Challenging the ‘Slave-Driving Employers’: Understanding Victoria's 1896 Minimum Wage through a World-History Approach

Abstract

In 1896 the colony of Victoria introduced the world's first legal minimum wage that also extended to adult men. It was much discussed around the world by commentators who saw its significance in terms of its radical break with the past. Traditionally conceptualised as an outcome of a domestic anti-sweating movement that focused on the exploitation of women and children in the clothing industry, I suggest that the radical innovation of the minimum wage is best explained if we adopt a world-history approach that recognises the potency of anti-slavery discourse in the nineteenth century, the encounter of British and Chinese workers in the context of urban manufacturing in 1890s Melbourne, and the ways in which the minimum wage, later theorised as a living wage, made the humanity of workers central to modern definitions of labour.

My thanks to Lee-Ann Monk for her invaluable research assistance.

My thanks to Lee-Ann Monk for her invaluable research assistance.

Notes

¹ ‘Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories, Work-rooms and Shops, for the year ended 31 December 1896’, Victorian Parliamentary Papers (hereafter VPP), Vol. 2, 1897, 5; see also report in Age, 4 August 1897.

² Walter Lippmann ‘The Campaign Against Sweating’, New Republic, 27 March 1915, 22.

³ Walter Lippmann ‘The Campaign Against Sweating’, New Republic, 27 March 1915, 25.

⁴ Walter Lippmann ‘The Campaign Against Sweating’, New Republic, 27 March 1915, 27; Florence Kelley, The Present Status of Minimum Wage Legislation (New York: National Consumers' League, 1913), 6. See also Elizabeth Glendower Evans, ‘A Case for the Minimum Wage’, Survey 31 (1914): 497–8; Learned Hand, ‘The Hope of the Minimum Wage’, New Republic, 20 November 1915; Florence Kelley, ed., The Case for the Minimum Wage, Special Issue, Survey 33, no. 19 (6 February 1915).

⁵ Kay Saunders, ed., Indentured Labour in the British Empire 1834–1920 (London: Croom Helm, 1984); David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

⁶ Persia Campbell, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries within the British Empire (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1923; reprinted 1971).

⁷ Kevin Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (London: Routledge, 2005), 2.

⁸ Kevin Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (London: Routledge, 2005), 2.

⁹ Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 55.

¹⁰ Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press: 2001), 101–16.

¹¹ National Consumers' League, Report of the Tenth Annual Session of the Council, 2 March 1909, 18.

¹² Victor S. Clark, ‘Labor Conditions in Australia’, Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor 56 (1905): 141, 147; Victor S. Clark, The Labor Movement in Australasia: A Study in Social Democracy (New York: Henry Holt, 2006). Clark was quoted in National Consumers' League of Oregon, Report of Social Survey Committee on Wages, Hours and Conditions of Work and Cost and Standard of Living of Women Wage Earners in Oregon with Special Reference to Portland, 1913, 11. Capital and Labor bound pamphlets, New York Public Library.

¹³ National Consumers' League, Report of the Tenth Annual Session of Council, 2 March 1909, 16–18.

¹⁴ National Consumers' League, Report of the Tenth Annual Session of Council, 2 March 1909, 33.

¹⁵ John Rickard, ‘The Anti-Sweating Movement in Britain and Victoria: The Politics of Empire and Social Reform’, [Australian] Historical Studies 18, no. 73 (October 1979): 585.

¹⁶ Ernest Aves, Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Acts of Australia and New Zealand (London: Darling, 1908), 7.

¹⁷ Ernest Aves, Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Acts of Australia and New Zealand (London: Darling, 1908), 10.

¹⁸ On the impact in Britain, see Rickard, ‘Anti-Sweating Movement’; on the United States, see Marilyn Lake, ‘“This Great America”: HB Higgins and Transnational Progressivism’, Australian Historical Studies 44, no. 2 (June 2013): 172–88.

¹⁹ Rodgers, 55.

²⁰ Victor S. Clark, ‘Present State of Labor Legislation in Australia and New Zealand’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 33, no. 2 (March 1909): 223.

²¹ Tony Ballantyne, ‘Writing out Asia: Race, Colonialism and Chinese Migration in New Zealand History’, in East by South: China in the Australasian Imagination, ed. Charles Ferrall, Paul Miller and Keren Smith (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005), 95–8.

²² John Rickard, Class and Politics: New South Wales, Victoria and the Early Commonwealth, 1890–1910 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1976), 92–3, 102–3; Rickard, ‘Anti-Sweating Movement’; Sheila Blackburn, A Fair Day's Wage for a Fair Day's Work? Sweated Labour and the Origins of Minimum Wage Legislation in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); in Alan Gregory's account of Alexander Peacock's key role in introducing the Victorian Factory Act there is no mention of the focus on Chinese workers: ‘Peacock, Sir Alexander James (1861–1933)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/peacock-sir-alexander-james-7994/text13927 (accessed 2 July 2013).

²³ P. G. Macarthy, ‘Victorian Wages Boards: Their Origins and the Doctrine of the Living Wage’, Journal of Industrial Relations 10 (1968): 116–34.

²⁴ Rickard, Class and Politics, 94–7.

²⁵ Jenny Lee, ‘A Re-Division of Labour: Victoria's Wages Boards in Action, 1896–1903’, Historical Studies 22, no. 88 (April 1987): 352–72.

²⁶ Sascha Auerbach, Race, Law and the ‘Chinese Puzzle’ in Imperial Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 4.

²⁷ Ann Curthoys, ‘Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy’, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 11–14.

²⁸ Ann Curthoys, ‘Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy’, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 12.

²⁹ Ann Curthoys, ‘Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy’, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 16.

³⁰ Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 27; also quoted in Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Vol. 2 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004), 260.

³¹ John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 62–5.

³² Ann Curthoys, ‘Conflict and Consensus: The Seamen's Strike of 1878’, in Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Working Class in Australia, ed. Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1978), 48–50, 58–62; Andrew Markus, ‘Divided We Fall: The Chinese and the Melbourne Furniture Trade Union, 1870–1900’, Labour History 26 (May 1974): 7.

³³ Curthoys, 51; Markus, 7.

³⁴ Markus, 6.

³⁵ H. B. Higgins, Victorian Parliamentary Debates (hereafter VPD), Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1895, 3129.

³⁶ H. B. Higgins, Victorian Parliamentary Debates (hereafter VPD), Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1895, 3129.

³⁷ John Rickard, H.B. Higgins: The Rebel as Judge (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 83.

³⁸ Antoinette Burton, ‘Getting Outside the Global: Re-positioning British Imperialism in World History’, in Race, Nation and Empire: Making Histories, 1750 to the Present, ed. Catherine Hall and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Antoinette Burton, A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 1–9, 25–36; see also Jerry Bentley, ‘Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis’, Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (1999): 215–24; Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake, Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (Canberra: ANU ePress, 2005); Patrick Manning, ed., Global Practice in World History: Advances Worldwide (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Weiner, 2008).

³⁹ Notable exceptions are previously cited works by Persia Campbell and Kay Saunders and also Tracey Banivanua-Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).

⁴⁰ Lake and Reynolds, 152.

⁴¹ Banivanua-Mar, 12–14.

⁴² Age, 10 May 1883.

⁴³ Age, 10 May 1883.

⁴⁴ Age, 10 May 1883.

⁴⁵ Alexander Peacock, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 17 October 1895, 2635.

⁴⁶ ‘Factories Act Enquiry Board, Minutes of Evidence and Appendices’, VPP, Vol. 3, 1895–6.

⁴⁷ ‘Factories Act Enquiry Board, Minutes of Evidence and Appendices’, VPP, Vol. 3, 206.

⁴⁸ Enquiry Board report quoted in VPD, Legislative Council, 17 December 1895, 4251.

⁴⁹ Report quoted by H. Cuthbert, VPD, Legislative Council, 17 December 1895, 4250–1.

⁵⁰ Factories Act Enquiry Board, Minutes of Evidence, 156.

⁵¹ Factories Act Enquiry Board, Minutes of Evidence, 159.

⁵² Hancock, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 13 November 1895, 3158.

⁵³ National Consumers' League, Report of the Tenth Annual Session of the Council, 2 March 1909, 18.

⁵⁴ Henry Sargood, VPD, Legislative Council, 18 December 1895, 4318.

⁵⁵ Alexander Peacock, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 17 October 1895, 2637.

⁵⁶ George Prendergast, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1895, 3144.

⁵⁷ A. O. Sachse, VPD, Legislative Council, 18 December 1895, 4327.

⁵⁸ Prendergast quoting McCulloch, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1895, 3150.

⁵⁹ Deakin, VPD, Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1895, 3148–9.

⁶⁰ William Ah Ket, A Paper on The Chinese and the Factories Acts (Melbourne: Arbuckle, Waddell and Fawckner, 1906), 5–6.

⁶¹ Higgins to Frankfurter, 15 October 1916, Frankfurter Papers, Library of Congress, MSS 47571.

⁶² Quoted in Lake and Reynolds, 151.

⁶³ Jude Elton, ‘Comrades or Competition? Union Relations with Aboriginal Workers in the South Australian and Northern Territory Pastoral Industries, 1878–1959’ (PhD thesis, University of South Australia, 2007).

⁶⁴ Jude Elton, ‘Comrades or Competition? Union Relations with Aboriginal Workers in the South Australian and Northern Territory Pastoral Industries, 1878–1959’ (PhD thesis, University of South Australia, 2007).

⁶⁵ Jude Elton, ‘Comrades or Competition? Union Relations with Aboriginal Workers in the South Australian and Northern Territory Pastoral Industries, 1878–1959’ (PhD thesis, University of South Australia, 2007).

⁶⁶ Mary Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930); Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999), 110–35; Fiona Paisley, Loving Protection: Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Rights 1919–39 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000).

⁶⁷ Quoted in M. B. Hammond, ‘Judicial Interpretation of the Minimum Wage in Australia’, American Economic Review 3, no. 2 (June 1913): 285.

⁶⁸ Quoted in M. B. Hammond, ‘Judicial Interpretation of the Minimum Wage in Australia’, American Economic Review 3, no. 2 (June 1913): 285.

⁶⁹ Alice Henry, ‘The Living Wage’, Life and Labor 3, no. 7 (July 1913): 1.

⁷⁰ American Labor Legislation Review 3 (1913): 105.