Liam Butler interviews Emeritus Professor Erik Olssen

Liam Butler interviews Emeritus Professor Erik Olssen ONZM, PhD (Duke), FRSNZ & FNZAH

12 September 2014

Liam Butler

Erik Olssen is the author of Working Lives c.1900: A photographic essay which gives a rare and fascinating view into working class life and the nature of work in New Zealand's first industrial suburbs.

Erik Olssen ONZM, FRSNZ taught at Otago University for 33 years and was Professor of History 1984-2001. He has published over 70 articles and chapters on American and New Zealand history and has also written several books. For over 20 years he directed the multi-disciplinary Caversham Project, the country's largest investigation of urban social structure.

Question One:
In your research you examine the working lives of a variety of professions. Family businesses factor prominently in New Zealand's early economic prosperity. What lessons from keeping it in the family do you think our modern economy could learn?

Family businesses have always been, and still are important within the NZ economy. I'm not sure what lessons are to be learned, however, except that family ownership usually means that the business can not achieve either scope or scale (or needs lot of luck making the jump). The book is more about the importance of skill and the sense of dignity and importance that it conferred - and explores the interplay of manual skills and knowledge in the productive process, whether the potter, shoemaker, taxidermist ... These men developed a strong sense of social equity and used it to build a better future for themselves and for NZ. The book looks briefly at the extent to which incomes ranged, and the way the immigrants tried to ensure that inequalities were smaller than in Britain and that class and status were much less consequential. hey built a remarkably equal society.

Question Two:
You explain that in the 1890's in an effort to increase the use of Gas ovens started to be sold on hire purchase. Now days people can get a high interest personal within four minutes of a text message or become indebted by waving a piece of plastic near a till. Is this a cause for concern?
Workers c.1900 would have been surprised to see how easy it would become to obtain credit. Small businessmen - whether builders or doctors - lived in fear of bankruptcy. If your breadwinner lost his job or could not work, you usually had to rely on both your own skill at growing vegetables etc. and credit from the storekeepers, etc.

Question Three:
You include photos of well-dressed workers c.1900 enjoying their free cooked lunch and having time off to listen to a visiting Christian preacher. What role does economic history play in plotting our future?

These were prosperous times, especially compared to the Long Depression (1878-1895). Economic history has a large role to play, as does History. First, the historian ought to know what has been tried previously and what happened; the past also allows you to interrogate 'new ideas' and so modify, check, etc ...

Working Lives c.1900: A photographic essay
Paperback, 176 pp, B&W photos throughout, & colour paintings, $50
www.otago.ac.nz/press/booksauthors/2014/working_lives.html
Working Lives is a visual testament to the nature of work and a visual record of the dramatic transformation of the land: from wilderness to industrial and urban landscape.

"The selection of photographs focuses on Otago and the city of Dunedin for good reason," says author Erik Olssen. "In the 1870s the city became the colony's leading commercial, financial and industrial capital.”

The images portray the day-to-day circumstances of work in factories and shops; and the rituals that created cohesion among workers such as staff picnics or fellow workers' weddings.

The values and habits of life that evolved among the working men and women of the industrial areas in Dunedin came to permeate the city and the entire country. A belief in the positive value of work and the dignity of labour lay at the heart of the new culture.

"Work played a crucial part in the individual life, and the way work was organised fundamentally influenced how society developed," says Erik Olssen. "Our ideas about fairness and equality were shaped by this period - we are the products of this era.”

The photographs, rich with fascinating detail, include spontaneous moments: working men resolving a dispute with a round of boxing, navvies at work and women on the job in factories. Most have never been published before.

Working Lives c.1900 goes beyond what words alone can do - giving us a visceral sense of what working life was truly like in 19th-century New Zealand.

To enter the draw and win a copy of this book CLICK HERE
Competition closes 26th September 2014 Open to NZ residents only.

To read more articles like this go to ELDERNET GAZETTE

ENDS

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