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CHAPTER 17
More Shortages

IF men and rubber were the outstanding shortages in 1942 and 1943, housing was probably the most intrusive from 1943 onwards. Building, severely reduced during the Depression, was brisk in pre-war years and continued strongly for almost two years into the war; good cheap homes for workers were a major target of the Labour government. Its housing scheme, begun in 1937, produced thousands of sturdy houses. They were roofed with tiles to promote local industry and save overseas funds and were placed sometimes in large groups in outlying suburbs, sometimes on small pockets of land available amid other development. They were built by private builders under contract to the Housing Division (part of the State Advances Corporation until 1944, then transferred to the Public Works Department), which bought the land and designed the houses. There were two, three and four unit dwellings as well as single ones and, in the cities, a few blocks of flats. The units each had two or three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bathroom and laundry; single houses had a living room, usually a meal alcove off the kitchen and two to four bedrooms. They were not for sale but were leased by the State Advances Corporation. Rents, starting at 12s 6d a week in a four-unit dwelling, varied according to room space, from 26s for a standard four-roomed house up to 32.s. Details were standardised and general appearance was fairly uniform, but care was taken not to make this too obvious: there were about 300 type plans in use and individual houses in each group were different.¹

The government held that the war did not lessen the need for houses, rather that it was an added reason for them; the shortage after the last war had been a tragedy. The State scheme would close down only if this would help to beat Hitler.² For the first two years of the war, house building continued buoyantly. During 1937–8 399 State dwellings were completed; 2665 in 1938–9, 3395 in 1939–40, 3966 in 1940–1, 3208 in 1941–2.³ At the outset,

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materials were plentiful and heavy defence construction demands did not suspend civilian building.⁴

Costs of private building soon began to rise but not prohibitively: in May 1941 some Auckland architects gave the average current cost as 22s 6d a square foot compared to 20s before the war. There was ‘keen demand for a good type of house’. Some cost between £2,000 and £4,000, but the majority cost less than £2,000. In those of larger size there was a tendency to prefer the ‘Georgian period of architecture’ to strictly modern design, and Auckland appeared to be evolving a home which could be described as English domestic, with larger windows appropriate to the climate. Modernistic planning appeared most often in houses of medium size and cost, their streamlined effects achieved with concealed roofs and rounded bays and sun porches. Stucco finish had been improved and was expected to lessen both fire risk and painting while promoting new ideas in construction. The trend towards simplicity helped to offset diminishing supplies of imported materials: ceilings were plain, there were flush doors, and often one-colour interior paint and paper schemes— cream was very popular and correct. There were many built-in cupboards, sometimes built-in dressing-tables and tallboys, even beds. Many roofs were tiled, and local factories were producing baths, sinks and other fittings of good quality but limited design.⁵ Among the informed, new ideas were arriving and people were becoming more critical of house design. A European architect wrote: ‘The modern house has arrived, though sometimes not at its best. As everywhere else, the first superficial approach towards modern housing seems satisfied with a flat roof instead of a tilted roof and windows a bit larger than previously.’⁶

During 1941 shortages began to pinch. In mid-June the Director of Housing (G. W. Albertson) said that shortage of material was not sufficient to have a pronounced effect on the building programme, but shortage of labour was troubling contractors throughout the country and was most noticeable at Auckland and Wellington; 4300 men were employed on State houses in place of 6000 two months earlier. Since January, as Building Controller, he had faced the task of supervising the distribution of labour and materials to ensure priorities: defence, primary production, factories making articles that could not be imported, hospitals, housing. It was necessary to obtain his consent for the erection of any building which would cost £2,000 or use more than half a ton of steel.⁷ By

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the end of the year a number of houses could not be finished for lack of items such as electrical cables and equipment, baths and piping.⁸

With Japan's entry, defence construction thrust all other demands aside. Local bodies now had to submit every building application to the Building Controller, who from 1 June 1942 was supported by an active committee and numerous sub-committees.⁹ Electric cables were acutely short.¹⁰ Labour for private building was unobtainable, and from mid-April State housing contracts, which had already slowed very much, were suspended.¹¹ Towards the end of the year the exclusion of labour from private building, alterations and repairs was eased slightly in some areas, including Auckland,¹² but in the Wellington–Wairarapa area the earthquakes of 24 June, 2 August and 3 December 1942 were a further cause of diversion and delay. Thousands of chimneys were wrecked and roofs damaged, cracks in some city buildings called for complicated and extensive repairs, while from some apparently sound buildings parapets were removed.

Meanwhile, full employment with higher wages and overtime meant increased demand for existing houses. In 1942 the shortage was officially estimated as 20 000.¹³ Workers came to the cities for war jobs, wives came to be near their husbands in camps. With prices rising and expected to rise still further, house buying was both a sound investment and a tempting speculation, though rent controls curbed quick fortune-making to some extent.¹⁴ At Wellington, where sites were limited, building costs high and where government employees had multiplied rapidly during the past few years, the demand was particularly strong. As early as February 1941, a Wellington land agent stated that flats had come to stay, that but for the Fair Rents Act¹⁵ land agents could sell 70 per cent more houses than they were selling and that low deposits of £200 or £300 were becoming scarce.¹⁶ In November 1941, an agent declared, ‘We are not facing a first-class housing crisis. We are past that stage’; another spoke of an avalanche of buyers and of house dealers buying for cash, renovating cheaply and making £400 to £500 on each deal.¹⁷

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In July 1942, another agent said that if he had them, he could let 30 houses or flats in two or three hours, a state of affairs which he feared was going to be chronic.¹⁸ Already, those concerned with the rehabilitation of servicemen were troubled by the gap of several hundred pounds between the value of a house and its inflated ‘scarcity value’.¹⁹

At Auckland in May 1942 there was talk of a boom; land agents for several weeks had been exceptionally busy and house values were rising. A suburban home, which 12 months earlier would have changed hands at £1,300, sold for £1,525 within 24 hours of being placed on the market; a house sold by the builder for £1,750 was sold again six weeks later for £2,500. There were many cash sales and otherwise the minimum deposit was often one-third of the purchase price.²⁰ In Dunedin sales were brisk, with houses long regarded as unsaleable changing hands.²¹ At New Plymouth, prices which 12 months earlier would have been far too high were paid without hesitation; 60 persons had applied to rent one house; 46 wanted a small house at £1 5s a week, 16 applied for another at £2 2s a week.²²

By 1943 the Auckland boom was called ‘fantastic’. Houses a few years old were selling at 50 per cent above their 1940 price. One, built for £2,000 in 1936 on a £725 section, sold for more than £5,000; for another, which cost £1,600 to build on a £400 section, a £4,000 offer was rejected. The big money was along the eastern waterfront and the hills above—St Heliers, Mission Bay, Kohimarama, parts of Orakei and Remuera—but substantial margins were paid in other districts also.²³ At the same time an agent recorded 300 applications for half a house (three rooms and use of a kitchenette), some offering a £20 bonus; another agent said that he had not had a house to let for nearly a year.²⁴ There were many complaints of houses inadequately converted for rooming, and of over-high rents: for example, two rooms, a kitchenette and shared conveniences cost from £2 5s to £3 10s a week;²⁵ an airman on £9 a week paid £3 16s for a flat for his wife and two children²⁶ and a

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serviceman's wife with two children and a third expected paid 22s 6d for one room.²⁷

The Fair Rents Act of mid-1936 affected only dwellings let between 27 November 1935 and the date of its passage and it did not apply where rent exceeded £156 a year. It held rents to those payable at 1 May 1936; change was achieved through landlord or tenant appealing to a magistrate. In 1939 it was extended to flats and apartments.²⁸ In October 1942 a further extension tried to close avenues of exploitation. For every house or part thereof let as a separate dwelling, the basic rent was that paid on 1 September 1942 and for those let for the first time after that date it was the amount first paid. Rents could be raised only by appeal to a magistrate or by agreement, approved by a factory inspector, between landlord and tenant. It became an offence to refuse a would-be tenant because he or she had children.²⁹ However, the Act did not apply to rents that included payment for food, such as a breakfast tray. This exposed many of the poorly paid to exploitation: for example, an apprentice paid 30s for a bed and morning tray in a room with eight beds.³⁰ Returning soldiers, single men, found that many boarding houses had changed expensively into bed-and-breakfast establishments.³¹

Overcharging was linked with overcrowding. Background standards were not high. Traditionally, many workers in rural areas were used to fairly primitive accommodation and in town many lived in cheap houses built by speculators. Again by tradition, each family desired its own house. Flats were a relatively new conception; they had not been built extensively and were mainly in small blocks. Rooms with meals included were often let, mainly to single persons. There were many boarding houses taking permanent guests at fairly modest rates. Sub-division into agreeable flats of larger, older houses, where families had shrunk and servants departed, was going on modestly. But the biggest pressure for housing came from people who could not afford such accommodation. For them, subdivision often involved merely the installation of a stove, cooker or gas ring in the general kitchen, in the rented room itself or in a hall, passage, landing or laundry. Some owners and tenants let a room or rooms, nominally as separate apartments, with common use of totally inadequate cooking, bathroom, lavatory and washing facilities. Very

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high rentals were obtained from the cumulative effects of sub-letting.³²

This situation was well established long before the war. In 1935 the Housing Survey Act was passed as a preliminary to planned reform. Local authorities in all boroughs and town districts with populations of not less than 1000, two suburban Road Boards, and any other authority named by the Governor-General in Council, were required to make housing surveys. By March 1939 these had been made in 115 of the 119 areas concerned and they covered 225 363 dwellings where 901 353 people lived. Of buildings used as dwellings, 31 663 were classed as unsatisfactory but repairable; 6827 were totally unsatisfactory. In 23 768 dwelling units equipment was only partly satisfactory, totally unsatisfactory in 20 096. There were 9835 overcrowded dwellings with 14 761 surplus persons in them, surplus in terms of the rooms and space occupied. In 27 214 dwellings accommodation below the defined minimum standard was provided for 68 405 surplus persons.³³

During the Depression many people had perforce accepted deplorable conditions. With the war, although money was more plentiful, the housing shortage intensified. A number of city boarding houses were closed, being taken over by the government as Service, Fire Service or departmental hostels.³⁴ Shortage of manpower and building materials made renovations more difficult. People, realising that there was no alternative, simply packed in.

‘Under existing by-laws’, stated an article in the Dominion in November 1943, ‘no minimum requirements are laid down for a dwelling house for use as a family unit. It might be a single room, and often is, in which a family sleep, cook, eat or work. There are in Wellington hundreds of houses [ie, dwelling units] without a bathroom.’³⁵ Another article stated that large rooms had been divided, sometimes by box-like partitions, into four separate rooms. Married couples with two or more children, were living in one room, in the same building as single men, with only one bathroom and water closet for 15 to 19 persons, some with no cooking facilities.³⁶

These evils were not ignored. In Wellington, where pressure for rooms developed earlier than in Auckland,³⁷ a committee of eminent

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citizens,³⁸ looking into social and moral problems, notably prostitution and excessive drinking, in August 1943 found that bad housing was a ‘foundation problem’. An official survey in 1937 had reckoned Wellington's shortage of dwellings as 7000; this had grown to 10 000, which led to the ‘grossest over-crowding’, and in some cases to social and sexual immorality. Rack-renting of girls on low wages, combined with the flood of servicemen, was producing malnutrition, bad health and prostitution. In some two-storeyed houses, of good appearance, let as rooms or so-called flats, the ‘normal amenities for domestic decencies are crude or are absent altogether’ and cooking facilities were often missing. Girls coming to Wellington could take rooms in apparently decent houses, then find themselves in a semi-brothel, where from force of circumstances they might stay and soon accept prevailing conduct as the way things were. It was not suggested that such conditions were general but the committee had evidence of ‘20 premises where to unprincipled greed are added immoral influences.’ Several had been placed out of bounds to servicemen on account of disorderly behaviour, ‘wallet rolling’ and venereal infection.³⁹

In November 1943, Wellington's Hospital Board called the housing situation ‘shameful’, bad for the health and morale of the people, and began to prepare a report.⁴⁰ At about the same time 26 organisations, including the Association of Scientific Workers, the National Council of Women, the Business and Professional Women's Club, the Federation of University Women, the Vocational Guidance Centre, the YWCA and the student associations of Victoria University and the Teachers' Training College, formed the Citizens' Housing and Accommodation Investigation Committee. It aimed to co-operate with the committee already working under Councillor Nimmo, and with other concerned parties, investigating thoroughly various aspects of the housing problem, including the working of the Fair Rents Act, bath and laundry facilities and the availability of meals, in order to publish reports which would move the City Council and the government to action.⁴¹

Wellington was not alone in such investigation. Early in 1943 a Christchurch City Council survey of 4122 dwellings, 639 apartments, 97 boarding houses and 394 combined dwelling and business

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places found 49.35 per cent to be satisfactory, 45.9 per cent unsatisfactory but repairable, 0.7 per cent overcrowded and 4.13 per cent due for demolition. Many houses which looked attractive enough from the street were divided into rabbit warrens, and rents for rooms containing a bed, small table, chair, sink and cooker ranged from 6s to 27s 6d. A single block of apartments contained 99 units housing 116 people; they had eight lavatories, five wash-basins, seven baths and two wash-houses; one room measured 8ft by 7ft 3ins. This survey deduced that many recently built flats were too expensive for men with families on £4 to £6 a week, who perforce had to share dwellings.⁴²

Drive towards improvement was impeded as building and renovation became impossible, while many felt that the pressures would ease with the end of the war. Armstrong, Minister of Housing, said in mid-1942 that, but for the war, legislation on rents and conditions of flats and rooms would have been passed already: people were being ‘unmercifully exploited’, there were houses without bathrooms and with appliances 20 years out of date. A Housing Improvement Bill was being drafted which included provision of government loans, at very low interest, to owners who could not afford necessary renovation.⁴³ The draft bill was available to the bodies which would administer it, whose suggestions were considered before it was re-introduced during the 1945 session for its second reading.⁴⁴ It became operative from 1 November 1945 and thereafter, with advice from the Health Department, regulations implementing its provisions were devised.⁴⁵

Senior Labour member of Parliament, James Thorn, in the New Year of 1944, wrote that the housing shortage was one of the gravest internal problems facing the government. In the previous September there had been 28 031 applications for State houses, of which 11 955 were assessed as urgent, some very urgent, ‘indeed, desperate and tragic’. Many of the others were not urgent but resulted, claimed Thorn, from the excellence of State houses and their reasonable rent. Many people who might otherwise have thought themselves satisfied, on seeing these houses and finding the rents to be 10 to 20 shillings a week less than their own, immediately applied. Applications came from 140 towns and smaller places, but 22 273 were from the three main cities: Auckland, total 11 575, urgent 3068; Wellington, 8698, urgent 5002; Christchurch, 2000, urgent 1282.

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About 16 000 State houses and flats had been completed since 1936: in Auckland 5422, in Christchurch 1488 and in Wellington, which had been distracted by preparations for the Centennial, 2741. Between December 1941 and November 1943 only 507, a ‘tragically inadequate’ number of State house units, including the 116 Dixon Street flats, had been completed in Wellington.⁴⁶

In May 1944 the city engineer reported that Wellington's housing shortage was going from bad to worse: the total number of new houses erected during 1943–4 was 142, well below the normal average of 700 residential buildings a year.⁴⁷ There were, however, complaints from several parts of the country, including Christchurch and Taranaki, when Semple as Minister of Works proposed to bring in 350 carpenters and others in building trades to hasten the 800 State houses contracted for in the Wellington area.⁴⁸

From 1943, with men released from the home forces for industry and returning soldiers righteously demanding homes, the problem grew worse, especially at Auckland and Wellington where industrial growth was largest. The population of the Auckland district, said Mayor Allum, had increased by 25 440 between 1940 and September 1944.⁴⁹ There were then 1375 ex-servicemen and 13 776 civilians in Auckland wanting State houses, while Wellington had 1243 house-hungry ex-soldiers and 10 808 civilians, Christchurch 503 ex-soldiers and 2578 civilians, Dunedin 206 and 975 respectively.⁵⁰ Servicemen had a 50 per cent preference in allocation and the RSA wanted 75 per cent. There were distressing cases. A woman, her three children and husband returned after five years in the Air Force, were living in one room. A returned soldier, whose wife was pregnant, was paying 25s for a room 10ft by 12ft, up two flights of stairs, the bathroom shared with 12 other tenants. Another, whose four years in the Army had included Greece and Crete, was living with his wife on the sunporch of a five-roomed house occupied by four families totalling nine adults and two infants. A couple lived in a basement flat with no fireplace, poor ventilation, continual dampness and a bedroom 6ft 6in high. An ex-serviceman was living in a ‘garage’.⁵¹

Auckland's problems were enhanced by the increasing urbanisation of Maoris. For years they had been coming in from country areas, drawn by better pay, more varied jobs and the idea of city

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life, but this movement had accelerated with the war. In 1935 there had been 1800 Maoris in the metropolitan area; in 1943 about 10 000 lived there, more than one-tenth of the whole Maori population of 97 000, while more than 30 000 lived north of Mercer.⁵² More than 2000 Maoris were employed in Auckland's essential industries, with the girls doing notably well in boot and shirt factories.⁵³ There was strong reluctance to let houses and rooms to Maoris, who then inevitably crowded into the slum areas, accepting dismal conditions and thereby augmenting the idea that the worst would do for them. No one favoured the idea of setting up a Maori quarter in the city, said George Graham,⁵⁴ secretary of the Te Akarana Maori Association, but Public Works Department hutments near work places would be better than Auckland back streets; the suburban Orakei block could be developed to house the whole Maori population of Auckland and keep them, especially the women, away from the temptations of the city. A residential area there or elsewhere was urgently needed.⁵⁵

When A. S. Richards, Labour MP for Roskill, visited some Maori housing, the disturbing reports that he had heard were confirmed. For 30s a week, a family of eight (six children) lived up a narrow staircase in dingy rooms sub-let by a Maori tenant who paid 10s. In a basement room 10ft by 20ft three men, three women and four children lived, for £1 a week; since the men were in essential work, sometimes on night shift, they could afford a house but were refused one because they were Maori. Two men slept on a table in a cellar without a window. Ten adults and two babies lived in two rooms, five people cooked and slept in a room 15ft by 12ft; seven adults and five children lived in three rooms, one only 8ft by 9ft; there were 14 people in two rooms; a family of 11, three children, three older girls and five adults, lived in one room. There was evidence of much effort to make the best of wretched conditions; Richards noticed the pervading smell of boiled clothing, and white linen hanging on the lines. Facing the obvious need for action, the Health Department said that Maori housing was the responsibility of the civic authorities, who said that it was a task for the government; meanwhile three times as many Maori as white people had tuberculosis.⁵⁶ A supporting editorial declared that there was a need for all to help, as all had helped with defence needs a year earlier.⁵⁷

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Little, however, was done except that an Army camp was taken over and improved for about 200 men from Rotorua and other districts. There was an overseer to supervise, catering was done by contract, there was a large recreation hall, and social life was run by a committee of the Maori War Effort Organisation. The men, with a very low rate of absenteeism, went in trucks to and from the freezing and phosphate works in Westfield and to tanneries and brickyards at New Lynn.⁵⁸ Again in Auckland a few small hostels for Maori girls were set up⁵⁹ and, in a temporary building in Airedale Street, a Methodist-run club for young Maoris.⁶⁰ By August 1944 Auckland Maori leaders, including returned soldiers, despairing of government taihoa (procrastination), decided to raise £7,000 by asking Maoris in the city to donate £1 each as a start towards creating a Maori centre on a large suburban site where buildings to accommodate a number could be provided. This self-help, declared the Auckland Star, should be no substitute for action by the Rehabilitation Department but should supplement it to meet a growing evil and to find temporary homes for returned men; positive and earnest assistance was needed in the acquisition of a site and the planning of buildings.⁶¹

In the election campaign of 1943 both parties promised houses. Labour reminded that it had built 15 000 State rental homes before the war closed in, and promised expansion at the war's end which would complete 16 000 dwellings a year.⁶² Holland declared that houses would be priority number one if the National party were returned. He held that rents were too high and proposed that tenants should be able to buy State houses.⁶³

During 1943, the inflation of house prices was curbed by the Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Act, which established the Land Sales Court, a court of record, the consent of which was necessary for all land transactions. It worked through local Land Sales Committees which settled prices of house properties based on the value in December 1942, increased or reduced to a fair value according to improvements or changes. These bodies had a restraining effect on property prices generally, though on a sellers' market vendors could arrange for the fixed prices to be recorded and extra sums

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to be paid secretly. Some cases came to light and others were suspected.⁶⁴ At a Christchurch RSA meeting in June 1944, for instance, it was said that there was a ‘fair amount of razzling going on’. Sellers were asking buyers to backhand the difference between their prices and those fixed by the committees.⁶⁵ Open charges about such demands were not often made; pay up and shut up was the style.

Prices for newly built houses were also rising. The Associated Chambers of Commerce called a conference of building organisations which reported that a standard house, privately built but very similar to a government house, which in 1939 would have cost £1,400 would in November 1944 cost £1,800; to this increase materials contributed £126, labour £200 and sales tax about £52.⁶⁶

After the slowdown of 1942–3, it was not easy to get housing under way again: skilled labour was short and so were materials, timber shortages being added to the lack of piping, electric cable and fitments which had already delayed the finishing of many houses. War had exhausted timber stocks. Wooden ships had been built for American use in the islands and, apart from New Zealand camps, enough timber for 2200 houses had been built into Pacific camps.⁶⁷ So many boxes and crates were used for sending foodstuffs to the Pacific and elsewhere that the need for radiata pine exceeded the supply and considerable quantities of rimu and matai, normally building woods, were used for packaging.⁶⁸ There were competing demands. Farmers required timber to maintain or further production; with Australian hardwoods unobtainable, deferred bridge repairs needed rimu, matai or totara; shortage of bricks and bricklayers increased builders' calls on wood, while supplies of rimu, etc, from the South Island were often delayed by shipping.⁶⁹

The earlier cutting off of Japanese oak and lessening of Australian imports had turned attention to native hardwoods, notably tawa which when kiln dried and treated with Pentachlorphenol was found suitable for finishing, interior fitments and furniture. Tawa was the only native timber of which production notably increased over the war years, from 116 534 board feet in 1938–9 to 5 327 046 in 1945–6.⁷⁰ Totara production remained fairly constant, at about 11 million board feet in each year of the war; beech increased slightly

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from 9 million in 1938–9 to 12 million in 1945–6; matai dropped from more than 22 770 000 board feet in 1938–9 to about 19 million a year during the period 1941–6.⁷¹ Radiata pine was beginning its march towards being New Zealand's leading timber. In 1938–9, 41 867 513 board feet of it were sawn, 13 per cent of all wood cut; in 1945–6, 96 819 028 board feet, 28 per cent of the total. When kiln dried and treated, it served well in furniture, joinery and building, but in 1945 the trees, though they were beginning to produce large quantities of flooring, were not yet big enough to yield many weather-boards. Rimu, growing not in convenient plantations but in forests more and more remote, remained the essential building timber. The 1945–6 production of about 175 million board feet was nearly 13.5 million less than in 1938–9.⁷² War Cabinet in September 1944 directed that all experienced timber-mill hands or bushmen serving within New Zealand should be released immediately to their trade.⁷³

There were a few moves towards hurry-up building and prefabrication, but no major departures from the standard house. Armstrong said in September 1942 that the Housing Department had designed a house smaller than usual but convenient and fully equipped, which could be built for about £800, using prefabrication in a modified form.⁷⁴ In February 1944 Auckland's first prefabricated State houses, which could be erected more rapidly and with less skilled labour, were begun at Mt Albert.⁷⁵ Similar houses, it was claimed, had been built for £675 in 10 days at Hamilton by private enterprise.⁷⁶ At Naenae in the Hutt Valley in April 1943, experimental prefabrication methods produced five dwellings in days instead of weeks.⁷⁷ Some two-storeyed flats built in February 1945 near the corner of the Great North and Western Springs Roads, Auckland, were designed to save timber and time by using pre-cast reinforced concrete columns, beams and floors.⁷⁸

The Director of Housing Construction reported in 1944 that to increase house production, reduce costs and relieve the demand for timber, the Department had erected a number of experimental houses and would erect more. These experiments were in three groups: prefabricated wood units; prefabricated concrete units; concrete in situ and block units. Already the Department was constructing the bulk

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of wooden houses in Auckland and Wellington on a modified prefabricated system and, in view of the many suggestions received, more experimental buildings would be erected. Early trials in prefabricated concrete had warranted further constructions to try out various systems in this material.⁷⁹

A few non-traditional houses appeared, such as one built at Ellerslie, Auckland, in five days, using plastic-bonded plywood on the structural principle of ‘stressed skin’ as in aircraft. Apart from the foundations, painting and papering, the five-roomed house with French windows and a concrete terrace was erected in five days and cost about £1,300.⁸⁰ Another model, by Christchurch architects, was completed on its prepared foundations in nine hours' work, except for its roof-covering, gutters and plumbing.⁸¹ But such departures were rare.

An example both of prefabrication and of the special demands made on the Housing Department was the township of Benneydale,⁸² south of Te Kuiti and three miles from the railway at Mangapehi. This was built after the government took over a failing coal mine, and in two years raised its production threefold. To the original village of about 20 prefabricated houses there were added, by November 1943, a hostel, a co-operative store, a recreation hall and about 50 houses incorporating successive improvements in prefabrication. About 20 of the latest sort were also built at the Tatu mine near Ohura.⁸³

There were a few proposals for temporary housing. A Wellington Hospital Board member suggested that Public Works buildings might be transferred to city reserves, matchlined and given plumbing; he claimed that they would last for four or five years and be habitable even if unsightly. Another held that additional housing must be temporary as many people would be returning to the land after the war and there would be a slump in town properties.⁸⁴ An Auckland City Council proposal to build small, temporary, wartime houses on vacant lots for necessitous cases, with the government sharing the cost, met no encouragement.⁸⁵

In March 1944 Churchill promised to bridge the housing void for the people of Britain with, among other measures, half a million prefabricated houses.⁸⁶ Not surprisingly, some New Zealanders hoped

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for a similar solution to their own immediate problem. At a meeting of South Island local bodies, the Mayor of Christchurch urged, in view of the likelihood of science in the next few years producing cheaper and better building media, that the government adopt a scheme like Britain's for cheap houses that could be erected quickly even if they would have but a short life. Other speakers also favoured factory-built houses in the emergency.⁸⁷ In July there was further thought in Christchurch of ‘Churchill houses’ being adapted for New Zealand, using wood and asbestos board instead of pressed steel. There was talk of relaxing building standards, but only for houses which belonged to local authorities.⁸⁸ The Press on 10 July warned that the question of temporary houses must be approached with the utmost caution; even if they were built only on city council land, ‘the proposal is a dangerous one’. Their life might be extended for 25 years or longer, just as condemned houses were occupied, because there was nowhere else to go. At Hamilton a local firm proposed, given loan money and priority in men and material, to erect 50 houses for £647 each, or £800 with paths, fences, etc. This was treated cautiously by the Council, which said that housing for the people was the concern of the government and would do no more than submit the loan proposal to ratepayers.⁸⁹ The Wellington Housing and Accommodation Committee advocated small temporary units costing about £300 each; rent at £1 a week would cover interest and maintenance and return capital within eight years.⁹⁰

There would be no temporary homes erected to become permanent slums, declared Semple: temporary buildings were about double the cost and less than half the remedy.⁹¹ However, some military camp buildings became transit housing, with the government and local bodies co-operating. An early example was Western Springs, Auckland, which had been built as a rest-home for the United States Army Air Corps. It housed about 300 adults and children, some in flats, some in units with communal facilities and with caterers supplying the main meals.⁹² Transit camps, where the government supplied and reconstructed buildings while local bodies provided land, water and drainage systems, became fairly widespread. In some places local authorities decided who might enter the camps, but in general the State Advances Corporation, which handled the letting of State

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houses, shared in allocating this temporary relief until families could be granted State houses. In March 1948 nearly 800 transit units were occupied by families urgently in need of help, while about 950 former tenants had progressed to State houses. The camps were not closed until the mid-1950s.⁹³

Besides houses and flats let to the general public through the State Advances Corporation the Housing Division, beginning in 1940, built houses required by the government for development, as for mines, electricity, railways, rehabilitation (where houses and farm buildings were put up on land prepared by the Lands and Survey Department for returned servicemen). In 1942–3, 1259 State houses were completed including 165 for other government departments. In 1943–4 only 880 were completed, 24 of them for departments. By March 1945 strenuous efforts had produced 1969 houses, 52 for departments, but there were 38 388 applicants waiting with 5860 ex-servicemen among them. In the next year 2985 were finished, 129 for departments, while 3400 others were variously incomplete.⁹⁴

Meanwhile building in the private sector was reviving, or at least the number of permits issued revived;⁹⁵ there are no figures on the completion of such houses, but they too were subject to the paralysing shortages lamented in Housing Division reports. An Auckland Star editorial on 13 December 1944 described one project. About a year earlier it had been announced that 440 houses were to be built on a block of land. Though many had been started, not one was finished and scores of foundations stood amid grass-covered wastes in formed and sewered streets. Shortages of materials accounted for delays.

Official reports on State housing in 1946 and 1947 explained that supplies of timber, cement and bricks were persistently inadequate, while lack of roofing material, baths, electric ranges and water pipe fittings caused frequent delays. Standard practices were modified, there were substitutes and experiments. Pinus radiata, specially treated, was used for framing. Concrete and asbestos products and bricks replaced timber sheathing or construction in about a third of the houses built in 1945–6 and in nearly three-quarters of those built in 1946–7, when only 2595 were completed. Beginning in 1946, portable, prefabricated houses were designed for timber workers, to increase timber production.⁹⁶

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A long battle lay ahead; in 1947 52 759 names, 15 278 those of ex-servicemen, were on the lists for State houses.⁹⁷ In 1944 the Director of Housing Construction had written that nearly 25 000 houses had been provided during the war; without the war the number of houses built by private and State enterprise would at a conservative estimate have reached at least 9000 per annum, or 45 000 over the five-year period. ‘The minimum number lost through the war is therefore 20 000, which would have overtaken any serious needs … it is estimated that the timber and materials used for defence construction purposes in all its ramifications would have been sufficient to erect 20 450 houses—that is to say, the number of houses lost to New Zealand by reason of the war is almost exactly counterbalanced by defence construction.’⁹⁸

Tea, sugar and clothing were rationed in mid-1942 because supplies from overseas became scarce. The next items, butter in October 1943 and meat in March 1944, were rationed because of overseas demands for more of New Zealand's plenty. Yet in 1940 there had been surging desire to help Britain by producing more, and spontaneous proposals to send more farm produce, even as gifts, even by curbing local consumption.⁹⁹ Reasons for the change and delay were complex. There were shipping limitations and war-shaped shifts in demands for butter, cheese and meat which had blunting effects on effort and sentiment. By 1943 production was falling owing to poor seasons, reduced labour and fertiliser, and farmers' desire for the incentive of higher prices. The government, with an election due late in 1943, was sensitive about farmers' complaints of its mismanagement; it shrank from adding the grumbles of a public losing some accustomed foods, and feared a black market.

Pre-war, average annual consumption of butter in New Zealand over 10 years was 31 300 tons, of cheese 3600 tons.¹⁰⁰ In 1938–9 148 000 tons of butter and 85 000 tons of cheese were produced; 116 000 tons of butter and 80 000 tons of cheese went to the United Kingdom.¹⁰¹ In 1939–40, original contracts for 115 000 tons of butter and 84 000 tons of cheese¹⁰² were exceeded: 130 400 tons of butter were exported from 160 800 tons produced, 91 700 tons of

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cheese from 97 600 tons produced.¹⁰³ Initial arrangements for September 1940 to August 1941 were for 120 000 tons of butter and 107 000 tons of cheese. When supplies from the Low Countries were cut off in June 1940 Britain asked for 15 000 more tons of cheese. With willing farmers and a good season 118 899 tons of cheese were exported, while butter exports totalled 139 444 tons.¹⁰⁴

In 1941 Britain strengthened its preference for cheese, asking that for the duration of the war and one year after New Zealand should limit butter supplies to 115 000 tons annually but increase cheese to 160 000 tons.¹⁰⁵ So far, prices had not increased since 1939: top grade butter was 112s 6d sterling per hundredweight, cheese 63s 3d and 62s 3d for first and second grades.¹⁰⁶

The change to cheese meant much reorganisation: thousands of large cans were made or mended, motor transport was provided, cheese factories were extended or re-opened. Withal 153 074 tons of cheese were graded for export in the 1941–42 season and 103 000 tons of butter.¹⁰⁷ Government and farmers could feel that they had nearly met Britain's request for cheese and that their butter offering was still substantial.

Early in 1942 Japan cut off margarine materials while unexpectedly large amounts of cheese were available by the short haul from Canada. In June 1942 Britain asked New Zealand to revert to butter-making: the new targets were 115 000–200 000 tons of butter and about 90 000 tons of cheese.¹⁰⁸ Britain increased its prices to pay for the change: butter rose by 4s 6d to 117s sterling per hundredweight, cheese by 3s to 73s.¹⁰⁹ In 1942 military service drew off or disrupted farm labour; fertilisers, with Nauru Island phosphates cut off, were scarce; farmers were impatient because they were expected to produce more with less labour, less fertiliser, less petrol and with prices which seemed inadequate against rising costs.¹¹⁰

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In 1942–3 export gradings of butter were 106 947 tons, of cheese 96 837; in 1943–4, 101 992 tons of butter, 85 473 of cheese.¹¹¹ Production was falling and from 1942 a good deal of dairy produce was going to the American forces in the Pacific and in New Zealand. In March 1943 London suggested that butter could be rationed in New Zealand.¹¹²

The Prime Minister hinted at rationing in a speech on 17 April 1943: New Zealanders might have to make more sacrifices, forgoing things they hardly dreamed of being without, such as butter and cheese, in order that the people of Britain might get enough food.¹¹³ A few days later a Dairy Board member, speaking of the fall in production, suggested that rationing of butter and cheese might be needed. Replying on 25 April Barclay, Minister of Agriculture, said that the government had not definitely considered such rationing but if it were necessary it would in no way be related to the fall in production, for which climatic conditions were mainly responsible, but to the needs of Britain.¹¹⁴ If rationing had not been considered, questioned the Press on 28 April, why not, and why had the Prime Minister mentioned it? The New Zealand consumer could do with less if Britain needed more, and the fall in dairy production clearly showed that if shipments to Britain were to be increased or maintained, local consumption must be cut. Barclay had, chided the Press, come close to describing his government in four words: ‘It is the Government of not yet and not definitely.’ The Dominion commented that if shipments were lessened by causes outside the control of the dairy industry, there would be few complaints should the deficits be made good by reducing domestic consumption, which averaged more than 401b per person yearly. It urged that the government should speedily take producers into its confidence.¹¹⁵ In Dunedin, where these exchanges gave rise to rumours that butter was about to be rationed, there was a notable rush on supplies.¹¹⁶

On 10 May, Barclay, speaking at a small town near Whangarei, said that the British government had asked that butter should be rationed in New Zealand so that the British 2oz a week could be maintained. He added, ‘I think that the people of New Zealand will be behind the Government if it accedes to the request.’¹¹⁷

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Barclay's kite-flying had a mixed reception. The Dominion was surprised that no government action accompanied revelation of Brit ain's request. Canada had led the way on 21 December 1942¹¹⁸ with a ration of 8oz weekly, reduced for a while to 6oz: here, where a poor season plus American demands had reduced exportable surplus, rationing would be readily accepted to keep up shipments, even if it meant hardship. It would be valuable to have Britons retain a taste for butter after the war, but the reason dwarfing all others was their present need. The disclosure of this important matter to a small country meeting gave ‘the impression of timidity, of a trying-out of public opinion, with its strange qualification “if the Government accedes to the request.”’ Had the British government been left in doubt about the response of the people of New Zealand? How could the request possibly be refused?¹¹⁹

Quite a different sound came from the New Zealand Herald. Rationing in New Zealand, if needed to maintain the 2oz ration in Britain, would be accepted with good grace, but people would have to be convinced of the necessity. They were not persuaded that the present famine in civilian eggs was unavoidable. The Minister was more ready to regiment producers than to encourage them to greater output, and he seemed intent on making a case for butter rationing rather than on seeking ways and means to avoid it. ‘New Zealand is capable of producing enough butter ro fill Britain's need and have sufficient left over to make domestic rationing unnecessary. If, instead of antagonising the farmers, Mr Barclay sought their co-operation and gave them the help required, the double goal would be reached— full supplies for Britain and plenty at home.’¹²⁰

A Dairy Board member, early in June, said that farmers owed a great debt to Britain and to the merchant navy; food needs in Britain must be met. If farmers were given the necessary labour he was sure that output could be increased to meet the full requirements of both Britain and New Zealand.¹²¹ The Auckland Farmers' Union showed its general irritation at this time by adopting a Waikato remit for direct action after the war: the time had come to announce that injustices should be ended and steps taken to show the determination of the industry, though it might be necessary for dairy companies and other branches of farm business to close down.¹²² A Wellington correspondent asked why the government did not explain that because of its lack of foresight and its mishandling of manpower, the country

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could no longer produce enough food for its own people while exporting pre-war quantities. In war the most important thing was food, both for workers and the Army, and New Zealand could have been in the unique position of supplying all that was required both now and for war-torn countries afterwards. ‘It is still not too late to put more men and land into full production, so that even though our sons are overseas, neither we nor they need go without butter.’¹²³

Presumably such criticism encouraged government silence when Australia on 6 June 1943 followed Canada into butter rationing, at half a pound a week.¹²⁴ At a dairy conference in June Barclay, while appealing to farmers to produce as a minimum 120 000 tons of butter and 100 000 tons of cheese for Britain, said that rationing was under consideration. The Dominion wondered at the ‘incomprehensible delay’, contrasted New Zealanders' 42lb a year with British citizens' 6½ lb, pointed out that while it took time, manpower and fertiliser to increase production, rationing would increase exports immediately, and concluded that a frank statement on the needs of the Mother country would draw ready support.¹²⁵ Government speakers might have answered that the needs of the Mother country were already well known: a British Ministry of Food mission was currently explaining them, but it had induced no spontaneous profferings of butter as in 1940. There were even expressions of reluctance. Mary Dreaver,¹²⁶ Labour member for Waitemata, on 6 August in the House asked Barclay to allay the fears of housewives that butter rationing was to be introduced. The Minister replied that rationing was under consideration'.¹²⁷ Truth, in September, expressing concern for the diet of New Zealanders, claimed that they, unlike the people of Britain and other European countries, had no substitute fats for milk and butter: in Britain, though the butter ration might be small, ‘the fat consumption may be very high.’¹²⁸ This argument ignored the well-known facts that the total weekly British margarine-butter allowance was 6oz, along with 2oz of cooking fats. In the Evening Post on 6 October, while one correspondent wanted rationing and increased shipments, another claimed that cutting down New Zealand's butter eating would make very little difference, per person, in Britain: ‘How can so few give more to so many?’¹²⁹ The Social Credit journal Democracy on 17 June 1943, noting the advent

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of rationing in Australia, had said that though it sounded ‘a little absurd’ rationing of dairy products in New Zealand had been sug gested, and there was also a distinct possibility that the requirements of the fighting services in the Pacific would overtake the supply. Democracy saw little hope of policing any attempt at rationing dairy products in a country which had more cows per head of population than any other, with thousands of families besides registered farmers owning at least one cow. ‘The Black Market would be liable to turn white—or at least Cream.’

As the months passed, several bodies publicly pressed the government towards rationing. The Northern Dairy Association in July urged that every effort should be made to supply the quantity of butter asked for by Britain, even if this required local rationing.¹³⁰ The Chambers of Commerce at both Wellington and Dunedin said that limiting each New Zealander to half a pound a week would Add more than 10 000 tons annually to the meagre British supplies And they believed that the country would gladly support the decision. Wellington members declared that it was a plain duty though they realised that it would not be simple to arrange equal sacrifice in town and country. Dunedin members wondered why rationing had not been effected already; did this timidity come from fear of offending a section of the community before the general election?¹³¹ Early in October a New Zealand Dairy Board member told a Farmers' Union meeting that the Board, consulted by the government on the matter, had already advised immediate rationing of butter and regulation of the sale of cream, but the government had not yet taken action.¹³² The Dominion¹³³ continued to contrast New Zealand's luxurious plenty with Britain's poverty, as did the Press on 4 September: ‘New Zealanders who think they are enduring great hardship are in serious want of nothing but a sense of proportion.’

During the election campaign apparently few questions were asked about butter rationing and these were answered warily. Barclay said that it was being considered and he thought that it would come but there was great difficulty because it was not possible to ration farmers or prevent them from supplying their friends.¹³⁴ Sullivan said that no official approach had been made by the British Ministry of Food in regard to butter rationing, but on such an approach

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Cabinet would immediately deal with it.¹³⁵ In September, the Grocers' Association paper published an article showing that it had dis cussed a butter rationing scheme in detail with the government.¹³⁶ ‘On good authority’ the Auckland Star announced on Tuesday 5 October, 10 days after the re-election of Fraser's government, that rationing at 8oz a head would be introduced the next week,¹³⁷ while butter merchants complained that they were still in the dark and had no half-pound wrappers.¹³⁸ Butter sales, especially at Auckland, rose steeply, as they had in several centres at various times during the previous few months.¹³⁹ Minhinnick cartooned a housewife, a merchant, a retailer and a farmer capering on a field labelled ‘butter rationing’, plucking at daisy petals ‘This week, next week, sometime, never’—while Fraser piped the tune on two pipes, Nash leaned on a cow and Sullivan smiled.¹⁴⁰

Finally, on 28 October 1943, just after the third series of ration books had been issued, with new pages, it was announced that people must at once register with a grocer or dairy for 8oz of butter each

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per week, infants under six months excluded. Unrationed consump tion was reckoned to be 13oz.¹⁴¹ Supplies to hotels, manufacturers, etc, would be reduced by one-third. Farmers would obtain their butter like everyone else; where normal supplies were too remote they could make butter for their own use or for sale to employees, but must cut coupons from the books of people using the butter. The sale of cream for domestic or manufacturing purposes was prohibited except with special permits. Permits for cream and extra butter could be obtained on a doctor's certificate. Perplexed doctors,¹⁴² seeking guidance from the Health Department and the BMA, were told to give butter and cream only to diabetics, active tuberculosis cases, nursing mothers who needed it, aged people and convalescents from long illnesses.¹⁴³ To provide for casual or seasonal labour, farmers and contractors could obtain permits giving 8oz per worker for one week but thereafter the workers' coupons must be produced.¹⁴⁴ Supplies to service canteen suppliers were cut by a third; clubs providing suppers on dance evenings were allowed ⅓oz per serviceman.¹⁴⁵

As it was clearly announced that rationing was imposed to maintain the dismal 2oz British allowance there was no general grumbling, though the government was criticised from several angles. Rationing must be obeyed in letter and in spirit, said the Auckland Star. Those who could evade the law, notably farmers, must voluntarily refrain from doing so; otherwise there would be a black market in butter, official attempts to smash it, and all the attendant ills. But there was ‘widespread and justified feeling’ that the 11.7 per cent drop in the volume of dairy exports in the season just ended had occurred primarily because of the government's disposition of manpower and failure to understand the nature of farming; shortage of labour, even of hope for labour, and of fertiliser, had caused production to fall. The government must decide on priorities; ‘while too many things are attempted some are going to be done less well.’¹⁴⁶ The Press censured delay:

The Government began six months ago to talk about this extension of the rationing scheme, has talked hedgingly and uncertainly about it ever since, has prompted selfish persons to stock their refrigerators, and has lost, in the six months, a cargo of

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5000 tons that might have been saved and shipped. It is inconceivable that the reasons on which the Government has acted now were less decisive in April than in October.¹⁴⁷

The Dominion said that New Zealand, as the Mother country's largest supplier of dairy produce and also the unit with the greatest domestic consumption per head, should have led the Empire in butter rationing instead of bringing up the rear. ‘There can be not the slightest doubt that the delay was purely political…. The right thing has been done, but very, very leisurely. All the excellent reasons now given existed months ago, but were set aside until domestic political matters had received attention.’⁴⁸ The Evening Post referred to ‘exceptionally long dilly-dallying’ in introducing a ration to which few if any would object.¹⁴⁹ The New Zealand Herald, from which a broadside on mismanagement might have been expected, spoke of the pitiful 2oz a week in Britain, exceeded daily by many in New Zealand. The only proper criticism of the decision was that it should have been made earlier, as a voluntary gesture instead of in response to a request; now Canada and Australia had set the example, leaving New Zealand a bad third.¹⁵⁰

Many people had stocked up in advance, though refrigerators were still luxuries. The Internal Marketing Division, surveying holdings in cool store found large quantities placed there by manufacturers and some for private use. The manufacturers were allowed to draw only their weekly quotas from these reserves, and those held by private persons were taken over, only one flagrant case being prosecuted.¹⁵¹ In this instance a soldier had during September bought 20001b at the retail price of 1s 6d a pound, expecting the price to rise, and was still holding it in January 1944; the butter was taken over at cost, and later a £10 fine was imposed.¹⁵²

Uneasiness about farmers' reception of butter rationing had been a factor delaying its introduction. Government spokesmen, such as the Food Controller, hastened to point out to farming audiences that if Britain did not get the tonnage of butter requested, British authorities might find it impractical to implement the 2oz ration and take butter off the civilian market. If the United Kingdom were diverted to margarine for the duration, it might be very difficult for the New Zealand producers to recapture their British market after

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the war.¹⁵³ Barclay had admitted publicly that it would be impossible to ration farmers or prevent them from supplying their friends.¹⁵⁴

Farmers are and were independent people, and the idea of measuring their cream and butter was rather like proposing to count their cabbages. Undoubtedly many a bowl of cream was whipped up, many a churn that had been out of regular use now made extra butter for farming households, hospitality or friends. This, however, was not the same as diverting a substantial portion of the cream normally destined for the factory into black-market butter. A woman who ran a grocery recalled that people who milked cows used their butter coupons and sent all the cream to the factory because they were paid more for the cream than the butter cost.¹⁵⁵ The regulations provided that farmers who supplied cream to factories should now register with retailers and obtain rations like everyone else, save where distance made this difficult, but in any case they should not make for themselves more than the amount of the ration, surely a forlorn counsel of perfection. Wherever possible, all cream should be sent to factories but, to make good use of farm butter, in areas outside cream collection rounds wholesalers and retailers could accept such butter and supply it to manufacturers and collective consumers at 20 per cent discount on their quota. Thus a baker or a hotel could get 121b of farm butter for every 10lb of creamery butter allowed.¹⁵⁶ But grocers who used to buy a few pounds of home-made butter, used mainly for cooking, from customers with two or three cows, now rejected it as people would buy only creamery butter with their coupons, refusing to expend them on butter of uncertain quality¹⁵⁷ Some wholesalers who accepted farm butter found themselves loaded with unsaleable quantities. In this area, advised the Press, the regulations were self-defeating: ‘those who cannot conveniently change their practice, sending surplus cream to a factory instead of surplus butter to the shop, and many cannot, will cease to produce a surplus or will waste it. Otherwise, it must tend to find an outlet in black market trading.’ The regulations were not working smoothly because, as too often, ‘they were framed by men who know desks and paper better than they know farms and shops.’¹⁵⁸

There was talk of quantities of farm butter being wasted or sold without coupons. At Nelson in particular, suppliers and grocers carried on as usual for a month or so: some 4000–5000lb were sold

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over grocers' counters without coupons, while about two tons that accumulated in a wholesalers' store was finally cleared when Internal Marketing shipped it, somewhat mature, to Wellington manufacturers. It was arranged that future surpluses in the district should go to Service camps.¹⁵⁹

Many non-dairy farmers' wives were accustomed to offsetting grocers' bills with butter sales. Where the cream could not be conveniently collected, it became official policy to continue this practice, with the grocer handing the butter on to an agent who, after meeting district manufacturing needs, would send any surplus on to the main centres for manufacturers there.¹⁶⁰ Some Primary Production Councils suggested that to encourage backyard production of separator butter from a few cows, its coupon value should be half that of factory butter.¹⁶¹ The Rationing Controller replied that while this solution to the serious problem of utilising farm butter had been carefully considered, it had been found quite often that cream collections could have been extended and that in other cases, through retailers and wholesalers, this butter was going to manufacturers as part of their quota.¹⁶² There was, he also explained to a Tolaga Bay resident, no objection to the owner of a few cows supplying butter to neighbours, provided they registered with him and he cut the relevant coupons from their books; local rationing committees were being formed to cope with special cases.¹⁶³ Obviously in such cases the neighbours would not be limited to 8oz a week. On the other hand, petrol rationing limited access to such supplies. No doubt there were evasions, but they were not so widespread as to induce much cynicism.

In July 1944, rationing for hotels and restaurants was tightened. Instead of receiving two-thirds of their normal supply, for casuals they were allowed ⅓oz per person, for each of the three main meals, while permanent guests' own ration books would determine their ration. To makers of sandwiches, etc, butter rations were based on the amount of bread used, ¼lb being allowed for each 4lb sandwich loaf and ⅓oz for each three scones, gems or pikelets.¹⁶⁴

Many workers who relied on cut lunches felt that their living standards were eroded unfairly compared with those who could buy sandwiches or pies or a restaurant meal. Timber workers claimed to have a special case. Some lived in rugged camps, remote from wifely

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ministrations, and were used to plain fare but plenty of butter; even those in their own homes thought that their heavy work in all weath ers demanded double the fats adequate for men in less strenuous or exposed occupations. The West Coast Sawmill Workers' Union, at its annual meeting, stated that unless each member's ration increased to lib per week by 20 November the men would cease work. Possibly this strong resolution was pushed by a militant few.¹⁶⁵ The union secretary explained that timber workers were not prone ‘to just going on strike any old time’ but they believed that with less butter they would be physically unable to cope with the work and weather.¹⁶⁶ The timber workers' national secretary made less peremptory demands¹⁶⁷ and North Island men confirmed that the ration was quite inadequate, citing one bush cookhouse that normally used 32lb a week, now reduced to eight, which would last for three days' lunches.¹⁶⁸ Sullivan stated on 12 November that prior to the West Coast meeting the timber workers' national secretary and the Fed eration of Labour had made ‘representations in the normal way’ for more butter for groups in heavy industries. The government would decide these claims without being influenced or diverted by threats or inflammatory language. The Auckland Star reproved all concerned: workers in heavy industry overseas received extra rations, and while the timber workers' talk of direct action was demoralising they were justified in seeking more, though not a full double ration; it was not to the credit of the administration that they had had to wait for it.¹⁶⁹ The West Coast union secretary's comment, that no New Zealand government could fool all the workers into believing that strikes or threats of strikes did not get results, persuaded the Director of Censorship and Publicity that the jostle for extra butter was damaging morale, and he requested newspapers to eliminate any suggestion that only by striking or threatening to strike could those with legitimate grievances in rationing obtain redress.¹⁷⁰ This request was stiffened into a directive on 3 December.¹⁷¹ As Baker puts it, ‘Discussion then became much less public’,¹⁷² and on 26 November it was quietly announced that an extra 4oz a week would be granted to miners and to sawmillers and bushmen in isolated

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districts. In December the Freezing Workers' Union also pressed for extra rations for the whole industry, but it was granted to freezing chamber hands only, on 20 January 1944.¹⁷³

The heavy-work allowance was maintained when, between June 1945 and October 1949, the general butter ration was reduced to 6oz a week, although expectant mothers and persons of more than 70 years still received 8oz. Manufacturers and collective consumers were then reduced to one half their pre-rationing norm.¹⁷⁴ Butter rations were restored to 8oz at the end of October 1949 and abolished on 4 June 1950. Annual consumption in New Zealand fell from 481b a head in 1942–3, to 361b in 1944–5, and to 36lb in 1945–6.¹⁷⁵

At the outset it had been clearly estimated that rationing at half a pound a week would save between 10 000 and 12 000 tons of butter a year for Britain.¹⁷⁶ Some early post-rationing estimates came near these claims. The 1944 annual report of the Internal Marketing Division stated that for the year ended 31 July 1943 butter sales in New Zealand through the Division (less purchases by the United States) totalled 32 066 tons. In the 10 months from 1 November 1943 to 31 August 1944, these sales totalled 19 018 tons, the equivalent of 22 822 tons per annum, thus saving about 9200 tons or about 30 per cent.¹⁷⁷ In May 1944 Sullivan claimed that saving at the rate of 14 000 tons a year, about 37 per cent, had been effected.¹⁷⁸ The Yearbook of 1945 estimated that the 6oz ration would leave 15 000 additional tons for export.¹⁷⁹ Later figures were more modest. The Yearbook of 1947–9 estimated that the 6oz per week ration permitted a saving of about 8000 tons of butter per annum, ‘although this figure may be slightly high because of a possible insufficient allowance for the increase in farm-made butter, and also because of the greatly increased use of industrial margarine which may to some extent become a permanent feature of New Zealand's economy.’¹⁸⁰ Baker has: ‘It was estimated that restrictions on the use of butter by consumers and by manufacturers reduced per head consumption in New Zealand by a quarter, and made available an

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extra 8000 tons a year for export or supply to the United States Forces.’¹⁸¹

Butter rationing modified housekeeping substantially. With unlimited butter at ls 6d a pound, many women were used to ‘slapping a bit of butter into almost everything’.¹⁸² They now had to practise restraint, saving to make their soldiers' cakes and family treats.¹⁸³ Those who cut lunches felt the pinch most. There were letters of complaint to newspapers, such as one claiming unfairness to workers. Professional business men and women could buy hot lunches, and timber workers, being organised, had made their stand. Other workers relied on cold lunches, often without even a cup of tea, ‘yet a Government calling itself “Labour” would cut out their bit of butter.’¹⁸⁴ An irate mother wrote:

If it [butter rationing] is a necessity, it jolly well shouldn't be! Our Government knew we would have to produce more food, but did they organise the armed forces to keep the farmers on the land? Not they! Thus a bigger butter rationing than need be. This is the first time I've been thankful that my elder, growing son is in the Air Force, as he will then get all the butter he needs, but what of my other three children? By the time their school lunches are cut there is nothing at all for breakfast and tea. It is bad enough to be without or very short of sultanas, bananas, raisins, baked beans, dates, honey and eggs for school lunches, but without butter, too, it is a bit too much.¹⁸⁵

There were various butter-stretching devices: for instance, equal quantities of warm milk could be worked into butter, and softened butter into which gelatine dissolved in milk was skilfully beaten would spread over a lot of bread.

By late 1942 in daily newspapers, women's pages had shrunk to a few inches, usually reporting weddings and meetings, but the Woman's Weekly, which since 1941 had advised copiously on saving all sorts of materials and effort, proffered recipes using minimal butter, sugar and eggs, as did women's columns in weeklies or periodicals such as Truth or the New Zealand Exporter. The virtues of good dripping and of cod fat, supplied by the butcher and rendered down in the oven, became widely known. Women exchanged recipes in which dripping, golden syrup, vinegar, glycerine, lemon juice and custard powder replaced butter and eggs. On weekday mornings,

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over the commercial radio, ‘Aunt Daisy’¹⁸⁶ broadcast. While advertising, this remarkable woman contrived