The World of Work

3.28 The 1886 census included land use statistics relating to Maori which, for all the likely errors in enumeration, give a reliable general picture of the situation in the two counties, Thames and Coromandel, which then made up the greater part of the Hauraki region. Taken together, 1,812 Maori people raised crops on a mere 493 acres (of which 327 acres were in potatoes); they had just over 236 acres in sown grasses, as few as 125 sheep and 831 cattle and as many as 2,017 pigs. All these indicators point to an economy not just of a subsistence kind, but at a very low level of subsistence. When other forms of employment failed, as they often did, the situation would be dire—and it should be emphasised that the amount of land in Maori hands was to shrink even further after this year.

3.29 The evidence, though patchy and incomplete, is enough to suggest that while subsistence farming of a very primitive kind remained basic, in the early years of the gold rushes some Maori again became energetic farmers with an eye upon a local market. However, it also suggests that land sales and gum earnings diverted attention from farming. Some Maori, it is probable, took advantage or tried to do so of the employment opportunities presented by settlement. But a couple of items of early zoth century evidence would support the view that, although subsistence was basic, the earlier spirit of enterprise was not altogether lost. In 1908 Stout and Ngata reported that 2,500 acres had been recently broken in at Kennedy Bay and that there was 'fairly successful farming' to be seen at Ti Kouma and Manaia (AJHR 1908 cis). And in 1910, the parents of Puketui (Broken Hills), applying for a native school, described themselves, perhaps with some pride, as 'permanent settlers at this place. We have lands of our own, and lands leased by

US from Govt' (BAAA I00I 487b).

3.3o The overall conclusion to be drawn from a slender body of evidence is that, at best, Hauraki Maori shared a place at the lower end of the socio-economic scale with their more disadvantaged Pakeha neighbours. As late as the 193os it could be asserted that Maori did not need the relief from unemployment available to Pakeha because they had land of their own and could live off it. Perhaps, at least in some cases, that could be said of Hauraki Maori a generation or so earlier. Some communities, however, had no land or very little; even those which had some were vulnerable to crop failures which devastated entire villages. On the other side of the coin, their Pakeha equivalents appear to have enjoyed a prior claim to public works employment and could at least hope for some assistance from small farm settlement schemes. Further, with private employment, it may be conjectured that they benefited from an element of discrimination.

3.31 Further, the government's approach to the problem of unemployment, as shown by the Department of Labour, is informed by a concern for surplus urban-dwellers, the overwhelming majority of whom were Pakeha. In Departmental reports there are no figures specific to the Thames district, only aggregate Auckland figures, but it is reasonable to suppose that some Thames Pakeha benefited from its operations. Without trying to minimise the sufferings of the Pakeha poor, it may be concluded that they had some advantages which were not enjoyed to the same extent, or at all, by Maori in an equivalent or a worse situation.

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