John Brogden and Sons - Work in New Zealand

Work in New Zealand

Towards the end of 1870 the New Zealand Government, dominated by Sir Julius Vogel, the, Colonial Treasurer and soon to be Prime Minister, authorised the colony's first major railway construction programme. Vogel came to London to negotiate loans and concluded an agreement with Brogdens to construct railways and provide plant to the value of £500,000. He also negotiated a much larger alternative contract, subject to Parliamentary approval, which would give the colony £ 4,000,000 of railways and 10,000 immigrants in return for transferring 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km2) of land to the contractors.

James Brogden went out to New Zealand to complete them. He left Liverpool in August 1871 and returned to England early in 1873. The diary that he kept during his journey shows that he was engaged in very difficult and protracted negotiations. In October 1871 the New Zealand Parliament rejected the larger contract but allowed the ministry to negotiate an extension to the smaller one.

The government started their own immigration programme and also made an agreement with Brogdens that Brogdens would dispatch up to 2000 able-bodied men plus wives and children to a maximum of 6,000 adults. For this privilege Brogdens had to pay the government £10 per adult and could take promissory notes from the adult immigrants not exceeding £16 each. Brogdens hoped for great things and, under pressure from the New Zealand government began in April 1872 to ship immigrants. These immigrants, and rail workers in general in New Zealand, gained the nickname Brogdenites.

In England Brogdens were offering better terms than the New Zealand government, mainly in the sense that they paid most of the necessary costs themselves, relying on promissory notes from the immigrants, whereas the government wanted substantial payments in advance which were hard for a working man to find. For this reason the colony's Agent-General in London, Dr. Isaac Featherston directed staff to support the Brogden programme.

It was not easy to persuade men or families to leave their homeland. However the 1866 recession in copper-mining in Cornwall and bitter disputes between farmers and farm labourers assisted the recruiters. Charles Rooking Carter (1822–1896), a member of Featherston's recruitment staff who interviewed nearly all the "Brogden navvies", had been a Chartist sympathiser and an active propagandist for improved working class conditions before emigrating to New Zealand in 1850 and the campaign worked closely with the unions.

In 1872 the Company were given six rail contracts as follows:

• Auckland and Mercer: completed 1875
• Wellington and Hutt: reached Lower Hutt in 1874
• Napier and Paki Paki
• Picton and Blenheim: completed 1875
• Dunedin and Clutha: part opened 1 July 1874, completed 1 Sep 1875
• Invercargill and Mataura: part opened 12 February 1874, completed 30 Aug 1875

for sections of railway totalling 159 miles (256 km) at a cost of £808,000.

There were considerable difficulties in the operation of the contracts and the management of the men. During the period 1870-1875, power gradually transferred from the Provinces to the central government, partly because of the railway question. The Bill to abolish the Provinces was carried in October 1875 and implemented a year later. However in the interim it was very difficult for Brogdens to get clear prompt decisions. Brogdens got less work than they had hoped and it became available more slowly than expected. Communications between UK and New Zealand were obviously slow so it was difficult to know how many men to send at any given time. Sometimes Brogdens could not find work for the men when they arrived. Men reneged on their promissory notes. There were disputes over working hours, wages and whether they should be paid when the weather stopped the work. Gradually the men drifted away. By August 1873, 2172 English immigrants had been brought out. They included 1299 working-age men who were contracted to work for Brogdens for two years but only 287 of them were still working for them. Most of the men were agricultural labourers, rather than true navvies and they found local agricultural labour and working conditions more attractive than navvy work.

Consequently work was slower than expected and in 1879 the Company was in dispute with the New Zealand Government over contract payments. Bankruptcy soon followed.

Although this was not a happy result for Brogdens, the results for New Zealand and the families themselves were good. New Zealand obtained useful citizens who were very happy with their work, wages, food and social conditions. Their letters home encouraged more people to come. Many of today's New Zealanders have ancestors who were members of the families who emigrated at this time.