HARD TIMES.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10828, 29 March 1932, Page 2

HARD TIMES.

EXPERIENCE OF PIONEERS. “We talk about'bad times now,” remarked the great-grandson of one of Nelson’s earliest settlers (says an exchange). It was well known that the first cloth manufactured in New Zealand was made at Nelson as long ago as 1846. A pioneer named Thomas Blick, who knew something of hand-weaving in the Old Country, constructed a cloth-weaving loom of wood and bamboo, and set to work to make cloth, which proved to be of excellent quality. A year later a number of German settlers arrived whose wives were skilled at yarn spinning, being able to produce by hard work about lib of yarn a day. So bad were the times and so scarce was money that they accepted Is per day for their work. The industry grew, and Mr Blick took in a Mr Webley as partner, and quite a good business was built up. The people were wearing clothes made from cloth spun in their own district. It was many years before the cloth was made in any other part of New Zealand. Mr Blick reared a very large family, whose descendants are .scattered all over the Dominion, quite a number being in Auckland. It was Mr Blick’s boast that when machinery for making cloth came into vogue, it could not produce the quality he produced in his hand loom with yarn made by German women, which enabled them to live till times got better, and they prospered.