when the contract money had been paid in full, or even in advance; but it was an improvement upon its predecessors, and was in constant use for nearly ten years. In 1888 the Hon. A. R. Guinness, now Speaker of the House of Representatives, introduced a Workman’s Wages Bill. It provided that wages must be paid within three days after the termination of the engagement or within a day after discharge in case of a worker being dismissed. This Bill, however, did not pass.
There were a few other measures dealing with labour in operation in those days, but, as has been stated, they were crude, and, in many respects, inoperative in practice. A Master and Apprentice Bill, for instance, was passed as early as 1865. It extended to New Zealand the laws of England dealing with relations between masters and apprentices. It provided for apprentices being taken on in the Government departments; it enabled destitute children to be apprenticed by charitable institutions; and it allowed householders, tradesmen, farmers, and others to take children over twelve years of age and have them legally indentured. This Act also was largely inoperative.
The colony did not provide for the registration of Trades Unions until 1878, when Sir Robert Stout, as Attorney-General in Sir George Grey’s famous short-lived Liberal Government, introduced the first Trades Union Bill, which he saw through its stages and on to the Statute Book. In drafting his measure, he followed the English Acts of 1871 and 1876 closely. He brought in no fresh provisions affecting unions, and the only new features of the Bill were those that made it apply to New Zealand. It provided that certain actions should not be lawful, and that Trades Unions should be registered in the same way as friendly societies. The Grey Government had discussed this subject when it first took office, and it came to the conclusion that Trades Unions in New Zealand had a right to be placed on the same footing as similar institutions in England. Workmen, the Government argued, should not be prevented from selling their labour at as high a price as possible.
It must not be thought that this was New Zealand’s first recognition of Trades Unionism. The principle had been recognised by Parliament when it passed the Law Society’s
