Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    Chapter 14—The Australian 1890s

    Alwyn Fraser

    God calls upon us to push the triumphs of the cross in Australia. New fields are opening. For want of workers and money the work has been hindered, but it must be hindered no longer. Of all countries, Australia most resembles America. All classes of people are there. And the warning message has not been presented and rejected. Testimonies for the Church 6:26.WEGW 227.1

    On December 8, 1891, Ellen White, accompanied by her son William and three literary assistants, arrived in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. Eight days later the group left on a journey of about 600 miles for Melbourne, the capital of the southern colony of Victoria. There she lived until she returned to Sydney in March 1894. Mrs. White would stay in Sydney and then at Sunnyside, her home near Avondale College, some 80 miles north of Sydney, until she returned to the United States on August 29, 1900. She was thus in Australia almost nine years.WEGW 227.2

    During that period Ellen White experienced an extremely severe economic depression that affected particularly the states of New South Wales and Victoria (where the Whites lived), which she described at length to a friend in the United States. She also witnessed the successful attempt to weld the separate colonies into a nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the problems that arose with the effort to include in the federal constitution the principle that Australia was a Christian nation.WEGW 227.3

    Although Mrs. White was, of course, primarily concerned with the missionary outreach of the church and the growth of its various publishing, health, and education agencies, her letters and other writings during this decade reveal that she was well aware of the secular and religious movements that were part of this most formative period in Australia’s development.WEGW 227.4

    Three years before the Whites arrived, while the colonies appeared to be riding high on a long wave of unprecedented prosperity, the first 100 years of British settlement was celebrated. Among the many distinguished overseas visitors who came to join in the centenary festivities was the earl of Carnarvon. Upon his return to England he treated the readers of the Fortnightly Review to a delightful and detailed description of the country and its people, stressing its “extraordinary prosperity”.WEGW 228.1

    The Sydney Morning Herald of January 26, 1888, the country’s actual birthday, took pride in the fact that the present “free and prosperous community,” with its undoubted “material progress,” had outgrown “its origin and completely effaced the traces of it.” Such fulsome praise was music to the ears of Sir Henry Parkes, the affable premier of New South Wales, the oldest colony. No one, of course, could know that in a few short years such prosperity would give way to deep depression.WEGW 228.2

    The country had, indeed, made remarkable progress in all areas of life since the first governor, a retired navy captain named Arthur Phillip, formally took possession of the continent on behalf of the British government. He had brought with him in the First Fleet of settlers the entire population of about 1,000 people, consisting mostly of unwanted convicts that the government of George III had sentenced to be transported from England, accompanied by their guards from the Marines.WEGW 228.3

    It was not a promising start, and though Phillip did assure his superiors in England that “this country will hereafter prove a most valuable acquisition to Great Britain,” he must have wondered at times whether they would win the battle for survival. But the first settlement did survive. Exploration opened up fertile plains for raising sheep; more free settlers arrived as Britain ended the transportation of convicts to eastern Australia; and the discovery of gold continued to attract people from overseas, so that other settlements were established by the mid-nineteenth century and began to prosper.WEGW 228.4

    The 30 years before 1890 were boom years, financed largely by funds from overseas. British investors, in particular, saw that considerable profits could be made from the rapidly rising demand for houses, factories, farms, and railways. During these years population doubled as new arrivals, mostly from Britain and Ireland, poured into the colonies under government-assisted immigration schemes. The hardworking Chinese, though, were not so welcome, for they were too numerous and it was thought that their willingness to work for lower wages would undermine the living standards of the Australian worker and his family.WEGW 228.5

    By the 1890s, Australia’s population of 4 million had spread out into six separate states or colonies—New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia (which included what later became Northern Territory)—each being responsible for conducting its own domestic affairs in its own separately elected parliament.WEGW 229.1

    At the same time, in spite of their sometimes intense rivalries, colonial politicians were realizing the need for a national government to deal with such matters as defense, international trade policy, and foreign relations. During the 1890s this nationalist movement strengthened, and shortly before the Whites returned to America, the British government passed a bill establishing a federal parliament to govern the new Commonwealth of Australia.WEGW 229.2

    When the Whites arrived in Melbourne at the close of 1891, the building mania that had gripped the city for the past decade had subsided. The architectural face of “marvelous Melbourne,” as the prosperous city had become known, had been greatly altered as new government buildings and taller office blocks, complete with the revolutionary American elevator, replaced the vacant lots and smaller buildings of an earlier age. New suburbs appeared almost overnight to meet the demand for homes for workers who were being employed in the city or in the increasing number of factories that were being established. Money for construction and purchase was readily available from the new and thriving building societies, land banks, and mortgage companies that had persuaded citizens of all wealth levels to invest their savings with the promise of large rewards.WEGW 229.3

    But the boom was self-limiting. As land prices fell and the demand for homes slowed, many of the newly formed finance companies that had overextended themselves in frantic speculation went bankrupt. Many wage earners and retired people who had invested their savings lost everything. The collapse of the building boom was, unfortunately, followed by the news that British investors who had recently lost heavily in Argentina were no longer willing to lend money overseas, even to Australian governments and companies.WEGW 229.4

    Now the situation was serious, because the expansion of the 1880s had depended to a large extent on money borrowed from Britain. The result was that public works programs, which had employed many men building railways, had to be sharply reduced; more building societies and land companies began to fail; and the number of businessmen filing for bankruptcy rapidly rose. Many who could not face public embarrassment committed suicide; more than one body was dragged from Melbourne’s Yarra River.WEGW 230.1

    As unemployment worsened and consumer spending dropped, more businesses went under. The eastern states of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland were most severely affected by this economic downturn. When building societies and land banks by the score suspended operations, many never to reopen, thousands of investors, most of whom were ordinary working-class people, lost the bulk of their savings.WEGW 230.2

    Worse was yet to come, however. In 1893, as the drying up of capital from Britain caused the commercial banks to fail, panic set in. Thousands of depositors in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane flocked to withdraw their savings. Not all were successful, and this created hardship for many people. Two thirds of Australia’s 28 commercial banks were involved in this enormous bank crash. People who had invested in these seemingly sound banks and building societies were shocked by their sudden collapse.WEGW 230.3

    Shock turned to anger as numerous scandals surfaced involving respected businessmen, public servants, and members of parliament who embodied the Victorian concept of virtue—good family men, teetotalers, regular churchgoers and supporters of charity. Caught up in the speculative mania, these bankers and builders with whom the public had entrusted their money were found guilty of fraud, embezzlement, misuse of trust funds, and other crooked dealings. Very little of this money was ever recovered.WEGW 230.4

    James Mirams, who started numerous financial institutions, was among those who served prison terms while vehemently protesting their innocence of any wrongdoing. His close friend James Munro, the Victorian premier from 1890 to 1892, who had helped Mirams establish the Premier Permanent Building Association, one of the largest of Melbourne’s many building societies, fled the country to take up a hastily arranged appointment in London.WEGW 230.5

    The depression affected all the eastern states, though Victoria and Melbourne especially were most severely hit. Unemployment rose sharply, while the savings of even the most thrifty were soon used up. Those who were buying houses and farms frequently lost everything when they could not meet their payments.WEGW 231.1

    “In this country I have found destitution and poverty everywhere,” Ellen White wrote in 1895, “and had I not means to relieve the distressed, to clothe the naked, to take the youth who are too poor to help themselves and place them in schools, and to help the churches in building houses of worship, we should have left the field long ago; for it would be useless to attempt to do anything, hampered on every side.” She proceeded to tell how she had given $1,000 to help some students gain an education, and a further $2,000 to help other distressed individuals.WEGW 231.2

    The full picture of this very severe depression may never be known. Contemporary newspapers carried heartrending stories of the misery produced by economic hardship. Some men, driven to despair by their financial problems, sought a solution by shooting their families and then committing suicide. A Melbourne clergyman told how a grasping landlord had taken furniture and clothing from an unemployed tenant’s house while he was out looking for work, leaving him and his five children with absolutely nothing.WEGW 231.3

    Fortunately, few followed the example of Mary Newsome, who, after her unemployed husband had left her, gave birth to a new baby. Already mother of three small children, she sought to solve the problem of an extra mouth to feed by burning her infant. Those with small children, who were able to find work, placed them with “baby farmers” who promised to feed and care for the little ones for a fee. Not all were dishonest, but the public was so outraged by reports of babies’ bodies being found that when one baby farmer, a Mrs. Knorr, was found guilty of murdering several children, there was little opposition to carrying out the death sentence.WEGW 231.4

    Since their menfolk could not find work, women frequently resorted to prostitution. Precise figures are not available, but there seem to have been about 10,000 prostitutes making a living in Melbourne’s streets and brothels during the depression years of the 1890s.WEGW 231.5

    How to deal with the widespread misery caused by the depression was both a pressing and a major task. Within the various state governments there were many who were extremely sympathetic, from a humanitarian viewpoint, to the plight of the unemployed and their destitute families. Some members favored a public works program, but all that was accomplished was the establishment of a labor bureau, which had limited success because only about one third of those who registered received work.WEGW 232.1

    Unfortunately, most of the jobs were available in rural areas, not the urban areas where the majority of the unemployed and their families lived. Colonial governments were reluctant to provide direct financial help because they did not consider it to be the state’s responsibility to spend money to alleviate social and economic distress.WEGW 232.2

    Private charities, operated by churches and benevolent societies, were very willing to help the distressed, though the many calls for aid usually exceeded their meager resources. They too had been affected by the depression, which had reduced private donations at the very time they were most needed. Some local businesses were able to provide limited supplies of bread, meat, and vegetables for hungry families. In Melbourne the most destitute were given a small sack of food each day and were able to obtain an evening meal and shelter for the night at such places as the Salvation Army refuges, Dr. Singleton’s Night Shelter for Women, and the Gordon Institute for Boys. Attending a compulsory worship service was probably a small price to pay for such a luxury, for there were many who had to spend a cold night on park benches and in the public gardens.WEGW 232.3

    Those who suffered most were the children. A government report issued in 1891 told of 10,000 children in Melbourne alone who were neglected and homeless and had to devote all their attention to supporting themselves.WEGW 232.4

    Even the workers themselves, acting as a group, could do little to change their situation. They could organize demonstrations and hold mass meetings, but these did not produce jobs or money for food. A popular form of protest was the torchlight procession, in which men were joined by women with babies in their arms to dramatize their plight. The clergy were particularly angered one Sunday evening in 1893 when some 300 workers marched through Melbourne streets bearing a cross to which was nailed a workman in effigy. A plaque above him read: “Humanity crucified.”WEGW 232.5

    Such forms of protest failed to produce action; frequently they led to violent confrontations with the police, especially when the church services of the more well-to-do citizens were interrupted by the marchers. Some clergy, together with their employed and well-fed flocks, expressed little sympathy for the unemployed, since they regarded their plight as a judgment from a God who was punishing the workers for neglecting Him while spending most of their leisure time drinking and gambling.WEGW 233.1

    During the latter part of the depression, Ellen White lived in Sydney. That city, although not as badly affected as Melbourne, was by no means immune from unemployment and hardship. Here, too, the needy received most help from private charity. Numerous church members benefited from Mrs. White’s generosity, even though her own living expenses were “much heavier in this country than in America.” She frequently visited a needy family of nine who lived 12 miles away at Castle Hill and who had recently become Adventists. The father was an unemployed stone mason who had borrowed from the bank to build his house and establish a citrus orchard. He lived in “daily expectation of receiving a summons either to repay the money loaned him or to lose all that he has.”WEGW 233.2

    The Whites themselves were affected by the depression. “Our faith has been tested and tried,” Ellen White wrote in her diary. “Families were continually coming to me and telling me that they had no money to buy bread, but what could I do? I could not pay my own workers any wages, and our grocery bills were accumulating. For three or four months my workers could not be paid, but they were willing to suffer inconvenience. I received from Battle Creek $600. This would barely set me straight with my creditors, but some of them were willing to wait.”WEGW 233.3

    Depression was not the only topic of public interest in the eastern Australian states during the early 1890s. These years witnessed a number of bitter clashes between capital and labor as the rapidly growing trade unions began to assert themselves. The earliest unions in Australia were craft unions, formed in the 1840s and 1850s by workers in the building, printing, and metalworking trades. Locally organized, they fought to secure such benefits as an eight-hour workday, higher wages, and improved conditions of work.WEGW 233.4

    By the 1890s a marked change had come over the labor movement. New socialist ideas were coming into the country and were being circulated in working class papers such as the Brisbane Worker and William Lane’s Boomerang. Questions were being raised about the unequal distribution of wealth and the need for social services.WEGW 234.1

    The unions themselves were becoming more organized to harness this working class discontent, as a result of the drive and vision of leaders such as William Spence. Born in Scotland in 1846 of staunch Presbyterian parents, Spence came to the Victorian gold fields when he was 7 years old. Two years later he was working as a miner. He emerged as a leader in 1878 after successfully organizing his first strike.WEGW 234.2

    During the 1880s Spence amalgamated unions in the shearing and mining industries and began to advocate a new union philosophy. With larger organizations, he argued, labor unions could have more success in bargaining with what he referred to as “tyrannical employers.” His organizational abilities produced huge gains in membership. In two years the Amalgamated Shearers’ Union grew to 16,000 members; the first six months of 1890 saw the number of workers that the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council represented increase from 20,000 to 35,000.WEGW 234.3

    But with increasing strength came increasing militancy as union leaders tried to force employers to agree to the “closed shop” principle of hiring union labor only in their industry. Employers watched this development with alarm, and, in response, formed their own organizations, such as the Steamship Owners’ Association and the Pastoralists’ Union, to protect freedom of contract. At the dawn of the nineties these two forces—a stronger and more militant trade union organization, and a growing employer unity—appeared to be on a collision course.WEGW 234.4

    Trouble broke out initially in the shearing industry. At the beginning of the 1890 shearing season, Queensland graziers, under union pressure, agreed to have wool shorn by union labor only and not to employ cheaper Chinese labor on their stations. Spurred on by this success, Spence aimed to force New South Wales and Victorian graziers also to adopt the closed shop.WEGW 234.5

    But his militant proposal for union solidarity “to draw such a cordon of unionism around the Australian continent as will effectively prevent a bale of wool leaving unless shorn by union shearers” infuriated the graziers. Now it was the employers’ turn to unite; both transport and stevedoring companies agreed to support the pastoralists by handling all wool.WEGW 235.1

    In August 1890 the struggle widened when trouble broke out in the shipping industry. A strike by maritime officers, who were joined by several other shipping unions, the Wharf Labourers Union, as well as shearers, road transport workers, and coal miners, led to what was called the Maritime Strike, the largest and most bitter industrial dispute Australia had experienced.WEGW 235.2

    Although the unions would ultimately lose this trial of strength, which lasted for three months and involved some 50,000 men, they would not go down without a struggle. There were some ugly scenes that embittered relations between capital and labor throughout the nineties and beyond. In November 1890 nonunion workers were hauling wool, under guard, down George Street, Sydney, to the wharves at Circular Quay, where it was to be loaded for export. About 10,000 men, members of the Trolley and Draymen’s Union, and their sympathizers, lined the route, frequently heckling the nonunion workers with cries of “Scab!”WEGW 235.3

    Although the protest had been noisy, there was no violence until the wool had almost reached its destination. Some onlookers then began to hurl stones; when a constable was injured the authorities felt that it was time for action. The riot act was read, and 300 police, who had been assembled to keep order, joined the mounted troopers and quickly dispersed the demonstrators.WEGW 235.4

    Shortly after the Sydney protest, when a mass rally of unionists was held in Flinders Park, Melbourne, the Victorian government called in the troops as a precautionary measure. Colonel Pride’s words to his men to “fire low and lay them out ... so that the duty will not again have to be performed,” shows how seriously the authorities viewed the situation. The rally, fortunately, was orderly.WEGW 235.5

    The next year, a potentially explosive situation occurred in Queensland when the Pastoralists’ Union determined to defeat the Shearers’ Union by refusing to accept closed-shop shearing. The shearers decided to accept the challenge and to fight back, literally, by forming a number of armed camps. One group even erected a blue flag, which symbolized an earlier confrontation between gold miners and the Victorian government at the famous Eureka Stockade in the 1850s. Nonunion workers, many of whom had been brought in from Melbourne, were threatened and had to be given police protection, which further antagonized the strikers.WEGW 235.6

    The premier, Samuel Griffith, warned that there “appeared grave danger that the freedom of men to pursue their lawful avocations under the protection of the law would be seriously impaired” if the situation continued. Finally, the government sent in troops to break up these armed groups at the shearers’ camps. Eleven strike leaders were arrested, tried, and subsequently sentenced to three years in prison for conspiracy and intimidating nonunion workers.WEGW 236.1

    While this ended the confrontation, the strikers were more than ever convinced, particularly by what they regarded as vindictive sentences handed down to the leaders of the strike, that the government was siding with the wealthy employers in a class war to oppose the working man.WEGW 236.2

    These strikes did not come at an opportune time for labor. Some leaders, like William Spence, had not wanted a large strike because they knew how inadequate the strike funds were. Sydney union authorities faced the strange situation of trying to dissuade many of their members from supporting the Maritime Strike.WEGW 236.3

    Perhaps the strongest argument against striking at this time was the state of the economy. As the depression grew more serious and unemployment rose, it became more difficult to persuade men to leave their jobs and strike. That is one reason why the strikes that did occur in 1892 and 1894, involving miners and shearers in New South Wales and Queensland, were short-lived and unsuccessful. There were plenty of unemployed, nonunionist strikebreakers who were glad to occupy the vacant positions.WEGW 236.4

    Union leaders were, of course, disappointed. William Lane, a radical socialist who had played a leading role in organizing the Queensland labor movement, decided that he could not successfully achieve his goals in Australia. An advocate of an Australian republic, Lane aimed at the “nationalization of all sources of wealth and of all means of producing and exchanging wealth.” He became disillusioned with the failure of the Maritime and Shearers strikes and with the steadily worsening depression.WEGW 236.5

    In 1892 Lane negotiated with the government of Paraguay in South America for a large tract of land where he proposed to establish his socialist utopia. The next year he sailed from Sydney in his own vessel, Royal Tar, with 220 settlers who had paid $60 per family. On board was a small library of Adventist publications including The Great Controversy, Thoughts on Daniel and Revelation, and Bible Readings, which the church’s ship missionary had persuaded the captain to accept.WEGW 237.1

    But the communal settlement suffered from numerous internal problems. Lane proved to be a dictator, and when he claimed to be receiving instructions by supernatural revelation, many of his followers returned to Australia in disgust. By the end of the decade only a few settlers remained in Paraguay. Lane himself settled in New Zealand, where he wrote for the New Zealand Herald and strangely trod a conservative, rather than a radical, political path.WEGW 237.2

    More moderate labor leaders decided that the time had come to effectively reshape society by becoming involved in politics rather than through industrial action. This idea, originally put forward in the eighties, had understandably received little mass support in that prosperous decade. But in the nineties, life was harder. Bitter strikes and worsening unemployment caused more people to favor a political solution to their problems. Thus the 1890s saw the appearance of Labour Parties in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and the election of their candidates to these parliaments. Now the workers would have a voice in colonial parliaments; perhaps the government would assist the workers rather than the employers.WEGW 237.3

    The social bitterness and economic losses produced by the strikes of the 1890s moved some colonial politicians to try to prevent a repetition. Acts were passed in New South Wales (1892), South Australia (1894), and Victoria (1896) to set up tribunals to determine wages and conditions of work, and conciliation councils to settle disputes before a strike occurred. In the long run, therefore, this period of industrial unrest did actually benefit the worker, because governments began to recognize that they had a clear responsibility to prevent disputes from producing such hostility and deep divisions in society.WEGW 237.4

    Any picture of Australian life in the 1890s, and particularly of the movement for the establishment of an Australian nation, would be incomplete without some reference to the Sydney Bulletin. Before the 1880s, most of the literature that Australians read was imported from England. In January 1880 all this changed. The founding of the Bulletin by John F. Archibald, who was its editor until 1903, has rightly been called “the most important single happening in Australian literary history in the last century.”WEGW 238.1

    With “Australia for the Australians” as its motto, the paper became an extremely influential supporter of federation. It could be found not only in the clubs and hotels of the cities but also in the huts of scattered rural workers, where it was known as “the bushman’s bible.” Although the Bulletin did not neglect city life, it devoted most of its attention to life in the sparsely settled Australian outback.WEGW 238.2

    Two well-known figures in Australian literature of the time were Henry Lawson and Andrew Barton Paterson, both of whom wrote about such typically Australian rural workers as drovers, shearers, miners, bullock drivers, and their families. Lawson grew up in the gold fields of western New South Wales and was quite familiar with the hardship of country life, which he delightfully portrayed in “A Day on a Selection.” Another short story, “The Drover’s Wife,” revealed the courage of women in the outback as they tried to cope with the problems of raising a family and dealing with drought and floods, bushfires and sickness, and five-foot-long deadly black snakes while their husbands were away for months at a time.WEGW 238.3

    Paterson, who first wrote under the penname “Banjo,” the name of his father’s racehorse, was a master of the bush ballad. Although he practiced law in Sydney, Paterson, who had been born in western New South Wales, frequently returned to the outback he knew and loved so well. In such folk ballads as “Clancy of the Overflow” and “The Man from Snowy River,” he told of Australian country life, using Australian characters and Australian language. In an era of growing nationalism his work was enthusiastically received.WEGW 238.4

    “Banjo” Paterson’s best-known ballad is “Waltzing Matilda.” It tells the story of a swagman (an itinerant bush worker) who, camping by a billabong (a pond or small river), steals a jumbuck (a sheep) that passes by, and stuffs it into his tucker-bag (food bag). As he struggles with it, the squatter (sheep station owner) comes by with troops, who demand its return. To avoid arrest, the swagman jumps into the billabong.WEGW 238.5

    “You’ll never catch me alive!” said he;WEGW 239.1

    And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,WEGW 239.2

    “You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me.”WEGW 239.3

    “Waltzing Matilda” (a matilda is the swagman’s bundle of possessions; to waltz matilda is to travel with one’s belongings wrapped in a blanket, known as a swag, and slung over the shoulder), now set to music, is today one of the most recognizable Australian songs.WEGW 239.4

    The 1890s also saw important political gains made by women. Australia and New Zealand were among the first Western countries to reform election procedures. The first secret ballot was held in the colony of Victoria in 1856, some 15 years before it was introduced into England. But it was in the field of women’s voting rights that the Australian colonies led the way. As early as 1861 women in South Australia who owned property were allowed to vote in local municipal elections. In 1894, following New Zealand’s earlier lead, South Australia became the first colonial government to grant women the right to vote at all elections and also to stand as candidates for parliament. In 1899 Western Australia followed her neighbor’s lead. Several more decades would elapse before women in Britain and the United States were granted the same rights.WEGW 239.5

    An anomaly arose, however, when the Australian Commonwealth Constitution of 1901 allowed only those women who had state voting rights to vote in federal elections. To eliminate this clear case of discrimination, the Electoral Act of 1902 permitted all adult women to vote in elections of the federal level. This act put pressure on the remaining state governments to allow women to vote in their elections. By the end of the decade all states had complied.WEGW 239.6

    The campaign to secure women’s voting rights in Australia was vastly different from that in Britain and the United States. In those countries, women were in the forefront of a battle that lasted for many years. Although they staged the customary marches and demonstrations, women, particularly in England, also sought to draw attention to their cause by engaging in a variety of such sensational acts as chaining themselves to railings, engaging in hunger strikes, and literally assaulting both police and politicians.WEGW 239.7

    This type of militancy was absent from the Australian scene, though this does not mean that women were inactive. There were those like Rose Scott, a prominent social worker in New South Wales, well known for her humanitarian work with women and children, who were deeply involved in the Franchise Leagues that were established in most states.WEGW 240.1

    Unlike in the mother country, the colonial franchise movement received extensive, though not always unanimous, support from men in public office, such as Dr. Stirling, a professor of anatomy at Adelaide University, who sat in the South Australian parliament. In 1890 the New South Wales parliament would probably have passed Sir Henry Parkes’ bill granting the vote to women, had it not been for other unrelated issues that caused its failure. Astute political leaders such as Charles Kingston, of South Australia, and John Forrest, of Western Australia, supported the campaign for women’s suffrage because they saw distinct political advantage in capturing the female vote.WEGW 240.2

    Women in Britain and the United States must have envied the gains that their southern sisters secured with comparatively little effort. Securing the vote, however, was one thing; getting elected to parliament was quite another. It was not until 1921, when Edith Cowan took her seat in the Western Australian parliament, that a woman was elected to such a position.WEGW 240.3

    Undoubtedly, the most important political development in the 1890s was the movement to unite the Australian colonies into a nation. Half a century earlier, a forward-looking colonial secretary, Earl Grey, had suggested that the colonies would do well to cooperate in matters of common interest. But this proposal and others made in the next four decades excited little enthusiasm among the colonists or their leaders.WEGW 240.4

    No compelling reason had yet emerged to persuade the colonies to bury their numerous jealousies and rivalries. They continued to argue over everything from railway gauge to tariff policy. Even during the 1880s, German and French interest in nearby Pacific islands and the threat of increased non-White immigration stirred only the politicians rather than the public on the need to unite for greater strength. A decade later, however, a combination of economic depression and industrial strife persuaded cynical politicians and unenthusiastic citizens that they should move toward a national government.WEGW 240.5

    By the middle of the decade, the state of the economy enabled proposals for a uniform tariff policy and national control over banking, bankruptcy laws, and public borrowing, to receive greater public support. A key conference was the second federal convention, held in 1897 at Adelaide. To this convention each state would send 10 delegates, who were to be chosen by the people rather than by the politicians. The task of the convention was to present to the people a constitution bill on which they would vote.WEGW 241.1

    Among the politicians in attendance was Edmond Barton, from New South Wales, a foremost supporter of federation who later was to become the country’s first prime minister. Barton played a major role in drafting the constitution bill, which provided for a federal government of two houses—a House of Representatives and a Senate—and described the powers that this government would take over from the states.WEGW 241.2

    During the discussion about federation, one of the issues that was hotly debated was the place religion was to play in the new government. Some church leaders, such as the Catholic Cardinal Moran, became deeply involved. Moran’s name appeared on the ballot in March, 1897, to choose 10 delegates to the second federal convention. It was significant that he supported the insertion of a statement in the preamble of the constitution bill that “religion is the basis of our Australian Commonwealth.”WEGW 241.3

    Although Moran was defeated in the elections and withdrew from politics, there were others, Catholic and Protestant alike, who were prepared to campaign actively for the inclusion of religion in the constitution. This “recognition” clause, as it came to be called because it would have the constitution state that Australia “recognized that God is the supreme ruler of the world, and the ultimate source of all law and authority in nations,” stirred up considerable controversy; both supporters and opponents circulated petitions.WEGW 241.4

    In spite of strong support from Catholic and Protestant churches and from both newspapers and politicians, the “recognition” clause was defeated. Among the religious groups who took the lead in this opposition was the Seventh-day Adventist Church, led by Willard A. Colcord, an American who had witnessed A. T. Jones’ earlier struggle for religious liberty in the United States.WEGW 241.5

    Colcord and the Whites clearly understood that such a “recognition” clause could jeopardize freedom to worship on Sabbath. Only a few years earlier Adventists had been in trouble with the authorities who were trying to enforce Sunday legislation. Under the heading “Seventh-day Adventists in the Stocks” the Bible Echo, the church’s religious liberty magazine, told the story of how two brothers, William and Henry Firth, were convicted of working on Sunday in their orchard at Kellyville, near Sydney. The Firths refused to pay the five shillings fine and chose to spend two hours in the stocks as punishment. Their decision embarrassed the authorities, who could not find any stocks at that time.WEGW 242.1

    Three months later, Robert Shannon was arrested as he was mixing mortar while building a house in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt. Shannon tried to prove that he was wrongfully arrested because the law mentioned the Lord’s day according to the Bible. The magistrate would not be drawn into a theological argument, however, and dismissed the case on a legal technicality—again, the authorities could not find any stocks!WEGW 242.2

    The defeat of the “recognition” clause was largely a result of the strong leadership of Henry Bournes Higgins, a Victorian barrister who had corresponded with Colcord and was well aware of the religious liberty problems Adventists had faced in the United States in the wake of a similar recognition movement. Higgins was also responsible for clause 116 in the present constitution, which states: “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”WEGW 242.3

    It was a triumph for Higgins and “the little squad of Seventh-day Adventists,” as one Protestant opposition group referred to the church, who were determined to keep church and state separate.WEGW 242.4

    By 1900 the constitution bill had been approved by popular vote in all the colonies and by the British Parliament. It was a proud moment for all Australians when on January 1, 1901, in Sydney’s Centennial Park, Edmond Barton was sworn in as the new country’s prime minister by the earl of Hopetoun, representing Britain’s Queen Victoria. That same day, the Sydney Morning Herald echoed the optimism that all shared: “We have within our borders, in our but partly discovered and exploited natural resources, all the material guarantees for prosperity and greatness. We enter a new year and the new century a united Australian nation.”WEGW 242.5

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents