The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 23, 1918, Page 9

In(iustrlal Autocracy in New Zealan ; Efforts of England to Build Up New Aristocracy in Australia Finally Fail I Because of Polltlcal Power of the Workers The second of a series of 10 artlcles by Mr. Mills, well-known writer and_lecturer, on “New Zealand Before the War.” BY WALTER THOMAS MILLS HE theory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, published under .the title of “Scientific Colonization,” was that new countries, like ‘new orchards and new herds, should be started with the best stock as the seed plant if such - new beginnings are to produce the best results. It was his contention that these best- people could not be in- duced to settle in a new country unless the neces- sary servants were made available and he argued, correctly enough, that in.a new country nothing but:land monopoly could provide the servants, for it had been discovered that no one;, not even a liberated or runaway convict, would work for another for any less than he could make working for himaself on any of the millions of acres of un- taken land in Australia. In order to compel- poor people to work for a wage less than an amount equal to what one could make working’ for himself on free land, the British government granted the land in great tracts:to pri- vate ‘persons who at once arbitrarily put up the prices of land to a: .point where poor men could not work for themselves on free land, or even cheap » land; and hence could be compelled to work for less than' they eamed or starve. Strangest of all the purpose to secure exactly this result was openly proclaimed by the British government as the rea- - son for adoptmg this policy. THE CHURCH COLONIES - | \ The portions of New Zealand where-this was not done through private land grants were in Christ- church and Dunedin, on the South Island. In Christchurch the land monopoly was given to a \ church colony which tried to reproduce in New Zea- . - " land the English church and only such usages as were acceptable to that church. In Dunedin it was the Presbyterian church from Edinboro which tried " to do the same thing for the “Free Church of Scot- . land.” In both these instances the function of the land- lord, in the hands of an ecclesiastical body, proved . just as disastrous to the common good as .in the hands of private adventurers. “There is no difference in disadvantages be- tween Tnmty church tenants in New York and the tenants of any other land monopolists in ‘the same city. Overcrowded districts with ecclesiastical landlords in New Zealand, in New York and everywhere else become the cen- ters of vicious, disorderly and criminal popula- tions just as effectively as though the landlords had been the worst of individuals instead of- among-the best of our. mst‘ltutlons. The char- " ~Wheat stacks at Wallaroo, South Australb;. TB\ method - of handlmg wheat, 1 * made possible because of the weather conditions, affords quite a contrast to our . . elevator methods: In spite of the great dlstance, Australia has been selling B wheat in Europe much cheaper than we can, in part because in the last three TR years the government has eliminated all speculation and profits & ¥ farmer and the European bnyer <l betwecn th ~ acter of landlordism does not depend upou the character of the landlord, but upon the infamy of the-relationship of the mastéry of the land- lord and the servitude of the tenant, which al- ways must prevail wherever landlordism has 1ts way. THE SELECTED it SETTLERS Mr. Wakefield himself was the founder of the first New Zealand colony at Wellington. The church colonies of the South Island came afterward. But .the effort to secure the best people through promis- ing the advantages of land- monopoly was used to the limit in all of the earlier bettlements It is said that in the case of New Zealand, among’its earlier "™ settlers, there was a larger percentage of univer- sity graduates, of poets, philosaphers, dreamers and finally of snobs, than could be found in the be- ginnings of any other pioneer settlement ever made anywhere. Natives in Australia were the most backwaljd of all savages ever discovered anywhere. They were entirely without social organization of any sort." The natives in New Zealand were the most advanc- ed. They lived in villages, had domestic animals, cultivated fields, and had a system of land tenure under which it was takenfor granted that if a man This second story from the pen of Mr. Mills is. an excellent illustration of what autocrats think civilization is. It is recorded that when the first Eng- lishmen went to India, they brought - back a wery unfavorable report of the country because they couldn’t find any landlords. History records that there, as in Australia, the first civilizing step " was to. introduce land monopoly and landlords. They were also going to give Australia some “good blood,” un- mindful of the fact that the further up: . you go in their scale the scabbier the blood gets. Our own Northwest was built up entirely by “very ordinary blood,” which is-the best blood for na- tional prosperity and free, intelligent institutions. did not use his land it was probably because he had no use for it. These lands were granted to the British land monopolists by the British government regardless of previous occupation and use by the' native Maoris.. Not understanding the British idea of land ownership, the Maoris sold great tracts of the ‘most valuable lands for trifling considerations, but they did so with the unaerstandmg that they were selling the permission to use,not to monopolize these lands, and when the British land monop- olists did not use them the Maoris attempted to do so. This led to an immediate. clash of arms and the British soldier was required to feach the New Zealand natives the advantages of the British land sys- . ten by the only process by which it was ever taught to any one—by ~force of arms., . THE ARMY OFFICERS . British soldiers were brought from India and the selected settlers, the - picked men, who had picked out themselves as the superior seed 'plant of a new nation, immediately abandoped the policy of land e monopoly and grantedv : Camei team in North Australia used to haul wool to market. The northern third of Austra- lia is within the torrid zone. free lands. to as. many British soldiers as would qult the army and become settlers in New Zea- land® The country came to be so largely oc- - cupied with gentlemen needing servants and with soldiers more accustomed to command than to obey, that the conditions of employment became so un- just that laborers were hard to. find. For many vears whenever a workingman reached New Zea- land, if he wasn’t able to take the same boat out of the country that brought him in, he took the first boat leaving after he had been able to earn enough / to pay his passage. STILL NEEDED SERVANTS Convict gamps had never been established in New Zealand, The good subjects of the king in New Zealand finally petitioned the British government to establish convict camps in their country in order that they might be able to secure servants. The working people of Australia were already in revolt. . The better people in New Zealand raised a deter- mined protest, and in England, at the time, a strong public - sentiment had been developed against the whole convict system. The British government re- plied that convicts could not be furnished, but that the British workhouses were full of paupers whom they: would be glad to send as assisted emigrants. At once the scheme of free lands for settlers was - again abandoned. In the 10 years from 1871 to 1881 the population was doubled and the new population came most largely at public expense from the workhouses of England and Ireland. At one time evéry fourth man in the country was a newcomer without capital, usually without -skill, and neces- sarily, under such a scheme, very soon without em- ployment. A_BOTTOMLESS PIT The land was overrun with jobless and helpless people. * Thé army maintained the peace and tem- porary.soup kitchen relief saved from actual star- vation the helpless workers whose presence in New Zealand made the beginning of a labor problem of a . different sort: than any contemplated by the earlier advocates of “Scientific Colonization.” These policigs had brought the country to a depth ' of wretchedness in which it struggled for a dozen years and from which any movement was neces- sarily. a movement upward. During the 20 years from 1870 to 1890, it is quite likely that nowhere in the world could have been found a place where the - conditions of labor and the arrogance of the polit- ical masters of,a’ country were worse than in Aus- - tralia and in' New Zealand. The governments were ‘under the complete control of the great land-owning grain and wool-growing monopolies by which' the factory system ‘was then applied to-farming. Everywhere the workers struggled in vain for op- -portunities to use the land. Not -one of all the - ‘British colonies of the South seas would sell land on terms where a young farmer, or a miner who wished to become a farmer, could make a beginning on the land. The trade unionists organized a back-to-the- land movement, but were refused lands on. any terms whatsoever by every British colony of the Thls occurred at the time and was the ‘South seas. (Conf}qued on page 14) o