TEA TIME

One New Zealand company to see a boom in its business during World War I was the Bell Tea & Coffee Company, and for a somewhat unexpected reason. During wartime, the Government announced a special postage concession rate for care parcels being sent to our boys serving overseas. To be eligible for the special rate, the parcels had to be within certain dimensions and those dimensions related directly to the size of Bell’s onepound tea tin. The company’s History of Bell recounts the resulting effects on the business: “A windfall to the company, sales boomed to the point of becoming out of control”. The phenomenon also soon became an issue on the front lines, where it was claimed the presence of the New Zealand Division could be detected by the proliferation of Bell tins left scattered on the ground.

the second half of the war coal was in short supply. Increased requirements from shipping and rampedup factory production along with strike activity, mainly on the West Coast, meant that by late 1917 episodic shortages of coal were becoming serious.

Labour shortages were another characteristic of New Zealand’s wartime economy and in his paper Brian notes that more than a fifth of the labour force would not have been available for civilian production during World War I. “A lot of businesses found themselves struggling with skilled workers being called up,” says James, “and although they could appeal, very often they found themselves in difficulty.” Slaughtermen in freezing works, waterfront workers and coal miners were among the occupations more likely to gain exemptions.

Inevitably, however, some decisions regarding exemptions proved contentious, such as the case of Robert Laidlaw. When he was called up for military service in 1918 he applied for exemption on the basis that his thriving mail-order business, Laidlaw Leeds (which later merged with the Farmers’ Union Trading Company) could not operate without him, putting his employees and investors in jeopardy. He was effectively excused by the Military Service Board after it granted an indefinite adjournment of his case, leading to criticism that it showed favouritism to the wealthy.