Factors in Accelerating Growth of Hauraki Milling

During the 1860s milling of the kauri forests became of a quite different order of magnitude—output accelerated. But in the expansionist 1870s, growth was exponential. Some of the factors in this leap need to be separated out.

Technical change

Whereas the earliest sawmills were small-scale affairs utilizing pit-sawing or power derived from water-wheels, in the 1860s they gave way to steam mills, enabling the industry to meet the sudden explosive demand for sawn timber. Heavy investment in machinery continued until, by 1886, Auckland sawmills 'with the most approved machinery' and 'the most efficient appliances' were 'classed amongst the best in the world'.67

Demography

The apparently insatiable domestic demand for kauri (until the Great Slump overwhelmed the colony in the early 1880s) had its origins in the population explosion of the later nineteenth century.

TABLE 1: POPULATION TOTALS

Note 1: Estimate. Suburban figures not given in Census

Note 2: Figure does not take in whole goldfield Source: Censuses, 1861, 1874, 1901

Although the Auckland totals are significant, so are those for New Zealand as a whole, as kauri was used as the prime building material throughout the whole colony, especially in urban areas.

The burgeoning construction industry

A rapidly expanding population and the need to overcome the paucity of capital assets of pioneer days—buildings, wharves, railways, etc.—interacted to make construction the largest single industry in Australasia in the nineteenth century.68 But only a limited

67 AJHR, 1886, C-3, p. 25.

68 N.G. Butlin, Investment in Australian Economic Development, 1861-1900, Cambridge, 1964, chapters 3, 4, 5; also J.A. Dowie, 'Studies in New Zealand Investment', PhD thesis, University of Canberra, 1965, passim.

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