peck of wheat; in clothes, tea, sugar, tobacco and money to the value of £15 a year, unless they are idle and worthless, when I confine the allowance to £10, which is the rate of wages established by Government. To those who behave well I give gratuities varying from £1 to £5, but I regret to say this practice does not much swell the amount of my expenditure."
His house-servants he paid from £10 to £15, and that he was a good master is evinced by the fact that not one of his servants ever attempted to run away.
In addition to the convicts he employed some ticket-of-leave men and free labourers, whom he paid according to contracts made with each of them individually, and not in accordance with the scale of wages drawn up by the Governor in 1816. Cox, who had 120 convict servants as well as some who were not convicts, paid his ploughmen (convict or free) £10 to £15 a year, and his mechanics £15 to £25, but as he may have paid the whole amount in "property" it is difficult to draw any comparison between Macarthur's and his methods.[1]
| Work. | King's Scale. | Macquarie's Scale. |
Week's Work, King. | ||||||
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||||
| Felling forest timber per acre | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 1 acre. | ||
| Burning off forest timber per acre | 1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 65 rods. | ||
| Felling timber brush ground per acre | 0 | 12 | 0 | ||||||
| Breaking up new ground per acre | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 65 rods. | ||
| Chipping in wheat | 0 | 6 | 8 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 1½ acres. | ||
These are about half the items. The lower price in Macquarie's scale is due to the fact that the wages are to be paid in sterling money. In King's scale they are "colonial currency," which was much depreciated. In King's time, the working hours were fifty a week.
Such were the general conditions of the workmen in the settlement in 1821. There was practically no distinction between free and convict labourers.[2] In Sydney the wealthy ticket-of-leave men, who had in many cases brought money
- ↑ See Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. The G.G.O., 7th December, 1816, regulates the wages of labourers, making no distinction for a few agricultural operations between convict and free. It may be compared with the scale drawn up by King, 31st October, 1801. H.R., III., p. 252.
- ↑ The convict, however, was subject to what was really a criminal jurisdiction of the magistrates.
