New Zealand is famous for the welfare state, developed in the late 19th century and being dismantled a century later. But the welfare state was not in fact New Zealand's first welfare experiment. Arriving in the early 19th century, European settlers shrugged off Old World values to demand, contrary to English law and practice at that time, that the elderly and the poor should take care of themselves. Settlers, building a new society afresh demanded active overnight support of the deserving - cheap land and loans for settlers, public works to create jobs, state savings banks. They passed vigorously enforced laws placing all welfare duties upon families. They kept handouts to the destitute miserly, demeaning and short-term.