The butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker: The varying fortunes of goldfields merchants

Abstract

The idea that goldfields merchants made huge profits during the rush era as a result of monopolistic pricing, predatory behaviour, and exploitation of their miner clientele is a strangely persistent one in popular culture and even in some academic thinking. Using the experiences of a representative group of Central Otago hoteliers, grocers and local goods manufacturers I will examine this in greater detail. Benjamin Naylor, a butcher and farmer; Jesse Geer, a baker and restaurateur, and Charles Ziele, a storekeeper and candle manufacturer, provide useful exemplar histories to test the theory. Using their experiences and making comparisons with merchants like them, I will discuss the commercial and/or mining background of merchants in the gold rush, their money-lending and capital-raising work, their successes and failures in business and as investors, and using their example, draw new conclusions about the commercial realities merchant life in the depths of a gold rush.