VI - LABOUR AND WAGES

Summary

When assignment was abolished in 1839 there were 25,322 convicts in assigned service in New South Wales, and these were reduced by the expiry of sentences at the rate of about 5000 a year. In 1843 there remained only 3532 convicts in assignment, and these became free during the next five years, so that in 1848 there were no convicts in private employ. As it had been customary during the later years of transportation to assign convicts only to employers in the country districts, the pastoral industry was the first to feel the stoppage. It is true that when their period of assignment was over, a large proportion of the ex-convicts remained in the districts where they had been employed, and continued in their old occupations, but many did not, and on obtaining their freedom made straightway for the towns. The cessation of assignment therefore produced a marked reduction in the number of persons of the convict or cheap labour class available for rural industries, and it was not found easy to replace them by free immigrants, especially in the more remote districts.

Speaking generally, the labour of assigned convicts was not efficient, though it was comparatively more efficient in the pastoral industry than in any other, but it was cheap.