STOPPAGE OF WORK BY THE COMPANY.

Colonist, Volume LVIII, Issue 14539, 17 October 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

STOPPAGE OF WORK BY THE COMPANY.

GENERAL DISTRESS.

REMINISCENCES BY SOME OLD

SEfJLTLERS. 1844.

I Just as the Nelson people were fair* ly recovering from the shock of the : Wairau massacre, and progress was I once more being made, another blow fell upon them,.the result of which it I was, for a long time, not easy to see. The arrival of an English mail —not a frequent occurrence in those days— brought. the intelligence that the New Zealand Company- had suspended operations. The Union Bank undertook to find enough money to pay the wages of the Company's men for the current week, after which nine-tenths of the wage-earning population would be left without an employer at any price. Just at this juncture, too, the usual trading vessels failed to arrive. And now the times were bad indeed. Some of the brave old settlors who went throiigh it all have, kindly sent some notes of their experiences. To touch them up, or alter them in any way, would'bo to spoil them, and they are therefore produced heve verbatim. A residrnt of .lliwaka wiic came out in the "Fifeshire" and was .only'a young lad in 1844 says: —We and many others went over to Eiwaka; there they built two" rows of houses, with posts and mud, and thatched with toitoi. Shortly after this the Wairau massacre occurred, and everyone in the place thought.we should all be killed. All the men kept watch every night ,J they were armed with guns; some at ihe olcL pa entrance arid some at , the new pa : entrance to see that no fresh arrivals came: in. Soon after this AJr Stephens-started to survey Ithvaka, and roads and ditches were formed on both sides of the Biwaka river, and right across the plain to the Mofcueka

river. There was. one store called-the Company's Store, where all the people got their provisions. The sugar was as black us tar.-. Then came the smash, the - company broke, and what little was in the store was divided amongst all hands. The people did not know what to do • they had , neither money nor -.food. Money, however, was no good in Riwaka, as there was nothing to buy. Some of the people had a little flour, and made flour-gruel to make it spin out. Some gathered sowthistles and boiled them : others dug up th<3 potatoes they had planted, peeled them to eat,% and planted the skins. I have seen the shoots of the potatoes planted- How long this state of things lasted 1 cannot "tell, but 1 know wo lived on potatoes a good while and ivhen we got bread we did. not like it. I remember. my mother made me a suit of clothes out of a three bushel sack, trousers and all. I was quite proud of them, and many others were dressed in the same manner.

A Stoke resident also gives some particulars which illustrate the hardships of the time. She says:—"We did pretty well until the Company failed; then it was a time of privations. I can mind the time when we only had one larger loaf in the house in five weeks, and if it had not been for potatoes. we should have starved. My father could get very little work. We could ■ not get bread, or tea, or sugar for weeks. There were more poor folks than rich ones: Our neighbours of course-were as much in want as ourselves. We were all then what they called squatters. The land belonged to someone, hut. we did not know who, and so w«.\ lived ior a while, but it was. hard times then. I think we were nearly as well off as those that had more money, for there was but one bakehouse, and it was first come first served1 I have waited more than an hour sometimes and not got any Wages, too, were very low, and for a long time after; and when we were married, in 1846 my husband was working for Mr Martin, of Stoke, for two shillings a day."