Australia at the Turn of the Century

Some of the events included a change to working conditions to make them fair, the change of rights of aborigines and women to vote and the introduction of the immigration restriction act in 1901. The most important event that occurred is the federation of Australia’s six British colonies.

Australia in 1900 was comprised of a variety of different races but was mostly made up of Anglo-Celtic background. 75.2 percent of people (2,913,997 people) were born in Australia but only 17.2 percent (665,954 people) was born in Great Britain. 1 percent (38,552 people) were born in Germany, 0.8 percent (29,907 people) were born in China, 0.7 percent (25,881 people) were born in New Zealand and 2.7 (105,510 people) were born in other countries. These other countries included Italy, United States, Middle East and Asia.

The Chinese people were some of the first non-white immigrants in Australia. When convicts started to fade away, rich cattle raisers went to Asia and brought back Chinese people to work as farm labourers and shepherds. After 1950, Chinese people started to work on the goldfield but other non-Chinese workers started to treat them badly. There were physical attacks on the Chinese workers because other workers did not tolerate their culture and customs.

There was a lot of conflict in the cities, employers wanted to make more profit by using Chinese workers because of their cheap labour. This also was to make European workers accept reduced wages and worse conditions. There was also an incident where 1000 European miners went on strike and the mine managers hired Chinese as replacements. The Europeans attacked the coaches the Chinese were in and pulled down the building where they were going to stay.

At the turn of the century, working conditions were poor and pay was very little. In the city area, many people worked in factories. Temperatures in the factories reached over 40 degrees Celsius in the summer and the factory managers treated the workers like slaves. People usually worked from 8 am to 6pm; sometimes they worked until 10pm even though they were not paid extra for it. Shop assistants worked 12 hour shifts on weekdays and 14 hour shifts on Saturday. When the first Factories and Shop act was passed, shop managers ignored it and the shop assistants feared complaining on risk of being sacked.

Children sometimes worked even though school was compulsory. They worked in factories, textile mills and in boot trade. Young children were hired because they were cheap labour and could get into and clean the small holes in between machines. Children were paid 2 cents per hour which was half the average woman’s pay; this was because the factory managers wanted to make as much profit as possible.