Bickerton A. W. Bickerton Looking Backward (1888). Morganeering- Morganeering Morganeering - - - Morganeering Morganeering - - - Utopian Studies Utopianism: A Very Short In- troduction Living in Utopia: Inten- tional Communities in New Zealand- Morganeering_cover.indd 1 23/02/21 2:26 PM Morganeering Or, THE TRIUMPH OF THE TRUST New Zealand Colonial Texts The Merry Marauders (1913) by Arthur J. Rees Tom Hungerford (1872) by William Baldwin Lenore Divine (1926) by Jean Devanny The Passionate Puritan (1921) by Jane Mander Alone in the World (1866) by Mary Ann Colclough The Two Lawyers (1891) by W. M. Southan Morganeering (1903) by A. W. Bickerton MORGANEERING Or, THE TRIUMPH OF THE TRUST A SATIRICAL BURLESQUE ON THE WORSHIP OF WEALTH by Alexander William Bickerton Edited with Notes and Introduction by Lyman Tower Sargent English and Linguistics University of Otago 2020 An English at Otago Publication Otago Studies in English English and Linguistics University of Otago P. O. Box 56 Dunedin New Zealand NZCT is pleased to have the opportunity to reproduce an early New Zealand novel never before published in its entirety. Copyright in the introduction and annota- tions rests with the editor, Lyman Tower Sargent. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re- produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holders. No. 7 in the New Zealand Colonial Text Series Cover image: “Prosperity at Home, Prestige Abroad,” a colour lithograph campaign poster for William McKinley dated 1895–1900, printed by the Northwestern Litho. Co, Milwau- kee. From the collection of the United States Library of Con- gress (LC-USZC4-1329; https://www.loc.gov/pictures/ item/2002719195/). Printed by Uniprint, University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand ISBN 978-0-473-55007-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-473-55009-7 (PDF) ISSN 2230–3855 Acknowledgements As is the case with all scholarly work, this book owes much to other people. I undertook all the work on the book during a series of fel- lowships at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington when it was under the leadership of Lydia Wevers. I cannot thank her, the staff and other fellows at the Stout enough for the help they gave me and their willingness to listen to and comment on various iterations of the introduction to the book and my other explorations into New Zealand utopianism. My work on the Wainoni community was assisted by Bill Met- calf, the foremost scholar on the communities of Australia and New Zealand, and, Lucy Sargisson during our collaboration on our book Living in Utopia: Intentional Communities in New Zealand (Alder- shot, England: Ashgate, 2004), which includes a different and long- er consideration of Wainoni. I am particularly grateful to Nathan Simon and Warner Saville, who, hearing one of my talks at the Stout, provided me with family information, and noted the gaps in that information, that added sig- nificantly to what I had found and what Bill Metcalf had given me. My work on the typescript of Morganeering was initially done at the library of the Christchurch Museum before the earthquake, and the staff was immensely helpful. The later stages were completed after the earthquake when the library was working under severe restrictions, and I thank the staff for finding the material I needed and their support while I worked on it. In New Zealand, I found other materials related to Bickerton at the Alexander Turnbull Library, the Macmillan Brown Library at Christchurch University, the Christchurch Public Library, and the Auckland Museum. In Australia, I found additional material in the State Library of New South Wales, and, oddly, I found the only ex- tant copy of a New Zealand publication that included an article by Bickerton in the Toronto Reference Library. I could not have com- pleted the work without the help of the staff of all these institutions. After years of search based on some confusions on when it was published, I found the only known copy of the Weekly Times and Echo in the microform room at the British Library, and the help given me by the staff of the room in locating it and other Bickerton materials was invaluable. Everyone working on New Zealand history must be eternally grateful for Papers Past, which I used constantly. More will be learned as it continues to expand its coverage. Illustration Credits xxv—Alexander William Bickerton, c. 1905. Ref: 1/2-038594-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand /records/ 23174381. xxxix—Postcard showing the visitors’ entrance to Wainoni Park, photographer unknown. xliii—Cartoon by Low, David Alexander Cecil 1891-1963, “The new planet. 1909.” Alexander Turnbull Library Reference Number: A-279-014. lvi—Serialised text of Bickerton’s novel, from The Weekly Times and Echo, 4 January 1903. vii Contents Introduction xi Bickerton’s Life xviii Issues of Importance to Bickerton xxv Partial Imact xxvi Religion xxvii Economic Reform xxix Rights for Women xxxi Educational Reform xxxii Bickerton’s Communal Experiment xxxv Conclusion xxxix Note on the Text xli Endnotes to Introduction xliv Morganeering, or, The Triumph of Trust 1 Textual Emendations 235 Morganeering A. W. Bickerton CHAPTER PAGE 1. The Appointment 3 2. The Ceremony 9 3. After the Ceremony 14 4. Wainoni 18 5. The Palace 28 6. The Communist 35 7. The Reception 41 8. The Journey to Wellington 45 9. Wellington 53 10. The China Trade 57 11. The Inspection 61 12. Lady Courtly 66 13. The Memoirs of the Wondergilt Family 70 14. Sterling 74 15. Preparations for China 79 16. China 83 17. The Pursuit 87 18. Home Again 94 19. The Inspection of the Guns 96 20. Sterling Discourses on Federation 101 21. Communism 110 22. A Discussion of Religion 116 23. The Journey 126 24. Washington 133 25. The Triple Wedding 144 26. Nearing Home 156 27. Home Once More 160 28. Miss Verdant Willowgreen 167 29. The Resignation of the Chancellor 175 30. Dora’s Trouble 186 31. Dora’s Illness 193 32. Wondergilt and his Wife 199 33. Robinson’s Visit 204 34. Love and Liberty 211 35. Capitalists at Home 218 36. Closing In 224 37. Conclusion 229 Introduction Alexander William Bickerton was a scientist now primar- ily remembered for his defense of a theory generally known as “partial impact” that describes how some new stars are formed, a theory that he elaborated into a complete inter- pretation of the cosmos. But among his many other activi- ties, Bickerton wrote poetry and fiction, mostly unpublished or self-published in very limited editions. Among the fiction was one utopian novel, Morganeering: Or, The Triumph of the Trust. A Fragment of a Satirical Burlesque on the Worship of Wealth. What was thought to be the only published part of the novel breaks off mid-sentence, but a continuation, longer than the published part, is held in the Bickerton Papers at the Canterbury Museum.1 On the back of one page in the manu- script is a note that suggests that the entire book had been serialized in the London radical journal the Weekly Times and Echo. A search of what appears to be the only remaining copy of the journal, a microfilm in the British Library, revealed that it had in fact been serialized between January and April 1903, and that became the copy text for this first book publication. The novel is largely set in Canterbury. The truncated part published in New Zealand is primarily a satire on contem- porary capitalism, with the title deriving from the reputa- tion of the American capitalist J. P. [John Pierpont] Morgan (1837–1913). Thus “Morganeering” was commonly used at the time to describe “robber baron” capitalism. The continu- ation, on the other hand, while set within the world satirized in the published part, depicts both the capitalist dystopia and a much better society. In his unpublished biography, “Toward Utopia,” Charles Morgan Williams (1878–1970), who came to New Zealand in 1902 and later became M.P. for Kaiapoi from 1935 to 1946, wrote of New Zealand, “I did not find it to be exactly a Uto- pia, but it was a land of opportunity, and under the leader- xii Morganeering ship of [John] Ballance, [William Pember] Reeves and [Rich- ard] Seddon was leading the World in Social Reform.”2 And in the first extended description of New Zealand as a utopia, Mr Oseba’s Last Discovery (1904), the eponymous protagonist, an inhabitant of the centre of the earth, visits the surface in search of a good society, and, after many disappointments, fi- nally finds New Zealand. The book is dedicated “To the Peo- ple of New Zealand, the most advanced community among men.”3 Or as New Zealand: Islands of the Blest of the same pe- riod put it, “New Zealand stands today as the Purest Democ- racy on earth, not content with theorising, but reducing to practice every high principle of Democracy, and constituting herself a paradise for every citizen who is sober, and frugal, and industrious.”4 The three key words in that last phrase are central to a number of the reform movements of the time. As these statements indicate, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New Zealand was recognized as a world leader in economic and political reform, both for what had been achieved and for what seemed possible or what might be done in the future.5 The movements that led to this perception, all of which produced one or more New Zealand utopias,6 included socialism, particularly under the influence of Looking Backward; 2000–1887 (1888) by the American au- thor Edward Bellamy (1850–1898); the single tax, as devel- oped by the American theorist Henry George (1839–1897);7 cooperation; land nationalization; currency reform; the fran- chise for women; temperance and prohibition; and the place of New Zealand in world affairs, particularly its role in the British Empire.