The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
EMIGRATION.
WHEN grants of land ceased altogether, and were superseded by sales, the character of emigration to Australia, and even the motives which directed it, were materially changed. To Australia, previous to 1831, the same class of persons proceeded in small numbers, who by thousands have resorted, during the last ten years, to Canada, and, above all, to the western states of America—families with capital varying from fifty to five hundred pounds, intent on living on land of their own.
The distance, and the then little known capabilities, of Australia, would, twenty years ago, have made it, under any circumstances, a difficult task to direct towards its shores a similar stream of colonists; but the new system of so raising the price and the quantity of land sold, so as to discourage the purchases of all but the wealthy, and of devoting the proceeds to the importation of able-bodied labourers for their use, altered the whole character of the free colonisation. The new system was not without merits as a temporary expedient for supplying, as rapidly as possible, the demand for shepherd servants, occasioned by the abolition of the assignment system, peopling the shores of the newly-settled districts in Port Phillip and South Australia. But as a permanent measure the moral and social defects were, and are, very serious.
By the emigration land fund system the parent state is relieved of a certain amount of (surplus?) labour without expense, and the colonies are supplied with the same, in proportion to the amount received for the purchase or rent of land. According to the principles of the system, those who are rich enough to purchase or rent land (the minimum of rent Toeing 4,000 sheep) have a right to dictate what manner of labour shall be supplied for the money. The sort of labourers who suit the employers of labour are not often those who would contribute most to the intelligence and education of a colony. For a long series of years the Australian flockowners' beau-ideal of an emigrant was an able-bodied single man from an agricultural county — humble, ignorant, and strong.
The South Australian commissioners exhibited one halfpennyworth of sense, amid gallons of nonsense and jobbery, by introducing the system of pairs of both sexes. This was the one good feature in their system.
The Australian squatters, and all persons more or less in communication with, and able to influence, the home government, like our own agricultural and the American manufacturing interest, held two very strong opinions first, that their pursuit was the only calling of any consequence to the State; and, secondly, that it could not be protected too much. They always wanted labour, and it could not be too cheap.
We find them constantly desiring to bring down wages to a level which, if reached, would have very soon put a stop to all emigration, for it would have been lower than in England, and that was not worth crossing the sea to earn. We find them constantly desiring to dictate what class of labourers they would have, and that class specially in reference to sheep. We find them depreciating, not untruthfully perhaps, but untruly, the character of the Australian soil and of the Australian agricultural settlers. To them the Alpha and Omega of the Australian colonies was breed sheep, to grow wool and tallow.
Even when claiming a return to a low price of land, many desired to keep up the size of lots, so as to exclude small farmers from freehold.
The result we now see. For fifteen years the agents of the colony and the emigration commissioners have been recruiting and sending out emigrant recruits. Their most successful operations have been conducted in times of distress in the home labour market. The fund in the early period of the system down to 1839, when all the colonists were madly engaged in nodding at the government continental land sales, was sufficient to pay the passages out of fifty thousand emigrants. For a time the market was apparently glutted, but the increase of stock, and the judicious measures introduced by Caroline Chisholm, soon absorbed them. Soon arose an increased demand for labour. The land fund was dried up; sales at 1 an acre were few and far between, except in the copper-mining colony of South Australia; but by degrees he rents from pastoral occupations of crown lands became so large that security was found for an emigration debt, to which was added, from time to time, the produce of town and suburban lots, and, as the population increased, occasionally of choice rural land. But it occurred more than once that when labour was needed in the colony there were no funds, and, when funds were forwarded to England, that the commissioners found a difficulty in collecting suitable emigrants.
Indeed, until the discovery of the gold-fields, very few, except the utterly destitute among the labouring classes, turned their attention to Australia.
Committees on emigration were appointed by the Legislative Council in 1839, when the bounty system was in operation, in 1842, in 1843, and in 1845; and in 1843 and 1844 committees on the "distressed labourers" of Sydney collected important evidence bearing on the same subject. It is worthy of remark that in these, as in committees appointed by the British Parliament, witnesses have seldom been called from among the respectable mechanics and labourers who are most interested in emigration, and best acquainted with the emigrating classes.
The committee of 1839 reported that emigrants were being introduced at the rate of 12,500 souls a year, at a cost of about £17 per adult, expressed a decided preference for bounty over government emigrants, and recommended a loan to be raised on the security of the land fund, and devoted to emigration a bounty at £19 a head for adults only, excluding children, and very humbly prayed that the crown would devote the land fund, which they calculated at not less than £150,000 a year, to emigration purposes. It is curious to remark that the committee object to the introduction of emigrants over forty years of age. The government emigration agent had invited emigrants of fifty years of age. The gold discoveries have recently enlightened the pastoral interests to the value of parents of even sixty years of age.
In 1842 the committee repeat their preference for the bounty system, announcing that in the preceding twelve months 23,000 emigrants had been introduced, and the cessation of emigration, in consequence of the falling off of the land fund, to an extent unexpected by the home government. They gently hint at the propriety of a reduction of the price of land to five shillings an acre. The tone of the document is that of a respectable nominee council.
The committee of 1843 represented the wealthy squatting class, and the majority took an entirely colonial and pastoral view of the labour question. They wanted shepherds as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and nothing else. No seven-shilling a week farmer—no cottage-destroying landlord—no unlimited-time-of-labour manufacturer–no woman-employing coal-worker, could have taken a narrower view of the question.
There is unfortunately in all of us a germ of selfishness which, when unchecked by public opinion or political opposition, is apt to grow into injustice and tyranny. In private life the squatters were excellent, generous, hospitable men; but one large proportion consisted of old colonists accustomed to convict servants, who cost nothing beyond their board and lodging, and another of young bachelors of capital, who arrived in the colony to make a fortune, intent on returning to the old country as soon as it was made. The one despised, and the other were indifferent to the opinions of the working classes. Both dreamed of naturalising in Australia the miserable wages of the southern counties of England and the Highland counties of Scotland.
To resist the aggressions of Sir George Gipps on the pastoral interest the squatters had formed themselves into a protective association, and by an easy process the association, founded to resist unjust confiscation and taxation, branched off into a combination for permanently lowering the wages of the colony. At the head of this association was the late Mr. Benjamin Boyd. Mr. Boyd arrived with the express purpose of making investments at the time (1841) that the colony was in a general state of insolvency, or, as he expressed it, "in a jam." A yacht of the Royal Squadron, an apparently unlimited capital, an imposing personal appearance, fluent oratory, aristocratic connexions, and a fair share of commercial acuteness, acquired on the Stock Exchange, at once and deservedly placed him at the head of the squatocracy. His aim was the possession of a million sheep. He was the chief of the hundred thousand sheepmen, with whom he combined to obtain fixity of tenure for their sheep pastures, to put down small settlers, and to reduce wages.
At the period we are describing, from 1841 to 1844, the colonial labour market presented the most curious contradictions. The bounty agents were pouring in a crowd of most unsuitable persons, who, once landed, were soon left to shift for themselves. Among the merchants of the town of Sydney distress prevailed in consequence of the cessation of building and other works, the wages of mechanics were depressed to a rate before unknown, and newly-arrived immigrants were astonished at the low rate of pay for town labour, so different to the flaming representations of the crimps by whom they had been collected. But in the country districts, and especially in the bush, where sheep and cattle were breeding, while their proprietors were going through the insolvent process, wages were maintained; and the anomaly was presented of large bodies of men being employed at the expense of government, at high wages, at public works, on a sham labour test, while flocks were wanting shepherds in the interior. Several causes supported this anomaly: 1st, There was no government machinery for distributing newly-arrived emigrants; 2ndly, The preference of the squatters for single men left families on the hands of the government; 3rdly, The Squatters' Club were not sorry to see the government embarrassed by the presence of a large body of unemployed labourers in Sydney; 4thly, The dishonest conduct of certain masters in withholding or unfairly deducting wages promised had given the bush a bad name; 5thly, Many of the emigrants were of a class who, having left parish aid behind, liked to keep close to government rations and wages. All were engaged, as far as their short-sighted views would permit, in killing the golden goose of colonisation.
Mr. Boyd's evidence before the immigration committee of 1843 affords, when read with the notes we can supply, a fair specimen of the haughty, gentlemanly, selfish class he represented. He had then been eighteen months in the colony, and was employing two hundred shepherds and stockmen, besides artificers. He was building a town and port at Twofold Bay; had two steam-boats, and a schooner yacht, the Wanderer. He had devised a wild scheme of saving labour, by putting three thousand sheep, instead of eight hundred, under the charge of one shepherd, on horseback.
Mr. Boyd despaired of the prosperity of the colony "unless the wages of a shepherd could be brought to 10 a year, or about 3s. 10d. a week, with meat and flour, without tea and sugar." The two last had been previously universally allowed; but he expressed his intention of doing away with them, "being of very questionable utility and necessity, although such is the waste and extravagance here that 8 lbs of tea and 90 lbs. of sugar are consumed per head." He states, further, that he "had no difficulty in engaging shepherds at 10 with these rations, but much difficulty in getting men engaged at these low wages forwarded to stations, as they were generally picked up on the road." "Any money advanced towards travelling expenses was usually spent in public-houses;" and it is his decided opinion that "more than 10 a year only does harm to shepherds, by sending them to public-houses."
Mr. Boyd also mentioned how he had kindly given a free passage to Twofold Bay, distant 600 miles from Sydney, to one hundred labourers out of employ. He did not mention that, on their arriving there, those who refused to accept 10 wages were refused a passage back for less than 5 j and that, while a few strong men walked back over the mountains, those who remained created such a feeling in the country that Mr. Boyd could not venture to visit his stations until the time of the year when the police magistrate, with a guard of policemen, took his annual round.
Fortunately all squatters were not like the Boyd clan, and the productiveness of the land defeated the combination. Had it been otherwise, a very few years would have produced a servile war of men against masters. From the Boyd clan proceeded stories founded on fact, and dressed to suit a purpose, about allotments of land sold for quarts of rum, champagne drunk in buckets by shearers and shepherds, who insisted on having pickles with their [measley?] pork.
Another order of men, chiefly permanent colonists, residing on their own property, were represented by Mr. Charles Campbell as employing from fifty to sixty shepherds and watchmen. "He had been obliged by the pressure of the times, to reduce his old servants to 18 for shepherds and 16 for watchmen, and had not found them so reluctant to accept the reduction as he expected. He would hardly like to see wages lower." He thought a great oversight had been committed by settlers in neglecting to form villages on their estates. He says, "Many of those who now complain of want of employment in Sidney might have been comfortably settled up the country in small villages, containing from ten to twelve men, heads of families, in various callings. In the present state of things we employ, at sheepshearing and reaping, men who wander through the country, from one place to another, in quest of occasional employment. Many of these are handy, clever fellows, but unmarried, and of irregular and dissolute habits. All these men earn is frequently spent in the first public-houses they come to after leaving the station where they have been employed. If, instead of employing men of this class, the flockmasters and landowners had invited married emigrants to settle in small villages, by allowing them land at a low rent, and not attempting to monopolise their labour, permitting them to choose their own employer in the neighbourhood, we should have our reaping, mowing, and shearing done at a cheaper rate; and the emigrants, by means of the money made during the busy season, added to their earnings, would maintain their families well, and their children, from not being scattered, might have opportunities of learning to read and write, and of receiving religious instruction. Many would in a few years become small farmers—first as tenants, then as landholders, and in either capacity would increase the demand for labour."
This was sound sense in Charles Campbell, as contrasted with the selfishness of Benjamin Boyd; but although Mr. Campbell's views were afterwards enforced and illustrated with a large collection of facts gathered by the one great colonial reformer produced by Australia, yet 1851 found the pastoral interests as ill provided with permanent labour as 1843. The selfish maxims of Mr. Boyd's Bent Street Club prevailed after the ruin and death of the founder. The successful efforts to retain good land as sheep walks only,—to encourage the growth of sheep and discourage the rearing of children, found Australia, when the golden revolution broke out, largely dependent on wandering shepherds, bound by no ties, either moral or local, social or domestic, to the district or the land of which they had no share. Even at this hour short-sighted successors to the Boyd policy are attempting to forge legal bonds to retain the unwilling services of cheap shepherds, hired in Europe—anything rather than give up a share in the land monopoly, although it is melting from their grasp.
But while the governor, backed by the Colonial Office, was deep in the contest which killed him and deceived thousands—while the bounty crimps were pouring in their miscellaneous collections to work or saunter, or, if women, walk the streets while the squatters, losing sight of the just half of their claim, were factiously obstructing all government, and ready to ruin the bodies and souls of shepherds to save wool—an individual appeared, unencumbered with colonising theories, undebased by any mercenary objects, laborious in collecting facts, diffident in expressing new opinions, prepared to learn, willing to teach, and anxious to be useful to all conditions of men. This individual—Caroline Chisholm—the greatest, the only practical reformer and worker in colonisation of the age, who will be remembered and blessed by thousands following their flocks and cultivating their farms in Australia, when the names of the land-jobbers and charlatans of the "sufficient-price school," the "Protectionists of colonial capital," are forgotten.