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Paid Work: Working Men
Throughout the period 1890 to 1940 the
principle of the male breadwinner wage was
the basis of paid work. No matter how able-bodied
men were employed, they expected to be paid
enough to sustain a family. Employers as
well as their workers accepted this idea.
Social and political developments in New
Zealand from the 1890s reflected this consensus.
The working class families of the southern
Dunedin suburbs had modest economic aspirations.
These were based on owning a home and section,
maintaining economic independence and social
respectability, securing jobs and future
prospects for their children.
Most
people on 'the Flat' worked with their hands.
What you did for a living determined your
place in the scheme of things. There was
a community consensus respecting skill and
independence and the capacity for hard physical
work. The yardmen at Fletcher Brothers timber
yard are show in this photograph dating
from 1925. Yardmen did not serve an apprenticeship
but had to be fit, orderly and strong. (Fletcher
Challenge Archives)
Caversham
was sometimes called 'the carpenters' borough'.
In 1902 over 33% of its skilled workers
(137 men) were in the building trade. They
were mainly carpenters but there were also
joiners and cabinet-makers. These men were
highly skilled and proud of their craft.
They worked mostly in small business partnerships
and banded together in the Amalgamated Society
of Carpenters and Joiners to maintain a
tight control of their work environment
and conditions. This photo shows a range
of tools that belonged to Archibald McLaren
who employed eight men in his business in
South Dunedin in the 1930s. (Otago Settlers
Museum Collection)
Carpenters
worked with hand-held tools such as saws,
hammers, augers, chisels, straight and moulding
planes, and each tool had a number of specialised
variations. Well-made joints in timber were
complex, often with connected wedges and
pegs. By the 1870s, however, dressed timber
could easily be bought along with an expanding
range of joinery and kitset houses. This
advertisement from the late nineteenth century
shows the range used. (Caversham Project
Archives)
The
Hillside Workshops, established near Ogg's
(now Cargill's) Corner in 1874, were Dunedin's
biggest engineering factory and the largest
enterprise in South Dunedin. Skilled metal
workers made up over 20% of the Caversham
male population from 1902. Like the carpenters,
the men of the metal trades shared a craft
culture that was maintained and passed on
in the workshops of 'the Flat'. This scene
from the Hillside Railway Workshops of the
1920s shows the machine shop. The skilled
craftsmen are dressed in suits and ties
in contrast to the unskilled labourers found
in other parts of the workshops. (Timeframes
Online Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library,
National Library of New Zealand Te Puna
Matauranga o Aotearoa)
While
many southern Dunedin workers commuted to
work sites in the city, there were also
some large locally-based industries other
than Hillside. The Wax Vesta Match factory
provided many young women with jobs. This
machine, photographed in 1920, patented
in 1854, made the matches. About 20 lengths
of cotton were passed from a large cylindrical
down through a waxing machine, they were
then dosed by passing through another machine,
and the process repeated until the wax coating
was sufficiently thick. The tapers were
then rounded, cut, and set in dipping frames.
The entire process had been mechanized and
one person could prepare and dip 50,000
matches a day. The boxes, however, had to
be made and fitted by hand, and women did
this work. In 1905 the South Dunedin factory
employed 50 women. (Timeframes Online Collection,
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library
of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa)
The
advertising of the 1930s would not meet
our modern expectations or standards. Here
'Hori' and his grandfather illustrate the
march of Western industrial progress. (Caversham
Project Archives)
[Next:
Working Women]
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