in wheat, prices for farm products sagged. The market for land seized up. Hard times led to urban unemployment and sweated labour (exploitative labour conditions) in industry. The country lost people through emigration, mostly to Australia. Vogel era In 1870 Julius Vogel introduced his grand go-ahead policy to dispel the slump with increased immigration and overseas borrowing to fund new railways, roads and telegraph lines. Local banks – notably the Bank of New Zealand and the Colonial Bank of New Zealand — were "reckless" and permitted "a frenzy of private borrowing". The public debt had increased from £7.8 million in 1870 to £18.6 million in 1876. But of railway had been built with under construction. of road had been opened, and electric telegraph lines increased from in 1866 to in 1876. A record number of immigrants arrived in 1874 (32,000 of the 44,000 were government assisted) and the population rose from 248,000 in 1870 to 399,000 in 1876. Women Although norms of masculinity were dominant, strong minded women originated a feminist movement starting in the 1860s, well before women gained the right to vote in 1893. Middle-class women employed the media (especially newspapers) to communicate with each other and define their priorities. Prominent feminist writers included Mary Taylor, Mary Colclough (pseud. Polly Plum), and Ellen Elizabeth Ellis. The first signs of a politicised collective female identity came in crusades to pass the Contagious Diseases Prevention Act. Feminists by the 1880s were using the rhetoric of "white slavery" to reveal men's sexual and social oppression of women. By demanding that men take responsibility for the right of women to walk the streets in safety, New Zealand feminists deployed the rhetoric of white slavery to argue for women's sexual and social freedom. Middle-class women successfully mobilised to stop prostitution, especially during the First World War. Māori women developed their own form of feminism, derived from Māori nationalism rather than European sources. In 1893 Elizabeth Yates was elected mayor of Onehunga, making her the first woman in the British Empire to hold the office. She was an able administrator: she cut the debt, reorganised the fire brigade, and improved the roads and sanitation. Many men were hostile however, and she was defeated for re-election. Hutching argues that after 1890 women were increasingly well organised through the National Council of Women, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's International League, and others. By 1910