Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 107

Massive economic expansion went with settlement expansion, as Macquarie ordered the building of roads, public buildings and even parks to be commenced.

Shortly after arriving in the colony, Macquarie wrote to Britain, asking for more convicts to be sent out. Previous governors had asked for specific trades (for example, ‘Send more carpenters!’) but Macquarie was the first to ask for more, full stop, arguing, ‘The prosperity of the Country depends on their numbers’. He also abandoned government farming, thinking economic improvement was more likely with private settlers. (He would be forced to bring government farming back later in his administration, due to circumstances outside his control; see ‘Coping with the deluge following Waterloo’ later in this chapter.)

Under this scheme of rapid economic expansion, the skilled manual labourers — masons, builders, blacksmiths, sawyers, splitters, fencers and carpenters — continued to be the worker ‘aristocracy’, earning exceedingly good wages. The unskilled variously became house servants, wharfies, quarry-workers, farmhands, assistants in offices and warehouses, or workers in the small manufacturing workshops that were proliferating.