If it is valid to assume that the character and characteristics of a people are shaped mainly by racial origin and environment, there are facts about the European settlement of New Zealand, the influence of novel conditions of living upon the settlers, which may assist our attempts to trace and explain the evolution of New Zealand society into what it has become today.
European immigration during the nineteenth century was instigated by more than one cause, and it took place under a variety of circumstances. Missionaries and a motley crew of adventurers constituted the first arrivals. After annexation came the planned settlements that represented an attempt to put into practice the theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield or a modification thereof. In 1861 gold was first discovered in substantial quantities, and during the next seven years the country's population almost trebled; but the gold prospectors were a wandering people, apt to move on as soon as the goldfields were worked out, and the increase of population caused by their advent was not maintained. A still greater influx of new colonists took place between 1874 and 1878 during the operation of Sir Julius Vogel's immigration policy. The new arrivals were mainly of working-class origin, and their contribution towards the forming of a national character was probably greater than that of any preceding category of immigrants. When the great slump that began in 1879 deprived many of employment, they demanded that the Government, under whose sponsorship they had come to New Zealand, should assume responsibility for their welfare. A growing tendency to recognise this demand as being just and proper had wide implications. Before the century ended, a Liberal Government surpassed all its predecessors in accepting and acting upon the principle that the State is in duty bound to preserve the aged and indigent from destitution. Attempts were also being made by the State to regulate the conditions of labour.
English immigrants alone outnumbered the sum total of those from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, while immigrants from foreign countries, chiefly Germany and Scandinavia, formed an inconsiderable minority. Australians who had settled in New Zealand formed about 4 per cent of the total European population in 1878, but it is probable that they also came in the first place mainly from the British Isles. It may be seen, therefore, that the people who settled in New Zealand during the 50 years succeeding its annexation were to a very large extent homogeneous as regards racial origin; and, indeed, they have so remained ever since, for when the country's formative period came to an end, natural increase took the place of immigration as the principal factor making for growth of population. At the turn of the century, then, we find a cross section of the British people settled in a country where the temperate climate enabled them to resume, with modifications necessarily imposed by environment, their traditional way of life. In the course of doing so they had already acquired certain characteristics, some of which have since become inherent and more pronounced.
Since the earliest days of colonisation the new settlers had set their faces against the establishment of privilege or a privileged class. As time went on, social equality began to be viewed as an ideal that might actually be realised in a country where the influence of vested interests was less firmly established than in the Old World. A dawning conviction that the “deserving poor” had a valid claim upon the community led to the introduction of old age pensions in 1898 – one of the first and most significant steps taken towards building the modern system of social security which, making no distinction between deserving and undeserving, provides the citizen with maintenance in old age and with a medical service at nominal cost throughout his life.
The once cherished belief that without the fear of starvation working men would not be industrious has long since been exploded or at least modified, but it is still claimed that social security tends to destroy initiative, especially among those classes which derive the greatest benefit from it. No doubt there are some grounds for this view, but it is not only the working classes who have been content to trade some of their independence in exchange for security. Inevitably, State intervention has meant the added imposition of restrictions upon the freedom of private enterprise. Somewhat anomalously, increasing interference by the State in affairs formerly regarded as exempt from its control has been accompanied by demands for its further interference by businessmen and farmers who, it would seem, have been constrained by regimentation to abandon the spirit of jealous self-reliance that had been the pride of their forebears.
A contrast to this attitude is presented by the marked capacity shown by New Zealanders both in war and peace for practical improvisation, for self-reliance and self-help in emergencies. Their dexterity may be explained by the fact that from earliest times they have perforce been accustomed to turning their hands to a variety of tasks which, in more populous societies, would be left to members of some special trade. A scarcity of specialists in New Zealand has been responsible for the omnipresence of the “jack of all trades”.
The ideal of an equalitarian society has had its effect on the shaping of national institutions, manners, customs, and way of life in general. Its influence is readily apparent, for instance, in the educational system. Primary education was made free, secular, and compulsory in 1877. The free-place system in secondary schools, instituted early in this century, was thereafter steadily expanded until, on the eve of the Second World War, less than 1 per cent of the pupils in post-primary schools was paying tuition fees. In 1936 the proficiency examination, which primary pupils were required to pass in order to obtain free education at secondary schools, was abolished, and since then the system of social promotion, or the moving of pupils into a higher class automatically, regardless of their progress, has been adopted. Free university education is now available to any student who has passed a University Entrance Examination, in which the standard required is not very high. There has, indeed, been a practical adoption of the declared principle that “Every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he lives in town or country, has the right as a citizen to free education of the kind for which he is best suited, and to the fullest extent of his powers”. Most New Zealanders would endorse the broad intention expressed above, but complaints are sometimes heard that adoption of the principle of equality of opportunity for all means that, in consequence of extraordinary care being taken over the teaching of backward or average children, the brilliant or exceptional child receives less than his due measure of attention. Critics also allege that the qualifications required for entry to a university are not high enough, and that many students attend universities who are insufficiently advanced or gifted to benefit by doing so. On this whole question there are two schools of thought – one of which holds that no attendant disadvantage should prevent the door to higher education being kept wide open, while the other remains apprehensive lest worship of equality should become equated with tolerance of mediocrity.
It is not compatible with the egalitarian ideal that there should be sharp differences in the scale of monetary reward for services performed. In New Zealand, care of the underdog has long since been a more important consideration than is the case in very many other countries. Successive governments may claim with some justice to have abolished poverty, but this has not been done without there taking place a narrowing of margins between the rewards for skilled and unskilled labour, with its consequent denial of incentive to acquire skill, to strive for self-improvement. The country's citizens have come to regard social security as their inalienable right, but by taking too readily for granted the State's obligation towards themselves they are apt to lose sight of the converse proposition that they themselves have obligations to the State.
The reluctance to reward skilled labour at rates calculated to provide an incentive for acquiring skill has its counterpart in the reluctance to remunerate the nations' best scholars and scientists on a scale sufficient to keep a fair proportion of them at home.
The fact is often deplored that so many young men of the highest ability prefer to take up a career overseas, but it is doubtful whether higher salaries would stem their exodus in more than a minor degree. Under any circumstances, regardless of monetary reward, the intellectual élite would be tempted to go abroad in search of a wider field of endeavour than can be found in so small a country as New Zealand.
In a society where great wealth is regarded as antisocial, it is natural that ostentation should be looked at askance. Marks of distinction are liable to be a handicap. For instance, the politician who accepts a title does not usually improve his chances of gaining or retaining office by doing so. Richard Seddon, it will be remembered, consistently and doubtless wisely, refused to accept a knighthood. Wealth carries with it a minimum of prestige; it is a positive disadvantage to the aspirant to a political career. Strongly marked individuality or eccentricity are seldom in evidence among New Zealanders, and even where they do exist, the qualities are tolerated rather than appreciated. The rule of conformity prevails, and if the American writer, Sydney Greenbie, is to be believed, it has already produced a considerable measure of standardisation among the inhabitants of the Dominion. “In face and feature, in mind and taste,” writes Greenbie, “the modern New Zealanders are so much alike that it is hard to remember the names of persons you meet casually for lack of distinguishing characteristics to which the eye can cling.”
Under conditions such as those described above, it is not surprising that no privileged class should have come into existence through long possession of landed estate or other permanent source of income. Nevertheless, the claim that New Zealanders have developed a classless society can scarcely be substantiated. Snobbery, when discouraged in one quarter, is prone to appear in some new form elsewhere. Recent investigations by A. A. Congalton and R. J. Havighurst show that there is a fairly well defined and universal appreciation of the graduated social status attaching to various social occupations. Results of a survey in which a cross section of the public was asked to answer a series of apposite questions showed, for example, that doctors, lawyers, and big businessmen were graded above heads of Government Departments, clergymen, and university professors; that office workers rated higher than shop assistants, miners than wharf labourers, and so on. Incidentally, the investigation also brought to light the fact that any attempt to inquire into the existence of social distinctions within the community invariably roused resentment.
A privileged class being also a leisured class, its rejection is in keeping with a deep-seated belief that work has a virtue in its own right, without regard to its usefulness. In pioneer days, when hands were few and subsistence hard to win, it was indeed a crime to remain idle, and the habit of seeing idleness as a vice has endured. At the beginning of the great slump, when Forbes the Prime Minister, shocked at what he had seen of the “dole” during a visit to England, declared that so long as he retained office there would be no payment without work, his words appealed to a moral precept deeply inculcated not only in the minds of reactionaries but of many radicals as well.
Paradoxically though it may seem, working hours have long since been statutorily limited to 40 per week; and as the calendar is liberally sown with special statutory holidays, it comes about that a people who revere industry find themselves with an abnormal amount of leisure at their disposal. As a result, town-dwelling New Zealanders spend a great deal of time working at the improvement of their homes and gardens. “Do it yourself” is a popular motto, and strangers from abroad are often surprised at the number of citizens of the Dominion who build their own houses. Incidentally, the proportion of town dwellers is surprisingly high for a country that has only comparatively recently emerged from its pioneering stage. In New Zealand a greater percentage of the population live in towns of 2,000 inhabitants and upwards than is the case in France, Sweden, Norway, or Japan. Strict observance of the 40-hour week cannot, of course, be enjoyed by the entire community. For instance, a rigid limitation of working hours is impossible for the farmer with livestock to care for, and women, or at least wives, may not always share the generous allotment of leisure statutorily accorded to the male. They fully subscribe, however, to his view that the way to salvation lies in avoiding idleness, and many of them are well content to be martyrs to domesticity. In the country their tasks are unremitting; in the towns they enjoy the advantage of being able to commander the services of the family breadwinner on workless Saturdays, and the New Zealand male, either in town or country, is more ready and able than the males of most other countries to make himself useful about the house. In New Zealand cities there is no night life comparable to that of the cities of Europe and America. Good restaurants are few, mainly owing to the severe handicap imposed upon them by the licensing laws. As a result, entertaining is done almost entirely in the home.
But if the diversions that urban life has to offer them are somewhat limited, New Zealanders are fortunate in possessing other sources of recreation of which they take full advantage. Vast areas of forest and mountain range, virtually unpeopled, provide a splendid playground for the tramper and mountaineer. Game is not privately preserved and blood sports, such as are available, are open to all either gratis or on payment of a small licence fee. Horse racing is immensely popular. In New Zealand there are as many race meetings as weekdays in the year, and probably more racing clubs in proportion to the population than anywhere else in the world. Visitors to the country sometimes comment disparagingly upon the high degree to which sport is organised, and point out that, instead of being played for their own sake, games have always to be reduced to the terms of a competition. There may be some value in these objections but it should not be forgotten that efficient organisation enables a very much larger proportion of New Zealanders to take an active part in games and sports than would be possible under less systematic conditions. The national devotion to rugby football is another favourite theme for visiting commentators who are apt to forget, however, the more or less comparable devotion of Englishmen to the association game or of Americans to baseball. Even so, it is open to question whether a disproportionate amount of physical and mental energy is not concentrated on rugby football. Other less virile games are becoming increasingly popular in the Dominion of late years, but there is still a widespread inner conviction that virtue attaches to pastimes which demand physical endurance and in which one is liable to get hurt.
Sport, then, is considered manly, and manliness wholly desirable. In the past, preoccupation with this principle led New Zealanders to despise aesthetic values, and their habit of doing so dies hard. Nevertheless, it is dying. Interest in the arts has grown at an increasing rate ever since the First World War ended, and local accomplishment has advanced steadily. From earliest times new surroundings and splendid scenery have proved an inspiration for landscape painters, and the visual arts have always flourished in some degree. In literature, the initial impulse came from novel conditions of living which begot books of experience. Poetry came later with the growing consciousness of individual nationhood, and the last few years have seen the publication of several novels of real merit. During the great slump of the early thirties theatrical companies from overseas ceased to visit New Zealand, with the result that theatrical entertainment was undertaken by amateur local enterprise. The movement led eventually to the founding of a professional company which had considerable success before succumbing to financial difficulties. A second attempt on the same lines is in process of being made. Music was the last of the arts in which New Zealanders were to win distinction or show a practical interest. Several composers of talent have appeared during the past decade and a half. A National Orchestra, subsidised by the State, has come into being and a chamber music society owes its origin and success to the work of individual enthusiasts.
The Philistines, however, are still powerful among us. They complain because the National Orchestra is not a paying proposition. Their influence is indirectly responsible for the fact that articles for journals and periodicals or radio broadcasts are paid for at rates that would be rejected out of hand by representatives of unskilled labour. Artists, indeed, are not yet regarded as an indispensable or even an important section of the community. Congalton and Havighurst, when carrying out the investigations referred to above concerning the social status attaching to various occupations, did not find it worth while to include the occupation of “artist” within the scope of their inquiry, feeling obliged, no doubt, to recognise the prevalence of a materialistic attitude among the people whose tastes and prejudices they were endeavouring to discover and define. Not long ago a South African professor who held the chair of philosophy at one of our universities, noticed that whereas South African students had been content to take philosophy as a subject worth while for its own sake, New Zealand students were invariably anxious to ascertain whether knowledge of philosophy would be likely to increase their earning power.
Without the stimulus of discerning criticism, the arts are apt to languish, and in New Zealand criticism has never reached a high standard for several reasons. Only a very few journals and periodicals devote space to discussion of literature and the arts, and the rates paid to contributors are not calculated to encourage writers to make themselves expert in any special branch of criticism. There is also the point that in a small country where, so to speak, everybody knows everybody else, there is a strong disinclination on the part of critics to hurt the feelings of personal acquaintances. Mutual appreciation is comfortable but not conducive to improvement.
The influence of evangelicals and dissenters, that had so marked an effect on the moral tone of Victorian England, found its way to New Zealand as an invisible export and made itself felt before the colony was many years old. In pioneer days drunkenness was the chief vice among men whose living conditions provided few other forms of recreation. Well-meaning persons formed societies for the suppression of a social evil and importuned successive governments for legislation designed to discourage or prohibit the sale of liquor. The cause of temperance became associated with the cause of female enfranchisement, since it was generally believed that the women's vote would prove decisive in the anti-liquor campaign. Time has shown that the assumption was unwarranted. Nevertheless, for nearly four decades after its inception the temperance movement made steady progress, and at the end of the First World War national prohibition came within an ace of being enacted. Since then the cause of prohibition has steadily declined. Women have not given it the support that was expected of them. Its failure in the United States has shaken the confidence of many of its adherents. But the heirs of the puritans still flourish – men who, like Cromwell and his major-generals, believe that morality can be enforced by regulation – and their forlorn-hope campaign for prohibition obstructs much-needed reform of the liquor trade whose controlling agents have connived at, and doubtless benefit by, the dissociation of eating and drinking, “the gradual imposition of bare, crowded, stand-up, all-male bars; 6 o'clock closing; no food with drink; no drink with food”. An attempt to amend these conditions has been made recently by the institution of hotels under trust control, but the movement makes slow progress.
Though New Zealanders have persistently rejected prohibition, an untold number of them appear to have assimilated, unconsciously perhaps, a great deal of the prohibitionist propaganda that has been directed at them for so long. In their minds “drys” and “wets” represent and symbolise the forces of good and evil. A secret sense of guilt afflicts the national conscience and militates against a sensible approach to the licensing question. It is responsible, one may opine, for the laws excluding all women from public bars, even in the capacity of barmaids. Apart from this inconsiderable disability, the status of women in New Zealand is high. They were enfranchised (though not till long afterwards made eligible to sit in Parliament) a quarter of a century before the women of Britain. Today they form a large and important section of the labour force, and the percentage of married women in employment, though much lower than that of Britain and the United States, is slightly higher than that of Canada. The objective of equal work for equal pay has not yet been secured, but agitation for its attainment is now in process.
Eating in New Zealand is free from official regulation but private enterprise has done little to promote its infinite variety. During the second half of last century British working-class immigrants came from a land where meat was an expensive luxury to one where it was cheap and abundant. Not unnaturally, they tended to become largely carnivorous and their dietary preferences have been bequeathed to descendants who remain satisfied with a few variations on the theme of meat and two vegetables. New Zealanders have certainly never regarded cooking as one of the fine arts. Though prone to boast of certain delicacies peculiar to their country, they have not yet devised any special local dish. The toheroa, for instance, is the gift of a benign providence rather than a product of culinary skill. During the past 20 years an increased intake of foreign immigrants has been responsible for opening New Zealanders' eyes to a wider range of foodstuffs and showing them the way to more adventurous eating. But if their diet has in the past been monotonous and unimaginative it has at least proved wholesome. Before the Second World War New Zealanders could claim to be the longest lived people on earth. It is only recently that one or more of the Scandinavian races have surpassed them in longevity by a narrow margin.
The remoteness of their country has its effect on the attitude of New Zealanders towards the world at large. Curious to see its wonders for themselves, they are great travellers. Eager to learn about it from the written word, they are avid readers of books and newspapers. At the same time the experience of living in a land apart has imbued them with an insular pride that prompts them to maintain a somewhat exaggerated estimate of the excellence of their own institutions. Though anxious to learn and fully aware that nothing is to be gained by pursuing self-sufficiency, they are oversensitive to outside criticism, even though it be constructive. Visitors who comment unfavourably risk execration by the local press.
On the question of whether they speak English with a distinctive accent and, if so, whether that accent is pleasing to the ear, New Zealanders are always interested in hearing outside opinion, though not always pleased by the judgment it pronounces. The view that hardly any accent is noticeable seldom fails to please; yet it is not admissible. A definite New Zealand accent had certainly been developed by the turn of the century, if not earlier, and it seems justifiable to assume that it came into being while the first native-born generation was growing up. Local variations of the accent have not developed to any marked extent, possibly owing to the fact that from earliest days New Zealand's population has been subject to movement, mingling, and interfusion. Opinions differ as to whether inhabitants of the various provinces can be distinguished by their speech.
The European New Zealander, or Pakeha, preferring to feel that relations between his own race and the Maori are on a thoroughly satisfactory basis, is in the habit of claiming that there is no colour bar. The claim is not wholly valid. All other things being equal, Pakehas receive preference when it comes to obtaining employment or lodging, and complaints are sometimes heard that Maoris are discouraged from patronising certain hotels. In 1939 Maoris formed approximately one-twentieth of the total population. Today they form approximately one-fifteenth. Their increase, which is likely to continue, may have the effect of putting to the test the claim that no colour bar exists.
For three-quarters of a century or more, after European settlement first began, the two races were engaged in a struggle, violent and otherwise, for the possession of a vital bone of contention. The Europeans wanted land to hold as individuals, to settle upon and farm with modern methods. The Maoris wanted to keep their lands under the old tribal system. They were neither able nor specially willing to use these lands to the best advantage, nor would they sell areas large enough to satisfy the Pakeha. The ensuing deadlock was broken by war and confiscation, after which the process of native dispossession was continued by purchase. Resentment smouldered among the Maori people and at length a national revival known as the Young Maori Movement inspired the race with fresh courage in its struggle to survive the impact of civilisation by learning how to profit from what civilisation had to offer. As time went on the Pakeha began to review his governments' past conduct with a more critical eye, and in consequence considerable sums of money were paid to various tribes to compensate them for the lands they had lost through confiscation. More important still, the State began to sponsor plans for Maori welfare, for land settlement, better education, and better housing. But long before they could derive advantage from these benefits, the Maoris had already, from one cause and another, lost the greater part of their lands. The 10 million acres remaining to them in 1891 had been reduced to five million in 1919, and today the figure stands at approximately four million. Meanwhile their numbers have almost trebled in the past 40 years, and calculation shows that their remaining lands can only support a small and ever-diminishing proportion of their total population as farmers and farm hands. City life attracts them and, as they can easily find employment in the towns, a migration thither is taking place. At present they find employment mainly in the unskilled occupations, and until they can be induced to avail themselves more fully of secondary and higher education it is scarcely possible that a larger proportion of them should find their way into white collar occupations. The difficulty of adjusting themselves to unaccustomed surroundings is largely responsible for their many troubles. Maoris who abandon their time-honoured way of communal rural life to become city dwellers are faced with the challenge of novel conditions. That this challenge should meet with an adequate response is a matter of grave importance, not only to the Maoris but also to all the people of New Zealand.
by Randall Mathews Burdon, M.C. (1896–1965), Author, Wellington.