The upper Te Mata Peak Rd was mostly formed by pick and shovel during the Great Depression.
The upper Te Mata Peak Rd was mostly formed by pick and shovel during the Great Depression.
The often quoted Wall Street crash of October 1929 in the United States has been pinpointed as the beginning of the Great Depression, which plunged the Western world into a pit of economic despair until the mid-1930s.
Many investors lost their money and reduced consumer spending and investment, resulting inbusiness failures and less demand for goods and services, with job losses following.
New Zealand was already showing signs of economic distress in the late 1920s with falling agricultural export prices.
Our major trading partner Great Britain reduced its exports to a level where many farmers who had borrowed to buy land at inflated prices during the 1920s struggled to survive financially.
With less money coming into New Zealand from exports, businesses felt the flow-on effects, and unemployment rose.
At the time of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake on February 3, the Great Depression had set in.
There were 509 men registered as unemployed during March in Hastings (population 12,000) and 400 men in Napier (population 16,000). Women weren't counted in those days.
Many of these men were doing voluntary work cleaning up earthquake debris and the government made available £10,000 in Napier and Hastings to pay them 14 shillings per day up to March 31. The work, however, as a condition from the government, had to be rationed amongst the men.
An unemployment relief work scheme to build the Te Mata Peak Rd was introduced in May 1931 to ease the unemployment problem and 165 men were employed to form it with pick and shovel.
Michael Fowler
In the winter of 1931, 800 Hastings men were unemployed. This was 5.2 per cent of the population of Hastings, and above the national average which was 2 per cent.
The situation during winter 1931 was dire, with many families destitute, unable to afford milk and having meat only once a week.
An Unemployed Workers' Association was formed in Hastings and organised fundraising to buy groceries for affected families (no welfare state then). Each member received weekly 1.8kg of sugar, 1kg flour, 2.7kg potatoes, .45kg rice, .45kg of bread, .23kg on tea and .02kg of tobacco.
In 1932 the unemployment situation in Hastings grew worse and peaked at 958 men in July.
A soup kitchen had opened in May 1932 in a building given rent-free by brewer Edward Newbegin. Farmers supplied sheep meat and others donated provisions and money. It opened every day between 4pm and 5pm for adults and children were fed soup and tapioca after school. A coupon system had to be introduced to stop abuse of the system.
The late author Barbara Anderson grew up in Hastings and recalled in her autobiography Getting There going with her mother as a young child to this soup kitchen where "mum and other men and women handed over food to long queues of men, women and children".
Barbara said the "queues worried her" and that the people were "not happy and eager like the queues at cinemas we occasionally saw, jostling a bit, laughing".
"These were the saddest faces I had seen."
"Why are they sad, Mum?" she asked. Her reply was "They're waiting for food. They'll be happier later on."
When it closed on October 1, 25,000 meals had been served. It was nicknamed the Good Cheer Depot due to the "spirit of unselfish devotion in which it was conducted".
Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a contract researcher, commercial business writer of Hawke's Bay history and now accepting commissions for 2022.
