‘Waging War on the Labour Market’: The State and Wage Labour in Late Nineteenth-Century New Zealand

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 26, Issue 1, 1 January 1993, Page 43

‘Waging War on the Labour Market’: The State and Wage Labour in Late Nineteenth-Century New Zealand

JOHN E. MARTIN

This paper assesses the translation of British social reformist philosophies and policies of the late nineteenth century into an economy that bore very little relationship to the context from which such philosophies and policies sprang. It does so by looking at the so-called ‘labour question’. The title ‘Waging war on the labour market’ relates to the view that a fundamental characteristic of the New Zealand state’s labour policies was its attempt to organise labour and that these policies drew on a military analogy inspired by a vision of an ‘industrial army’. 1 This vision recalled influences such as Edward Bellamy, the English Fabians and German State Socialism, and was expressed by a development parallel to the Department of Labour in the Salvation Army.

Ingredients of British reformist thinking were translated into the New Zealand context in different ways. The threat in the city of the pauperised and marginal unemployed population called the ‘residuum’ became displaced into a rural context and a fear of the shiftless and unemployed swagger. Control of this residuum by the establishment of labour colonies was rejected here and replaced by a vision of access to the land to create a more settled population. The British ‘back to the land’ movement was translated here into village settlements, the State farm and, at the end of the century, workers’ hamlets. In the realm of industry the British anti-sweating movement was very influential here but it was applied to a completely different economy and had contrasting effects. The Fabian concept of an ‘industrial army’ strongly influenced the thinking of Reeves, Tregear and the Department of Labour in the context of a greatly centralised political system and was central to the department’s organising role in many spheres of economic and social life.

To make sense of the impact of such ideas we need to reopen the debate on the nature of politics and policies in New Zealand in the Liberal period, as admirably summarised and developed by Hamer. 2 It has perhaps become accepted, although not by Sinclair and Rogers, that social reform in this country was largely based on pragmatic grounds as a result of the pioneering experience, resulting in a ‘natural’ and perhaps less than conscious kind of state intervention that took a highly practical form - encapsulated in Metin’s phrase ‘socialism without doctrines’. Reeves himself as a key participant

was a strong advocate of this approach, even though he linked it more strongly to Fabian thinking. Hamer begins to question this orthodoxy, by suggesting that reference to wider philosophies and ideologies was more than simply ‘slogans and catch-phrases’ legitimating and rationalising government policy. Both Rogers and Hamer, for example, seek to understand the impact that immigration had on key political actors in terms of the importation of doctrines. Hamer wants to break down the ‘two separate compartments of “imported doctrines” versus the “spontaneous” inspiration of reforms from within New Zealand.’ 3 This he does at two levels: first, a clearer understanding of key elements of Liberal philosophy and ideology; and second, some analysis of the immigrant origins of Liberal Members of the House. However, he leaves more or less untouched the precise interplay of overseas ideas and their translation into the New Zealand context.

Hamer’s most central point is that one has to understand Liberal policies in terms of an overarching moral stance, first as a negative reaction against ‘Old World’ evils, and second as a positive assertion of New Zealand’s emerging place in the world and identity, as a ‘social laboratory’. 4 The goal was to save the country from evil by means of advanced social reforms. This moral stance provided the link between the Liberals and British philosophies and endowed their efforts with a philosophical edge, according to Hamer, that took them beyond ‘socialism without doctrines’ and impelled radical and innovative reforms. It was reflected in a wide range of policies concerning land reform, labour and the poor, relating to the key perceived problems of land monopoly and aggregation, unemployment, poverty and poor relief, and class divisions. One could argue that this moral stance was in fact characteristic of a much wider spectrum of politicians, public servants and others, ranging from the more obvious Ballance, Stout and Reeves (together with Tregear and MacGregor), to Atkinson and Rolleston, and that it was characteristic of much of New Zealand’s policy in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The Department of Labour and its policies (and earlier government labour policy, one might add) represent an excellent example of the influence of British reformist ideas. Policy both bore the mark of these overseas influences and derived from concrete issues relating to the nature of the colonial labour market and labour-force. Overseas influences that created conditions for moral panic motivated the early factory legislation, and in parallel, the outrage during the Long Depression over the swagging phenomenon. The vicissitudes of the colonial labour market inspired the long history of attempts to deal with unemployment by means of local labour agents, labour exchanges and public works. In this paper the latter type of policy will simply be used as a contrast to highlight the nature of the former, that is moral reactions to the labour question. In Britain the baleful effects of the city were blamed for the social problem of the latter half of the nineteenth century. London and its outcast residuum

became an overwhelming image of the collapse of civilisation into poverty, destitution, disease and crime. Control of the feared residuum became of crucial concern. The image of the city as the repository of the evils of the Old World was a powerful influence here, even though substantial urban centres hardly existed at the time! 5 This extremely distorted perception has had an effect on historians also. In spite of considerable evidence to suggest otherwise, nineteenth-century unemployment is perceived as an urban problem for urban workers. 6 In fact, while protest was expressed in urban centres, unemployment was not generated by the city as much as by the rural economy and associated infrastructural development works. New Zealand carried across from Britain a perspective on welfare with a strong emphasis on discipline and control but in a modified form. 7 Rather than confronting the existence of a substantial impoverished mass by direct coercive control government policy sought to minimise and marginalise the residuum. In order to understand this we have to look much wider than the obvious forms of‘welfare’ policy in charitable aid and towards land and labour policy in dealing with the poor in New Zealand. 8 We also need to put the policies in the context of the collision between the positive and negative elements of reformist ideology as it worked itself out in New Zealand. In order to sustain the positive image of ‘God’s own country’ in contrast to the Old World it was necessary to deny the existence of its opposite or at least to sideline it. Land and labour policy was crucial to the maintenance and bolstering of the image of ‘God’s own’. The vital role played by release of land, public works, control over immigration, and maintenance of a standard of living by regulating wages through the arbitration system - these were more central than the control and mopping-up of those who failed to ‘make it’ in the colonial society.

A willingness to deny the existence of Old World evils in New Zealand only exacerbated fears when signs of the intrusion of such evils made themselves felt. This created the conditions for moral panic. Fear of the residuum was expressed by a mounting abhorrence of the loafer and swagger. The urban residuum was displaced into the country and onto the itinerant seasonal underemployed labourer. This section of the workforce was a natural product of an economy still strongly dependent upon the rural sector, and consequently highly seasonal in its demand for labour. Seasonal and cyclical fluctuations in the economy were amplified in the labour market by government policy regarding immigration and its twin, public works. By the 1870 s there was a considerable body of itinerant labourers. Up to the middle of the decade this body was absorbed adequately by the summer employment of shearing, harvesting and other farm work, and by other casual work in town and country during the remainder of the year. 9 Underemployment was an everpresent problem, however, and, with the full impact of Vogel immigration being felt in the latter half of the 1870 s and a deterioration in economic conditions, what had previously appeared

as a useful additional source of labour rapidly became the ‘loafer’ and ‘swagger’ problem. At times in the 1880 s and the early 1890 s reaction assumed the proportions of a moral panic. Poor relief provisions in New Zealand were extremely limited. Governments had to juggle the belief that this was a land of opportunity and that there should be little need for public relief, with the manifest existence of unemployment, poverty and destitution. As Hamer suggests the Liberals’ social and land policy was largely aimed at the avoidance of a poor relief system and workhouses as existed in the Old Country. In the context of unemployment this translated into the Liberals’ refusal to provide ‘relief’ work specifically; all work had to be on ‘reproductive’ public works. This represented an important ideological statement reflecting an aversion to relief. As Tregear pointedly put it, ‘without work, nothing’.

This aversion went back to the beginnings of government involvement in dealing with unemployment at the end of the 1870 s. It was common to restrict relief work to the bare minimum and provide it only at times of dire emergency when social unrest threatened. Major Atkinson was the primary shaper of the government’s labour market measures dealing with unemployment. He argued that traditional public works unemployment relief was an evil that could be tolerated only as long as it was absolutely necessary. It encouraged dependence and perpetuated the problem rather than solving it. The key to his views are to be found in the belief that unemployment simply should not be a problem in this country. The government attempted to separate the male labour market from poor relief and deal with unemployment by an entirely different mechanism. Unemployment policies centred upon immigration policy and the activities of immigration agents, and also upon public works, land reform and closer settlement.

This bifurcation of social policy made charitable aid a residual haven for one segment of the residuum, women, children and the elderly. The very term charitable aid’ was an effort to avoid the connotations of the poor law. There was no formal entitlement to charitable aid nor did principles exist upon which claims might be made - it was entirely discretionary. Tennant notes that the ‘less eligibility’ principle was even more rigorously applied here than in England at its source in the poor law. 10 Here all indigents, not just ‘able-bodied’ paupers received minimal and temporary assistance, largely in the form of outdoor relief. Only the elderly received indoor relief on a longer-term basis. Working men did not figure much at all, and if they did relief was usually given on account of their dependents. When unemployment was particularly severe and unemployed men had to go on charitable aid, this was short-term and was made subject to a strict work- test, usually stonebreaking. The contrast between Atkinson’s much-ridiculed compulsory and universal National Insurance proposal of the 1880 s and Seddon’s later Old Age

Pensions Act of 1898 reflects the divide between labour market assistance and charitable aid. Atkinson's scheme was intended to strenthen independence and avoid the demoralising effects of the poor law by aiming the scheme at those in work and being based on a contributory flat tax. Atkinson referred to the ‘problem of poverty and pauperism in England’ and observed that ‘we see malign influences and agencies at work in all old countries which seem to be producing more and more destitution as the nation advances in material prosperity... no greater curse could come upon any country ... than the English poor law in all its intensity ... [which] has degraded and demoralized ... We have then to consider in what way we can

provide against destitution without demoralizing the people.’ The Old Age Pension by contrast was a residual, less than generous and means-tested measure funded from the consolidated account, and backed strongly by the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. It carried across the principles of charitable aid outdoor relief as Rolleston himself pointed out in the debate in 1898. 12 The debate between contributory and non-contributory forms of welfare has continued to characterise discussions of welfare in this country, and the almost invariable political choice to plump for non-contributory benefits funded out of general taxation has differentiated New Zealand’s welfare state from many others. The roots of this crucial difference may well be found in the nineteenth-century marginalisation of welfare as poor relief.

The issue remained with the country into the 1890 s - what should be done with the residuum? Before long one possible solution arrived in person in New Zealand in the form of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. From the mid 1880 s there had been in Britain a strong reaction against unconditional relief and towards the reform and regimentation of the unemployed. 13 This was associated with revived interest in ‘home colonisation’ schemes whereby the unemployed would be ‘returned’ to the land. Such utopian schemes drew upon the example of the continental labour colonies of the previous fifty years which had attempted to set the unemployed and vagrants to work on the land. 14 It arose out of a feeling of futility with temporary relief, a belief that village life should be regenerated, and a growing perception that the morally degenerate urban unemployed had to be institutionalised, and reformed and trained.

The most controversial scheme was that proposed by General Booth, which linked spiritual and material destitution and redemption. 15 He was concerned with the poverty-stricken ‘submerged tenth’ of the population and planned to draft the unemployed into a city colony where they would receive food and shelter in return for work, then to a rural labour colony to receive industrial or agricultural training, and lastly to be sent to an overseas colony to start a new independent life. At all stages rigid discipline and abstinence would apply. This system was to be complemented by the Salvation Army’s own labour bureaux.

The first city workshops were opened in London in 1890 and the farm colony of Hadleigh the following year. Establishment of an overseas labour colony proved more difficult. To this end Booth toured around New Zealand in October 1891. 16 The settlement here would be divided up into allotments of no more than five acres each with access to a common for pasturing cows and would be a self-supporting small-peasant style of community with each household having a few pigs and sheep, a cow and a vegetable garden. Some basic cottage industries would also be fostered. Booth corresponded with Ballance and was keen to establish a colony in New Zealand and Ballance was quite enthusiastic. Booth wanted a great deal, not only a substantial block of land given free of charge but also government financial support for land clearance. Although his plans were lauded by many, others were more cynical and critical of the proposed scheme. The opposition claimed that the government ‘has made the Colony the camping-ground’ for the submerged tenth, and there were fears that a flood of labour would arrive and that those from the criminal class would be sent. The labour movement considered that unemployed New Zealanders should be assisted first. The matter became something of a political cause celebre and the opposition by trade unionists and others proved sufficient to discourage Booth.

Ballance did in fact offer Booth some land but, having heard nothing definite, the government turned its thinking back to its own State farm. This was assisted by the pressure brought to bear by local authorities which were increasingly finding charitable aid burdensome, and looked to central government to provide a way out through ‘co-operative industrial settlements’. In order to understand the origins of the State farm we need to look at the land reform movement. As a response to the agricultural depression of the 1870 s and the failed agricultural labourers’ movement, the ‘land question’ became of considerable significance in Britain. The American populist economist Henry George and his book Progress and Poverty became the intellectual driving force behind the ‘back to the land’ movement in Britain that aimed to establish a peasant yeomanry to deal with the urban ills of unemployment, pauperism and overcrowding. 17

George’s ideas on the unearned increment, land nationalisation and the single tax also fell on fertile ground in New Zealand and his views had wide currency by the early 1880 s. Unlike Britain where land was well and truly locked up in estates of the nobility and gentry, New Zealand offered a prime testing ground for George’s theories. The land was still accessible and the State controlled vast areas. Rather than granting meagre workmen’s allotments, a wholesale settlement of the poor and unemployed on the land seemed at least in principle possible. George had personal contact with Sir George Grey, whose own views on the land question were similar. Ballance largely accepted George’s prognosis but preferred a more gradual approach. Rolleston, the author of village

settlements and the first to introduce state leasehold, had undergone a conversion strikingly similar to George in his ride through prime runholder country, saying that ‘as far as human eye could see, I saw the country in the hands of about a dozen people exclusive of two companies, and I prayed “Lord, lay not this sin to my charge.’” 19 The most important practical consequences of George’s ideas in New Zealand lay in the push for state leasehold, a moderate land tax associated with the break-up of large estates, and what is of most relevance here, the reinforcement of the pre-existing strong colonial belief that access to land was the panacea for ending unemployment. It was vital to get the unemployed settled on the land. The beginnings of the village settlement scheme lay in Rolleston’s policy in 1874-75, as Superintendent of Immigration, of settling immigrants on small allotments in Canterbury. 20 He followed this up in the early 1880 sas Minister of Lands by creating village settlements, largely in Canterbury. Rolleston also promoted the first form of state leasehold in 1882 which would in his eyes not only prevent aggregation of large estates but also prevent ‘those extremes of poverty and wealth which are the curse of older countries.’

Ballance then rapidly introduced the village-homestead settlement scheme in 1886, largely to deal with the problem of the unemployed as an alternative to temporary public works relief and to get the unemployed out of the towns and permanently settled on the land. This scheme supplanted Rolleston’s village settlement scheme and was more focussed on providing people with ‘homesteads’ or dwellings. Such settlers would partly provide for themselves from their small holdings and also provide a source of seasonal farm labour at peak times of year. It was the concern with unemployment that explains why more than half the land allocated was in the Auckland province. The serious unemployed agitation that had erupted there during the winter of 1886 had panicked the government. Although some 75 settlements were planned for over a thousand settlers on nearly 40,000 acres the scheme never realised Ballance’s dream. 22 While a moderate success in Canterbury it largely failed elsewhere.

Atkinson terminated the village-homestead settlement scheme when he came back into power in late 1887. He believed that this policy did not create independent communities at all but rather a ‘rural proletariat dependent on public works employment’. 23 This was perhaps a more accurate assessment than that of Ballance. There was now a crucial shift in thinking. 24 Land and work were now to be brought together by the State itself in establishing farms on which the unemployed would work. In adopting this idea, Reeves and Tregear were influenced by the labour colony notion, as combined with the concept of co-operative settlement of the British Fabians. While labour colonies were often intended as repressive mechanisms of control of the residuum, the

Fabian notion was a utopian model of how the whole of industry should work together. The State farm would take those from the residuum, while providing a model of future social and economic organisation. Gibbons argues that the State farm represents an example of control over workers that was subsequently extended by the Department of Labour to the casual workforce at large. He believes that Tregear moved to a strongly coercive view of the workforce and found the answer in labour colonies, with the example of the State farm before him. However neither Tregear nor Reeves envisaged a coercive State farm. Tregear saw the undeserving element that might need control as very much in the minority and explicitly acknowledged that the State farm did not fulfil the function of ‘detention and discipline’ required of such penal colonies. Reeves made a strong distinction between the coercive Dutch and German colonies and conditions in New Zealand and stated that any such exercise here would not involve strong control or discipline. The State farm was intended to assist the helpless poor - those who for reason of lack of skills, age or infirmity could not help themselves. It was not so much concerned with the ‘helpful poor’ that the department could assist into jobs nor with the ‘criminally-lazy poor’. There was no point in sending the helpless poor out to jobs in the countryside, because they lacked the skills or were unable to cope with such arduous work. While feeling that in principle the criminally-lazy poor should be made to work the department made no attempt to coerce the unemployed. Registration with labour bureaux and assistance into work remained voluntary. The State farm was in other words another form of charitable aid.

In practice the State farm became a political liability for the department and it was closed in 1900. The Liberals and the department began to turn their eyes towards assistance for working people in an urban setting - towards providing worker housing rather than land. This initiative of the department was to prove to have a much larger and long lasting impact than the State farm, and indeed launched state-provided housing schemes in this country. Ballance’s village settlement concept was transmuted into two distinct policies. First, the Liberals had by 1894 replaced it with the improved farm settlement scheme with lots of 10 to 100 acres, recognising finally that the areas of land allocated had simply been too small, and secondly that in many districts no outside work was available. Second, the concept of villages was replaced by worker allotments in hamlets close to cities. The idea was that the workers would commute into town for wage work but still be able to sustain themselves from their allotments when unemployed. In 1896 the Land for Settlements Act was amended to allow the government to assist workmen into homes in or near towns. Tregear and the Department of Labour were instrumental in the establishment of such hamlets.

Progress was slow but hamlets were eventually established in Christchurch, Wellington and, later, in Auckland. By the early years of this century the

policy was no longer actively pursued but there had been some moderate practical achievement and, in a wider sense, workmen’s hamlets were another step towards severance from the land and a recognition that the state was going to have to intervene more directly in housing if it was to assist. The passage of the Workers’ Dwellings Act in 1903 signalled this new commitment.

Another manifestation of Old World evils being visited upon this country alongside unemployment was the ‘sweating’ of women and children. Sweating became the icon by which to encapsulate the excesses of nineteenth-century factory work while the Sweating Commission of 1890 became the pivotal reference point of the labour movement in this country. 26 But the significance of sweating lay more in the moral outrage of the time at the threat to the condition of women and children than in its extensive development. The agitation against sweating and the consequent crucial effects that this had on legislation were most strongly derived from the British experience and did not have a great deal to do with economic developments in this country. Women and children in factories made up only a small proportion of what was itself a very small industrial workforce in the 1870 s and 1880 s. While an increasing proportion in the 1880 s (as consistent with a general upwards movement in their labour-force participation) women remained a relatively small proportion of the labour-force. A greater change was the increased employment of boys in industry, particularly in the more marginal general labouring groups outside the craft unionised occupations. The worst working (and living) conditions, however, were experienced by male rural and public works workers but this has gone largely unnoticed. 27

The concern for sweating manifest in the Royal Commission of 1890 was integral to a long tradition of moral concern and attempts to legislate to control the hours and conditions of women and young workers that predated the deepening depression of the late 1880 s. These |?rior efforts at control were more effective than is commonly thought/ 8 The Employment of Females Act 1873 should not be regarded as a ‘dead letter’; considerable numbers of convictions were obtained under it and inspectors attempted to enforce it reasonably diligently, particularly after an earlier Royal Commission had investigated conditions in 1878. This Commission did not find that sweating was widespread. It concluded that the Act had largely accomplished its purposes and had improved working conditions, in spite of problems with inspection and a lack of deterrence. The 1890 Royal Commission also found that sweating was not a serious problem. Much has been made of the minority report which redefined sweating widely as bad working conditions, long hours and low wages. But the Commission did not find sweating in this sense to be a problem in factories employing women. The long hours largely applied to those in shops and to other occupations rather than factories. Conditions were worse

in male trades and as a result of the use of boy labour. The minority report should be read as a political statement with the aim of preventing sweating taking hold here rather than confirming that it was an existing prevalent evil. Given this reinterpretation, the issue takes a different shape. The anti-sweating agitation constituted moral outrage at the possibility of such an Old World evil taking root in our midst. This outrage fuelled the fires of preventative state legislation and took it in new directions, providing a powerful force for the Liberals to ram home their labour legislation. In order to prevent the very possibility of sweating the Department of Labour was given sweeping powers of registration of all factories and regulation of clothing outwork. The agitation also gave added impetus to the introduction of then radical compulsory arbitration because of the intransigence of Auckland clothing manufacturers in the early 1890 s. The real significance of the new Factories Act of 1891 and subsequent legislation was the extension of regulation to all factories, including male workers. While adult male hours were not regulated, working conditions were increasingly regulated and inspection tightened up considerably.

While the moral concern for sweating might have provided the starting point, the practical significance of Liberal labour legislation lay largely in terms of the organisation and regulation of work more generally in an industrial setting. This was consistent with and was accompanied by a wider organisation of the labour market and labour-force. Such organisation was shaped by the concept of an ‘industrial army’. The Long Depression and the failure of both local charitable aid and government relief to deal with the problem of unemployment caused many to rethink possible solutions. Intervention was increasingly seen as a positive and necessary matter rather than something to be avoided if at all possible and undertaken only in dire circumstances when political instability seemed likely. Thinking turned towards the active government organisation of the unemployed as part and parcel of the wider organisation of the labour market and labour-force, and indeed of society itself along Fabian lines of an ‘industrial army’. This thinking can be found strongly in New Zealand’s first Minister of Labour, William Pember Reeves.

Reeves was strongly influenced by ‘state socialist’ thinking of the late 1880 s, particularly Lassalle in Germany and the Fabians in Britain. His philosophy is laid bare in a series of articles he wrote for the Lyttelton TimesP What is particularly interesting is not simply the extent of penetration into social life by the state, with which we are familiar, but also the form that it took. Reeves drew on an image of the state organising society as if it were an industrial army along the lines of a military force.

Each nation, it is true is a disciplined army; but it is an army of industry only. All now honour work, and all work is honoured. The crimes which spring from poverty and greed, from ignorance and oppression, from class hatred, trade conflict, and social jealousy and ambition have vanished for want of a cause. There is but one producer -

the State; one distributor - the State; one capitalist - the State; one landlord - the State; one merchant, one schoolmaster, one almsgiver, one arbitrator - the State.

This bears a striking resemblance to the vision enunciated by General Booth in the same year in his book In Darkest England. Booth talked of the ‘regimentation of the unemployed’ by means of city and farm colonies which would be organised along military lines and involve strict discipline. The first step for both the Fabians and the Salvation Army was to organise the unemployed and turn them to useful work. Municipal authorities should start communal labour farms and factories. Then the state should absorb the larger trusts and syndicates before turning to the smaller capitalist businesses. The State would incrementally extend its powers to be all-encompassing in the end. Reeves referred approvingly to the Fabian Essays in Socialism and found Annie Besant’s article ‘lndustry under Socialism’ to be particularly useful. This talked in more detail of the organisation of labour: the unemployed must be registered, classified as skilled or unskilled, and drafted into self-supporting communal farms and municipal factories. 31 He also referred to Lassalle’s suggested beginnings of socialism in ‘State-aided co-operative factories and farms’.

Bellamys Looking Backwards , which had arrived in the country in late 1889 and sold many thousands of copies also made a great impression on Reeves. 32 This describes a Bostonian who falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find a utopian society organised on a co-operative basis as a disciplined industrial army along the lines of a military force. People would engage in compulsory industrial service in corps suited to their talents and choice, which were divided into grades of skill with promotion on merit and were commanded by generals and officers. The economy in toto - both production and distribution - would be directed centrally by the state, literally as a ‘command’ economy. Reeves’ articles argued that the state had indeed already made many advances in this country towards socialism, albeit unconsciously. Every step by the state towards regulation and interference with the rights of individuals was also a step towards socialism.

The State, nowadays, confronts the individual from the moment at which it registers his birth to the day on which it takes care he is buried in a cemetery ... [in New Zealand] the State is the largest landowner, the chief rent-collector, and the owner of the largest industrial “going concern” - the railways. It not only manages the Post Office, the lighthouses, the telephones, and the telegraphs, but has established a powerful Life Insurance Company ... The State not only provides for the sick and the aged helpless, but finds work for the unemployed and teaches, free of charge, every child in the Colony whose parents will accept State teaching. Above all, it has interfered with the labour market by State immigration, by factory and mines inspection, and by regulating with some care the labour of women and children. And this was prior to the Liberal reforms!

A second characteristic of the states advancing powers was its essential benevolence: ‘every fresh power given to the State to aid the sick and relieve the poor, to provide for the maintenance of the old and the education of the young; every change, in short, which interposes the shield of the State between the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich, the mass and the individual -is an advance towards the goal of Socialism.’ 34 By means of the state the working class would be transformed and civilised to become an orderly, educated body. The Department of Labour was to be the instrument by which organisation of work, the labour market and labour-force, and hence of society at large was to take place. 35 And indeed the department made a vital contribution to the emergence of a highly organised form of society. This process was implemented through the department’s extensive local network which was increasingly used for a wide range of bureaucratic purposes. The major elements of the departments activities - unemployment, arbitration, factory legislation and the Shops and Office Acts - had strong organising effects. Intervention in the late nineteenth-century labour market, in Gibbons’ words, assisted in the ‘decasualisation’ of the labour market and the disappearance of the itinerant male labourer from the roads. The Factories Acts organised hours of work, regulated working conditions and created a framework for extending standardisation and uniformity. The Arbitration system was absolutely crucial in eliminating what Reeves and others termed ‘industrial war’ or strikes, and in organising the relationship between employers and workers and their respective organisations. Indeed the organised expression of both groups’ interests was either largely the creation of the Arbitration system, or a direct response and reaction to the system. Regulation of industrial relations through registration of unions and employer groups, and promulgation and enforcement of awards, also provided stability, continuity and predictability. The awards themselves became instruments that codified and organised work practices and conditions, and the hours of work, and eventually led to the minimum wage, family wage and the structure of basic wage relativities. In other words, the entire structure of the wage economy became more organised through government intervention.

The department also had a crucial role in organising wider aspects of social life in this country through regulation of the shop and office working hours, control over domestic servant registry offices, inspection of living conditions for shearers, farm labourers, flax- and saw-mill hands, and control over rents. As the department s administrative net spread ever wider in the early twentieth century, it became responsible for the ultimate and most basic form of imposition of uniformity in the administration of weights and measures. The development of the Shops and Office legislation illustrates well the department’s wider role in organising society. Traditionally in the nineteenth century, shops had opened long hours six days a week, particularly on

Saturday (payday and the major trading day) which might stretch from 8 am to 10 pm. In response to these long and unregulated hours, the Liberals passed the Shop and Shop-assistants Act in 1892. This limited the employment of women and those under eighteen to 58 hours a week, provided seating for women, and provided for a weekly half-day holiday. It was the last provision that introduced a principle fundamentally reorganising the use of time which had such long-term ramifications. After a difficult period establishing the precise form of control over shop hours, from the early twentieth century onwards there was a gradual development of Saturday half-day closing. This was to have a tremendous impact on the development of Saturday sports and leisure.

With the introduction of a 44 hour week in shops in 1936 most towns and cities observed a Saturday late night and a Wednesday half-day but within a few years this had switched to a Friday late night and Saturday half-day. A Shops and Offices Amendment Act of 1945 introduced the five-day 40 hour week and Saturday trading almost entirely disappeared. Thus the New Zealand weekend emerged in its full glory. The pattern of Friday late night and no trading on Saturday was to remain until the 1980 s, apart from certain exempted listed goods which could be sold outside those hours. It should be said that administering this legislation was probably the least popular task of all within the department but it is difficult to deny its power in organising the lives of New Zealanders.

In conclusion this paper has explored some ways in which policies concerning the labour question were influenced by developments and thinking in Britain. These influences were felt in diverse ways and were expressed in consequences not always anticipated or understood. The over-riding and enduring consequence was to strengthen greatly the Liberal organising impulse that in the long term gave rise to the kind of society that characterised New Zealand in the first half or more of the twentieth century - a homogeneous, state-organised and state-regulated society. There is no doubt that much of the reformist zeal and impulse that produced such a society was drawn from the powerful concerns that dominated Britain in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

REFERENCES 1 I am currently researching and writing a history of the Department of Labour, to be published as a book. The various unpublished papers listed below are draft contributions towards this project. 2 D. Hamer, The NZ Liberals (Auckland, 1988), chapter 2. 3 Hamer, p. 39. Also see F. Rogers, ‘The Influence of Political Theories in the Liberal Period, 1890-1912: Henry George and John Stuart Mill’, in R. Chapman and K. Sinclair (eds), Studies of a Small Democracy (Auckland, 1963); F. Rogers, ‘The Single Tax Movement in NZ’ (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1949). 4 See also R Coleman, ‘The Spirit of NZ Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Modern History , 30 (1938).

5 Taking a benchmark of a population of 5,000 the urban population remained relatively static at around only a quarter of the total in the period 1874-1901. For a discussion of the low level of urbanisation in nineteenth-century New Zealand, together with the reaction against itinerant labour, see J.E. Martin, ‘God Made the Country and Man the Town’, in I. Shirley (ed), Development Tracks (Palmerston North, 1982). 6 R.J. Campbell, ‘Unemployment in NZ, 1874-1914’, (M. Phil, thesis, Massey University, 1976) and all the historians who base their descriptions of nineteenth-century unemployment on this source. For an alternative view, see J.E. Martin, The Forgotten Worker, especially chapter 2; J.E. Martin, ‘The Government, Immigration and Unemployment in the 1870 s and 1880s’ (unpublished paper, 1992). 7 See for example, W.H. Oliver, ‘The Origins and Growth of the Welfare State’ in A.D. Trlin (ed), Social Welfare and NZ Society (Wellington, 1977); M. Tennant, ‘Duncan MacGregor and Charitable Aid Administration, 1886-1896’, NZ Journal of History, 13 (1979); M. Tennant, Paupers and Providers: Charitable Aid in New Zealand (Wellington, 1989); P.J. Gibbons, “‘TurningTramps into Taxpayers”: the Department of Labour and the Casual Labourer in the 1890s’ (M.A. thesis, Massey University, 1970). Tennant retreats from a strong social control argument by saying that the contingencies of politics and administration created a considerable gap between intent and achievement. 8 W.H. Oliver, ‘Social Policy in the Liberal Period’, NZ Journal of History, 13 (1979), 32-3. Also see F. G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare (Sydney, 1985). Oliver contrasts Britain and New Zealand with the latter having an emphasis on economic policy related to land and labour as social policy. Castles coins the phrase ‘wage earners’ welfare state’ to describe the distinctive type of welfare state in Australia and New Zealand which depended on improved economic conditions for (largely male ‘breadwinner’) wage earners. 9 J.E. Martin, The Forgotten Worker, chapter 2. 10 Tennant, Paupers and Providers, pp. 98-9. 11 NZ Parliamentary Debates, 42 (1882), pp. 183-4. Note that this scheme was not intended to deal with unemployment, as observed by Hutchison, p. 203. Both Grey andTurnbull argued that the solution to poverty was to unlock the land. Turnbull, p. 207: ‘They are forced and crowded into the towns, where they cannot obtain employment, while the land, which is teeming with wealth, is locked up against them.’ Grey specifically cited George, p. 195.

12 NZ Parliamentary Debates, 103 (1898), p. 550. Rolleston argued on behalf of his now dead friend Atkinson for consideration again of a contributory universal and compulsory scheme that would not stigmatise the poor as paupers. 13 J. Harris, Unemployment and Politics-, a Study in English Social Policy, 1886-1914 (Oxford, 1972), chapter 3. 14 There had been penal labour colonies in Switzerland, and other less repressive ones in Germany, Holland and Belgium. Harris, Unemployment and Politics, pp. 117-18. 15 General William Booth, In Darkest England, and the Way Out (London, 1890). For the Salvation Army, see R. Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army, vol 3: Social Reform and Welfare Work, 1883-1953 (London, 1955); C.R. Bradwell, Fight the Good Fight, the Story of the Salvation Army in New Zealand, 1883-1983 (Wellington, 1982). 16 See J.E. Martin, ‘From Land to Housing; Assistance to Workers’ (unpublished paper, 1992). 17 H. Newby, Country Life: a Social History of Rural England (Totowa, N.J., 1987), chapter 7: ‘The Land Question’. R. Douglas, Land, People and Politics: a History of the Land Question in the UK, 1878-1952 (London, 1976), pp. 48-51, 102-7. 18 Rogers, ‘The single tax movement in NZ’, pp. 38-44. George’s ideas continued to have influence through the Knights of Labour and the Anti-Poverty Society in the late 1880 s. I do not propose to analyse how George’s ideas were played out in New Zealand (as described in detail by Rogers) but rather to explore how they became translated into

land reform that was intended to assist the unemployed specifically. Surprisingly, Rogers does not look at all at the practical effects of these ideas in government policy. 19 W.D. Stewart, William Rolleston (Christchurch, 1940), p. 148. 20 See J.E. Martin, ‘The Unemployed and the Land: Village Settlements’ (unpublished paper, 1992). By 1899 some 1,488 selectors had been settled on 9,832 acres under the scheme (an average of 6.6 acres) after a resurgence of interest in the scheme in the late 1880 s. The scheme had proved very successful in Canterbury. 21 NZ Parliamentary Debates, 42 (1882), p. 515. Rolleston’s introduction, pp. 166-7. 22 Many of those selected were unsuitable, often the blocks were too inaccessible to be viable, while many holdings were too small to be economic and there was a lack of supporting employment in the area. Labourers and impoverished craftsmen and tradesmen often did not have the resources to develop and cultivate land, particularly when the selections were of a considerable size, much larger than Rolleston’s earlier scheme. By 1891 the number of settlements had shrunk to 45 and the area of land to a little over 20,000 acres; just over half of the original numbers of settlers remained. Rolleston’s scheme was more practical and probably did more for working people and the unemployed than Ballance’s much-heralded scheme.

23 J. Bassett, Sir Harry Atkinson, 1831-1892 (Auckland, 1975), p. 148. 24 J.E. Martin, ‘From Land to Housing: Assistance to workers’ (unpublished paper, 1992). 25 RJ. Gibbons, “‘Turning Tramps into Taxpayers’”, chapter 4 and pp. 72, 88. 26 Modern-day labour historians have by and large accepted this moral outrage at face value and have assumed that the widespread existence of sweating can be taken for granted. See virtually any general history of New Zealand. For two recent examples, see J. Bassett, ‘Dark Satanic Mills’, in J. Binney, J. Bassett, Erik Olssen, An Illustrated History of NZ, 1820-1920 (Wellington, 1990), pp. 190-1. R. Dalziel, ‘Railways and Relief Centres’, in K. Sinclair, (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History ofNZ (Auckland, 1990), pp. 116-17. This view is also characteristic of the publications and activities associated with the observance of a hundred years of women’s suffrage in 1993. 27 See the national survey in 1891 of living conditions for shearers and others that emphatically underlined these bad conditions. Martin, The Forgotten Worker, pp. 151-4. 28 J.E. Martin, ‘Factory Legislation Prior to the Liberals’ (unpublished paper, 1992). 29 ‘Pharos’ [W.P Reeves], Some Historical Articles on Communism and Socialism - their Dreams, their Experiments, their Aims, their Influence (Christchurch, 1890). He wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Pharos’, the Alexandrian lighthouse that was amongst the seven wonders of the world and that has a strong resonance with the Salvation Army’s symbolic lighthouse. Sinclair, Reeves, pp. 100-103 suggests that these articles comprised the first publication in this country on the topic of socialism and attracted much attention. See also W.P Reeves, ‘The State and Its Functions in New Zealand’, Fabian Tract, no. 74 (1896). Reeves argued that state socialism had naturally grown in a country that had recently been colonised and where settlers were an ‘active part of the State’. Colonists knew the ‘imperative need of social organisation’ and were ‘used to the notion of co-operation’.

30 ‘Pharos’, Some Historical Articles, p. 8. 31 G.B. Shaw, (ed), Fabian Essays in Socialism (London, 1889), pp. 153-5. This book was published only a few months prior to Reeves’ articles, in December 1889. 32 H.O. Roth, Trade Unions in NZ: Past and Present (Wellington, 1973), pp. 10-11. 33 ‘Pharos’, p. 45. It became Reeves’ favourite habit to reel off such statements during his political meetings in the early 1890 s. This listlike description of the encroaching powers of the state bears an uncanny resemblance to Sidney Webb’s own description. S. Webb, ‘Historic’, in Shaw, (ed), Fabian Essays, pp. 47-8. 34 ‘Pharos’, p. 39. While the Fabians were able to place a lot of emphasis on the role of municipal authorities in ushering in socialism, here all fell to the central state. Reeves was acutely aware of the very limited powers of local government here. See NZ Parliamentary Debates, 68 (1890), p. 79.

35 See J.E. Martin, ‘Benevolence, Social Control, or Functioning for Capitalism? The Origins and Early Years of the Department of Labour in NZ\ (unpublished paper given to the Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne, July 1991).