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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 44

From the Daily News of March 21st

page 29

From the Daily News of March 21st.

A Correspondent writes from Wellington, New Zealand :—

We steamed into Port Chalmers, Otago, on the morning of the day before Christmas Day, and a more enchanting piece of scenery I never witnessed. The excessive moisture of Otago imparts a freshness and luxuriance to vegetation which reminds an Englishman of home. Nor is there much to disturb the illusion when he mingles with the inhabitants. Everything looks like home—the bustle, the business enterprise, the air of prosperity, the noble churches, the healthy look of the people—and the rain. As everyone knows, Dunedin, the capital of Otago, and about seven miles from the port by rail, is emphatically a Scotch town. The "Macs" are everywhere in force—hence, I suppose, the wondrous prosperity of the place. I never visited a town with more signs of progress and general comfort. Labour seemed everywhere in demand, and the poor did not seem to be with them at all. When unskilled labour commands higher wages than thousands of Englishmen of high culture can get, poverty is out of the question. Among the most interesting institutions of the town was a workman's club—a large well-situated building, with reading-rooms, billiard-tables, a library, sitting-rooms, and a restaurant, where all kinds of cheap food could be obtained. In one of the suburbs a large immigrants' home has been erected, where, free of charge, the fortunate possessors of strong arms and weatherproof constitutions go straight from the emigrant ships, and live well till they obtain employment. Happy toilers ! Here is realized their dream of prosperity—"eight hours' work, eight hours' sleep, eight hours' play, and eight shillings a day." Skilled labour commands a much higher price. Good masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and mechanics generally get from twelve to fifteen shillings per day. In almost any paper you take up you will find advertisements for men, offering these wages. For instance, in one now lying open before me I find the following :—"Notice—Wanted, 60 good pick and shovel men; wages 9s. per day.—Apply, &c." The day, of course, meant eight hours only. £150 for four months' work ! and such work as tens of thousands of men in England are quite capable of doing who are now threatened with a reduction of 3d. or 4d. per day from their half-crown. Nor is this the whole of the case. Workwomen are at a still higher premium. I found outside the door of a "Labour Exchange" in Dunedin the following list of wants:—"Five Dairy Girls, ages £35 and £40 a year; seven Hotel Girls, £40 and £52; 27 Experienced Servants, £30 to £60." On inquiry at this "Exchange" I learnt that over 19,000 persons had found employment through its agency during the last five years. The pay of a woman for a day's work at a house is 4s. and food. Large familied men are specially to be congratulated. I came upon one who brought out some half-score of boys and girls about a year page 30 ago. I knew him well in England, and what a hard struggle it was to keep the wolf from the door. I had long urged upon him the desirableness of taking his family

"Where children arc blessings, and he who hath most
Hath aid to his fortune and riches to boast,"

but it was a "far cry" to New Zealand, and it was not till the autumn of 1877 that the centrifugal forces gained the day. His experience had gone for beyond my most sanguine anticipations. Before he had been three months in the colony the collective earnings of himself and family exceeded £8 a week. I hope this fact will come with all the force of a new gospel to many an over-familied man in England. I am sure it would if I could put into words the exuberance of self-satisfaction with which the youngsters announced their independence of their parent's pocket. One of the lads puts a sovereign into his mother's hands every Saturday as his contribution towards the domestic expenditure. A girl not yet eighteen years old has ten pounds already in the savings' bank and "dresses like a lady." It only needs adding as a finish to the picture that I saw hanging up at a butcher's door sundry fore-quarters of lamb, weighing about eight pounds, with the price ticketed on "2s. 6d. each." The school accommodation as is generally known, is every way satisfactory in all our colonies. The universal rule appears to be this—every householder pays a pound a year towards the educational department, and his children, be they many or few, become free of the school. Any deficiency of income is a charge upon the State. I know something of rural England and of the terrible exigencies of existence there in former years; and as I contrast the happy, contented, well-fed, and well-dressed appearance of the New Zealand settlers' children, with the squalid, dejected, and ragged urchins with whom I was familiar, I feel thankful that such a door of hope has been flung open, and only wonder that where ten families now emigrate hitherwards, there are not at least a hundred. On board a coast steamer the other day I met a man who some twenty years ago was a struggling country wheelwright in England. He came to New Zealand, and to-day he owns over a thousand acres of fertile land, and is rich enough to take a voyage to the old country and buy there an expensive marble monument for a lost child.

We steamed into Port Lyttelton on the day after Christmas Day, and from thence I visited the pride of all good Churchmen—the ecclesiastical city of Christchurch. A railway—carried by a tunnel costing half-a-million sterling through the huge mountains which encircle the bay—runs from the port some sixty miles into the pro-vince, and some seven or eight miles along this line is Christchurch Station. I have seen nothing so thoroughly English as the forms and homesteads all along the route. English grass, English hedges, English faces, and English order everywhere. The first thing which met me on leaving the station was a troop of eight hundred school children just off for a holiday. I stood and watched them pass by and I did not see one ill-clad or ill-fed looking child among them. page 31 The town or city is not at all picturesque, as the whole neighbourhood is as Hat as Lincolnshire. Immensely profitable, however, is the unpicturesque region, and fortunate settlers who, a few years ago, became owners of two, four, or six hundred acre sections of the land at a nominal price, are to-day proprietors of valuable farms. As many as eighty bushels of wheat to the acre have been grown, and the only drawback to the prosperity of the place is the dearth of labour, and its consequent high cost. With wheat at 4s. only per bushel farmers grumble sadly at having to pay 10s. per day of eight hours to their labourers. "Necessity is the mother of invention," and a new "self-binding harvester" has appeared for their relief. By means of one of these ingenious machines a farmer can cut down and harvest about fifteen acres per day. With the growing wealth of the district there is, however, a growing power of employing even dear labour, and hence the facility with which large consignments of English emigrants are distributed. I saw in a paper to-day the reply of a Government official to an urgent application for immigrants from Taranaki. He writes : "We have none to spare from other places; all are clamouring for more immigrants." This is very significant, and should set at rest the idle reports of interested parties as to the numbers of men out of work in New Zealand. I have taken some pains to trace out the origin of such reports, and I find them to emanate from colonial failures, men who never ought to have come. Too often the old country has acted towards her colonies as if she had read a notice on their seaboard, "Rubbish shot here." Many of the immigrants cannot work. Instead of wondering that so many evil reports reach home respecting colonial life, the mystery is that there are no more.

Leaving Port Lyttelton by a small coast-steamer we reached Wellington in about twenty-four hours, passing through much highly romantic scenery. Standing out in the bay, a few miles from shore, I noticed a large sailing vessel, and soon found it was the Hermione, an emigrant vessel belonging to Shaw, Saville and Co., in quarantine through fever on board. The quay at Wellington indicated the importance of the place as a leading outlet of the North Island. Intense bustle prevailed, and acres of land space were filled with all descriptions of merchandise. I soon had painful experience of Wellington's excessive windiness. It was almost unendurable. A steam-driven tram-car, however, is ever accessible, and few people walk the streets during the heavier gales. There is little worthy of note in the town, and one wonders what were its claims to be made the seat of government. On inquiry as to the prospects of English emigrants there, I found it no exception to the rule. Work seemed everywhere in excess of workers, and no man, able and willing to use his muscles or skill, need remain idle. I ought, perhaps, to qualify this uniform testimony as to the demand for labour with the fact that this period of my visit, being of course the early summer, is necessarily the busiest time of the whole year. I think it highly probable that during the winter the excess may sometimes be on the other page break page 33 tion barracks occupy a good site in the Waimea road, and silently testify as to the need of the town and district for more workers. Poverty appears to be unknown, and the state of the labour market may be further inferred from the fact that a lot of fellows at work carting mould, &c., and receiving 8s. per day of eight hours, actually struck the other day for another 1s. I am afraid their demand had to be gratified. The utter unreasonableness of such extortion is at once seen when the price of provisions is remembered. Bread is the same price as in England; sugar only a trifle dearer; butter 10d. per pound; tea and coffee a shade cheaper than at home; meat, half-price or less. For instance, I went with my farmer friend to the butcher's shop the other day, and he paid 4s. Gd. for a fine leg and loin of mutton, weighing about 141b. I saw some splendid beef in the shop, and on inquiry I found the price of the best cuts was 6d. per pound. It is very noticeable how this cheapness of food operates on the labourers. I remember carving for a number of Berkshire farm-labourers at a harvest home feast a year or two ago, and I shall not soon forget the enormous quantities of beef and mutton which those men disposed of. The explanation was obvious; it was their annual sight of such luxuries, and they were consequently ravenous. A few days ago three farm-labourers sat down to dinner at my friend's table. There was the best of meat provided, but oh ! the daintiness of the guests ! "Just a nice slice here," "Not too fat," and "Well done, if you please." No pampered diners at a London hotel could have been more particular. The explanation was supplied by one of the men, "We gets almost too much of it, sir." Just so. Instead of once a year, they get the best of meat three times a day.

Wishing to see the English agriculturist at home in the country of his adoption, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days at a "bush" farm some twenty miles distant from Nelson City. A railway of a very elementary character took me about seventeen miles of the distance, and the good farmer convoyed me the remaining three miles in his primitive vehicle. I wish I could give a fair description of this romantic region. I found my friend's home to consist of a four-roomed shanty, situated in a valley surrounded with lofty hills. If he had ever been guilty of the sentimental longing for "a lodge in some vast wilderness," he must at last have gained his quest. Nothing could be more intensely lovely. His farm consisted of about a thousand acres, and lie had only just entered upon it. The immense hills all around formed a part of his domain, and there, nibbling away at the short grass, and more than half-hidden among the thick underwood, furze, ferns, &c., were his sheep and cows. After a short rest we mounted a couple of small horses, and proceeded to look over the estate. Along narrow tracks we wended our ways over hills and valleys, through romantic rifts, and beside trickling streams. Occasionally the thick bush altogether shut out the sun's rays for a quarter of an hour or more, and none but well-trained horses could possibly have threaded their ways through such strange intricacies. page 34 I need hardly dwell on the exquisite enjoyment of the ramble. I found myself repeatedly asking the question, "Why do not some of those martyrs to dyspepsia and nervous affections in England just take their carpet-bags in hand, and step on board the Cuzco, and in a couple of months' time find themselves in some such splendid sanitarium as this?" After an hour's ride we came upon a neighbouring farmhouse of a much better character than my friend's. Here we pulled up, and paid a visit to the orchard. Happily the wild cherries were just ripe, although the cultivated ones were pretty well over. Nothing could exceed the lavish luxuriance of the crop. Scores of trees were laden with the delicious fruit. Every farm appears to have a number of these wild cherry-trees—a fruit closely resembling the English "May-duke," only with a slightly bitter smack. For cooking purposes they are superior to the English cherries. They are so plentiful as to be a drug in the market. Indeed they do not pay to gather, and in this orchard there will probably be several hundred pounds' weight left on the trees to spoil. I saw a fine tree of cultured cherries—the English "black heart"—only half picked, the boughs being still laden with dried-up fruit. It is simply marvellous how lavish nature seems in the bestowment of her gifts in this bright and sunny region. But the English labourer amid it all, how fared he? Well, there was one not a hundred yards off mowing hay. I soon interviewed him, and found his position very independent. He had his own home and small farm, a cow or two, a few sheep, and three or four acres of land. There was plenty of feed all around for his live stock. When he wanted money he could always get a few days' work at one or other of the farms, and altogether the man seemed about as free from care and anxiety as the sheep and cows around him. I am afraid the level of his existence was not far removed from that of his daily associates. Your colonial settler's life is sadly material. His whole energies are spent in subjugating nature—clearing bush, and conquering brutes. English farmers, with their compact holdings, their snug cow-sheds, their roomy stables, their fenced-in meadows, and their numerous hands, know nothing of the terrible exigencies of these lonely bush-farms. Every now and then a wandering fit seizes upon the live stock, and away they go for miles over the interminable hills. Only yesterday I was asked to join the farmer's son in a pursuit after a couple of runaway horses. We mounted our steeds, and away we went through the wildest, most rugged, and most picturesque scenery that I ever read of. About four miles off we found the quadrupeds munching away at a splendid field of clover, evidently enjoying it all the more because it was stolen. Another day it would be the sheep into whom the demons had entered, and over the mountains would they go and be well-nigh lost in the thick scrub. A stout lad, about such a one as an English farmer would give 8s. a week to and grumble at the imposition, was kept well employed at 18s. per week with a clever dog in guarding these wandering sheep.

I am struck with one thing in connection with many colonial farmers page 35 —their appearance of being over-worked and dreadfully poor. It is the exception to find one who would compare in appearance, at least of general ease of circumstances, with the average British farmer. Their hard, horny, shapeless fists betoken manual toil such as the Englishman is a total stranger to. And it is the same with the female portion of the household. The dearness and scarcity of labour make it necessary to dispense with as much as possible of it, and so milking and butter-making, and often far worse work, falls to the share of wife and daughters. At the farm in question the mother and one daughter did all the domestic farm work—that is, attended to the cow-yard, dairy, stock-rearing, and I know not what besides. There was no servant about the house. I asked the good lady if she was not dull in such an out-of-the-world sort of place. "Dull!" she replied, with an expression of surprise that such a question should be asked, "I haven't time even to think of such a thing." Yet she had moved in good society at home, and known most of the comforts of English life. I have ridden by the side of her daughter to a neighbouring town, and seen her with about half a hundred-weight of parcels tied to her saddle, galloping back again, apparently incapable of fatigue, and wholly independent of human help. My thoughts travelled to some young ladies of my acquaintance in London to whom it would give a galvanic shock even to listen to the story of her usual day's work, and I wondered which had most true enjoyment of life. Nay, I hardly wondered. The bright, sunny-faced girl by my side left no room for doubt.

The ride by rail from Nelson to this bush region revealed a charming succession of seemingly prosperous farm-homesteads. The town of Richmond, about mid-way, appeared to be specially prosperous. The farms had more of an English finish about them. I should imagine that the happy owners had reached that stage of success when it becomes possible to indulge in the luxury of foreign help. Here it is that the English farm-labourer finds his opening. Sons of well-to-do farmers learn among other things at the capital schools to which they are sent, to despise field-work. None of the exhausting moil for them ! So, amid groanings of spirit over youthful degeneracy, the old farmer has to article his boy to some lawyer, or architect, or apprentice him to the local grocer, and hire labourers to till his fields. The young ladies also learn a thing or two at the fashionable city "College," and the dairy soon comes to know them no more. Hence the demand for dairymaids, making the wages for such work higher than that of an educated governess. I suppose New Zealand would gladly absorb a thousand English dairy-girls to-morrow, giving them £30 or £40 a year each, and their board and lodging. I mentioned that unskilled labourers at Nelson had struck for an additional shilling per day, making 9s. for eight hours. They have now got it, and more men at the same rate are urgently required.