EL CUADRO COMUNICACIONAL.
ANÁLISIS DE LA COMUNICACIÓN EXTERNA
The dilemma for the state was that, besides creating work for the unemployed, the only other practical option was to pay workers sustenance without work; an option which ran contrary to the need to maintain the incentive of paid Jmployment and individual self-reliance. One other option was to leave the
J
I nemployed completely to their own devices, 'the rod of starvation' as Maxreber called it. But this option was problematic for a country which was claiming
tp be a labourer's paradise in its effort to attract working class immigrants,
I
especially from the British Isles (Fairburn, 1989). The country was still eager to
attract more immigrants many of whom were working class people. The policy makers' dilemma was that New Zealand had to compete for immigrants with other countries such as Australia and Canada, not to mention the United States (see figure 3 below).
·FIU� I.!; ..1 N lJ A �::; L�'1.' I.!;D K �tl <: atATlu � . u N E W Z EACA N V.
FREE · AND ·
i:;:SISED r A.8SAGESARE
gl�nted· bi' '. ZEALAND tU 8 60VE lfN.MENT of as under:- , NEWto Married Agricitltural LR.bour�re. Navvies, Plough
men. Shepherds, ILll:d a. f�w Cuunu·y. Mechu.uics, ou
tl:lcir givin g a Promissory Note for .£10. payable in
"the' Culouy hy instalments ; o r 'by
p
aying.£5 in �asb.FREE
PA SSAGES ARE GIVEN '1'0 SINGLEFE'MA'LE DOME ST I C ,SERVANTS.
Daugh ters and �ons' of twelve years "of age and
upwards. and going out with tb>ir Parents, nre
takt!u, the .former ,FREE O F CHAHGE, and tb�
luttt·r on p:lymeot ·of .£4 , iu " cilsh; or ·on·giving �
rrulUil:iSN·y' Note for £6. <' . , ';: , " .. " ,. "
SINGLE MEN are .taken o� pa.yment (befol'e
Sa.iliIlg) of t he 8�m of .£8 j , or on pllymen t of ·.£4 in
Ccl.Sh, nrid giving a .. Promis80�·S ��le for .£8. '
For '1'�l'ms nnd Conditions a.pply p�rsollatJy. or by
lett�r, £0 the. Agent Gcn�'ral for New Zt:aland� 7.
'Veslminster Chambers, London�-S.W. ' .. . . '
London, October 18t,h, 1873. .
Gulway�Jllmes J. l!'inn, Vici;Qria Plaee.
' -': "F
� ,, - ,. -'-',-Emigration ·to' Queensland,
AU S'l'RALlA.. ' ., QUEENSLAND GOVERNXENT OFFICES,32, ,CHARING ' CROSS. L(I:-l Of l!'l.
Competition by new colonies for emigrants, seen in the advertisement
columns of an Irish newspaper, The Galway V"uuli&4Ior and Onrnaughl Advertiser, 7 January 1873. Mr James J. Flynn was probably one of the many emigra tion agents who collected commissions from governments in the U.S.A.,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Uswdly the agent received a
Government reluctance to create work for unemployed men was a source of concern for Mr R. Turnbull, Member of Parliament for Timaru, who considered that the Government failure to create work may have curtailed the inflow of high quality working class immigrants. "Nothing acted more detrimentally to the interest of the colony than to find that men in it were anxious to do work and that nothing could be found for them to do" (NZPD, 1888: 394). Thus contrary to the Conservative view that the unemployed were partly to blame for their predicament, pro-reform policy makers saw workers as eager and willing to work. For the working class the prospects of employment was one of the main factors which brought them to New Zealand in the first place.
Government1s continued reluctance to create steady employment for many of the unemployed led to the lexodusl in the 1880s, mainly to Australia, of skilled tradesmen in search of work. As Scholefield put it:
Thousands of disappointed men, efficient, industrious, and temperate, left the colony in despair. Of those who remained many had emigrated· from the Old World a few years earlier,
full of hope and enthusiasm. They were now inconsolable agitators 0916: 169).
Drummond described the lexodusl of pakeha male workers as:
The unemployed began to leave the Colony in swanns, like migratory rats that were starved out of one district and pass on irresistibly to another in search of food. In the eight years 1885 to
1892, 125,000 persons left New Zealand (1907: 92).
At the height of the lexodusl it was estimated that the country was losing about 1 ,400 people per month. Many were skilled men brought under the assisted immigration scheme and whom the country was to need once the economy recovered
( Canterbury Times,
April 16, 1888). In 1888, arrivals in New Zealand were 13,606. Departures 22,781 (NZOYB, 1937). The lexodusl led to a crisis of confidence in the government and prompted the Conservative Government of Major Harry Atkinson to step up funding for public works to relieve unemployment. From 31 March 1888 to 31 May 1889, £37,000 was spent on wages of relief workers (A]HR, 1889 D-5A).The Icollapsel of the Pakeha male labour market during the 1880s IIhad finally brought unity to some sections of the workers . . . The Maritime Council formed in 1889 in Dunedin was one of the resultsll (Sutch, 1966: 69-70). Similar Councils Were formed in Auckland and Wellington. In Christchurch a Working Men1s Political Association was formed during the same year (Morrell and Hall, 1957). By the autumn of 1890 workers had made up their minds to send working men to the
House of Representatives as well as to influence the election of Liberals who had promised in their manifesto to improve the conditions of working men (Reeves, 1956). (See Chapter Four which looks at the Liberal Government's responses to unemployment between 1891 and 1912).