. There are eighty- four tailors in the Association. Nearly all are at work; prices remain as before but they only work half-time. By this the work is distributed, and few are absolutely destitute; but things are a shade worse just now. This does not include those engaged in factories; there, however, employment must be very unstable or very limited, for the clothiers are not doing one-third the business they were. This statement I substantiate by two others, you can certify for yourselves that our men are walking about in more seedy coats, and the brokers are buying decent garments by the shelf-full.
On one Monday morning, a leading firm of drapers was visited by more assistants applying for situations than customers asking for goods. Among grocers, the accounts vary from 50 to 150 out of billets. As there are grocers and grocers, I am inclined to take 50 as the outside; these unfortunately will not be rapidly absorbed, for the monthly accounts of the merchants are rising rapidly in proportion to their turn over. This is very significant; it shows that retailers are allowing more and more credit to their customers; and unless the Banks will show grace, and the merchants show pity, the mercy and generosity of the storekeepers to the poor—a mercy and generosity they always show in bad times—will meet the melancholy and undeserved requital of insolvency. I have found nothing, in my inquiries, more suggestive of the obstinacy of the present distress than this increased indebtedness of the storekeepers, unless it be the alacrity with which so many of our impoverished neighbours accepted a bare sustenance on the Public Works at Hindon and Mullocky Gully. All could not do that; men accustomed to light muscular work and dapper duties would shrink from it, and be useless for it. It takes twelve months to make a good "navvy" out of a farm laborer; it would take more to transform a draper or a clerk into a bad "navvy." Yet these abound in our streets. There is no defining their numbers. Poor devils! * Their name is "Legion," for they are many. These are only specimens. They are not exhaustive statements, but as specimens they are fairly and painfully suggestive. There is yet another consideration or two. The building societies could unfold a tale most harrowing when you read between the lines of the dry figures. The prevalence of febrile diseases must be ascribed in measure to diminished food and anxious worry as well as heat and drought. Even servants' wages are gone down, and girls have more difficulty in getting places, so that help from this side is less available. And, to crown all, the very cautious estimate of receipts made by the Government proves to have been excessive by a quarter of a million for the year.
"Why stand ye here idle all the day?"—"The agents beguiled me and I came." This is rather hard on Messrs. Berry, Clay den, and others. I have read some of their letters and addresses. Mr. Berry's I thought at the time so fair that on the ground of their publication I declined to write similar accounts myself for some Home papers. He has further cautioned his readers in a closing letter to beware of the reaction then setting in. Of Mr. Clayden's productions I cannot speak well. A few months in the Colony does not give him the right to speak with authority, and what he says is often wild, absurd, and misleading. The best of those agents describe the country on an average of years; they, speak to people suffering from far worse distress than ourselves, and no general report of our distress can be appreciated by those whose personal experience has been confined almost entirely to the piping times of expansion. A minister, a magistrate, and a ready editor are not in direct communication with the classes on whom the burden presses most heavily; they cannot understand it as we do on the spot. For myself I hardly conceived it to be so bad till I went about with a desire to know the worst. The real causes lie deeper than the honestly-meant but misleading rhetoric of our agents at Home. We share in the common distress of the world. Famines in the East and wars in the West have done something to intensify the crisis through which all nations are passing. We in New Zealand are chiefly affected by English trade. In three years the chief imports fell £15,000,000; the chief exports fell £46,000,000. These figures are drawn from tables ending in 1876: trade has been worse since. In Darlington, an iron district, house after house is empty; in Lancashire, business was hardly worse in the cotton famine; in London, 50,000 are reported out of work; the landlords never had so many farms unlet; and last year the crops were only sufficient to feed one fourth of the people—it would cost £48,000,000 to purchase grain for the rest. It is no wonder, then, that times are bad here; it is certain that, take us all round, we are as a whole far better off than if we had stayed at Home. The distress we share with the world at large has been aggravated by our Colonial policy. Money has been absorbed in public works with too great rapidity. The Government railways have been overdone. Branch lines suck the profits out of the trunk lines. Lack of funds has produced a stoppage of works and men are suddenly thrown out of employment in large numbers whom it was intended to settle gradually on the land. In these circumstances the market should have been allowed time to recover from the glut of labour set free. This has not been done as promptly and thoroughly as it might. We owe much of our trouble to a policy that, has wrought extravagantly on public works, and put no adequate check on immigration when bad times were threatening. The shoulders of Government are very broad, and they can endure much blame; but they are not alone at fault. The distress has been aggravated by over-speculation and extravagance among all classes. Men have left out of their calculations the probability of reaction. They have bought to the extent of their credit, and even beyond it. They have even relied on a continued rise to save them. They have mortgaged up to their eyes. They have left no margin for accidents. This recklessness has exposed them to the first turn of "the screw;" and speculators have been paralysed for at least eighteen months. Capital that should have been reserved for contingencies and the working of the land, has been sunk in the laud alone. And our working men have been as great sinners as the rest of us. They have counted on a continuance of work at high prices. In this expectation they have pledged themselves to building societies for a pound a week when they should have only ventured 10s., and have launched on a style of living far beyond their habits at Home or their necessities here. Clerks and tradesmen are in the same boat. Extravagance has run riot almost everywhere. Economy has been the exception in many houses. Giving parties in one class, and "shouting" in another, have squandered means that would have shielded against reverses. In this connection it is worth notice that the racecourse was never so thronged as at the last meeting.
Nevertheless, times are mending. Wool has done well in quantity, quality, and price. Grain is abundant. These are the life-blood of our trade, as land is its back-bone. Freights are low as compared with Adelaide. The pastoral and agricultural interests will thus be soon largely relieved of their difficulties, if not restored to their recent ease and prosperity. The pressure is already slackening. When men are in trouble they lay down their carriages; when they are getting on they exchange market carts for buggies. I have the pleasure to inform you that the sale of buggies has not' decreased—rather otherwise; that the purchasers are mostly from the country, and that you may therefore righteously infer that wheat at 4s. 6d. and oats at 1s. 6d. are not going to ruin all the farmers.
In a debate on Free Trade in the House of Commons, Mr. Macdonald, one of the two or three working men who had seats there, avowed his conviction that in two years England would tide over its present difficulties. And though we cannot look again for the spurt which the diggings gave us, nor for the lift we had from the early period of public works, it is probable that fifteen months will restore an average prosperity to this Colony. The recovery must be gradual, but it is certain; it has already begun. You cannot despair of a country like this. The climate is healthy and the people strong. The general spread of education places an instrument of great power in the hands of our young people. The population, though of rapid growth from immigration and large families, is but equal to that of Liverpool or of Glasgow, distributed over an area equal to England and Scotland put together. There is yet much land to be taken up in the North Island. The land already occupied is not farmed' to one half its powers of yielding. Minerals abound, though in out-of-the-way places; and new industries are springing up by the side of old ones that are being extended. Add to these constant conditions the splendid clip, fetching good prices—the fine harvest, which, besides exportation, will go to keep bread cheap and reduce the price of bacon—the weeding out of rotten concerns that gave an unnatural inflation to trade—the policy of caution distress has already induced—the more ready flow of capital, the rise of deposits at the Post Office, and the partial loosening of the bank screw— and, above all, the honesty, sturdiness, and determined purpose of you young men to work patiently through the crisis towards the better times—and who is there who will think the clouds are not lifting? Who so infatuated as to despair of this country? Bate not "a jot of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer right onward."
The large numbers that have taken the offer of Government and gone on to the works show great good sense on their part. It is but a pittance, but it is a livelihood for single men, and certainly more than half a loaf for the married. A bread-and-bed wage is better than nothing and living on credit. The withdrawal of single men must give married men more chances in town. Relief work can never equal in value the ordinary occupations of men.
To lean on Government for employment is only justifiable as a last resource and under special circumstances. To do so as a rule is to encourage the worst features of Napoleonism, and to reinaugurate the evils of the proletariat of Paris. We have no right to demand that Government ought to find us work at anything like full wage. Only when distress verges on famine is Government justified in providing relief-work; even then it should only be sufficient just to maintain the unemployed till they can be absorbed in other directions. Unfortunately, in some respects Government has placed itself in the position of railway contractors on the verge of bankruptcy. They have imported more men than they can employ; they have stopped works too suddenly; and the superfluous labour has been thrown on the public. In this exceptional case they are bound to intervene and prevent, absolute destitution. This they are trying to do. More than this they should not attempt. And in pushing on public works, they must consider not only the future benefit by opening up the country, but also the slender means available under financial embarrassments.
I would be the last to throw discredit on the value of a prosperous trade, good wages, and plenty of spare cash. But when these are checked and restricted, everything is not gone. Fine and noble work has not always been assigned to the rich and the well off. That ugly old man who was busy in asking questions at Athens was only poor, but Socrates has inspired and controlled philosophical thinking from that day to this. That little Jew, with blear eyes, who went from city to city all round the Mediterranean with a story of One crucified but risen from the dead, was dependent on his own handiwork. But, though poor, Paul made many rich. There was at Oxford a young man of dreamy spirit, sensitive conscience, and innate ruling power. In after years that man revived a paralysed establishment and founded a new community of Christians; but John Wesley used to boast that he and his wife had but one silver spoon between them. If, then, we have only got the stuff in us, a noble effective life is within our reach, in spite of our making little money. Nay, since plain living and high thinking often go together, it may be good for a people to be stripped of some luxuries, and to be driven to a simpler life. The moral tone of a true man is nursed in adversity. A check in external prosperity lends firmness to inward virtues. The rapid making of one's fortune has dwarfed the intellects of many and marred the finer, sensibilities of more. Money getting is a noble pursuit, but when it becomes money grubbing it is a mean and pernicious habit. If a passing cloud saves us from this, and helps us to think of some other things than wealth, it will do many of us a really good turn. It is bad for anyone to live with only these two thoughts—How much money can I earn to-day, and how much pleasure can I buy to-night? You hear complaints of the narrowness of religion. I would engage to show that money getting and pleasure hunting, apart from religion, are narrower still. But I prefer to remind you that thoughts of God, of eternity, of duty—and these are essentials of religion—expand the mind and control the conduct of a man more effectually than the excitements of pleasure and the axioms of trade. We need a counterpoise to the weight of money getting, that so easily besets us. And nowhere can you find so adequate a balance as in the sense of a Divine presence, and in thoughts that wander through eternity. The man who keeps his eyes always on the earth will not loner walk upright. Cherish the habit of looking onward and upward, and you will gain an erect and buoyant mien, that a rough path can neither bend nor sadden. Most of you have been made familiar with this loftier and wider range of thought at some time in your life. Some of you were once occupied in encouraging it in others. The severance from old association, the demoralisation of a long voyage, and the eager quest of wealth and pleasure in good times, have contracted your vision and limited your activities. Now that adversity has diminished that which absorbed your care, let me ask you whether the game was worth the candle, whether you have not paid too much for your whistle, whether the look above and the look beyond—the peace with God and the hopes of Heaven—whether these are not an exorbitant price to have thrown away in the absorbing pursuit of business and pleasure only? And now that the reverse has come, would it not have nerved you to face it with grave cheerfulness, if you could be sure you had not sacrified your piety for pence and your future for the trifles of a day? "It is the abuse of our faculties that makes us wicked and miserable." This is not a quotation from the Bible or a religious work. It is a saying of Jean Jacques Rousseau's. You men have faculties—you have health, honesty, industry, energy, ambition, hope, and love. You must confess that, measured by the standard of your own conscience, they have been wickedly and miserably abused. In the presence of your Creator, this abuse exposes you to His just displeasure, and excludes you from His companionship. By the dedication of His willing Son to the Cross, He has established His throne in righteousness, has stretched forth His hands in mercy and provided a way for every wanderer's return; whosoever will may come. The penitent is assured of His unbounded pity, and the trustiness of His unchangeable support. All He asks is the confession: "I am a sinful man;" and prompt and clear is His response: "Thou shalt be My son." In the full rich assurance of His Fatherhood, and in the deep, clear sense of your Sonship, you shall find reason to trust Him at all times, power to lift a constant aspect when times are bad, and motive to serve Him when times are good.
* I need hardly explain to any but to those whose feelings may have been hurt that this quaint phrase is meant as an expression of deep but almost hopeless commiseration. I feel about the immediate occupation of our surplus clerks much as Burns did about the reform of an unhappy individual—"Ye aiblins might."