'Not easy work to starve their employees': the 1921–22 Tasmanian Timber Dispute

John Dargavel^*

Although there is a rich industrial history of the timber industry, little has been written on its labour history. This paper recounts the course of a dispute in Southern Tasmania in 1921–22. It occurred during a national campaign by employers against Justice Higgins' 1920 decision to set a 44-hour week for timber workers and engineers. Local and state factors exacerbated the Southern Tasmanian dispute where a group of sawmilling companies commenced a lockout. The Australian Timber Workers' Union resisted attempts to force them to work a 48-hour week, enter a contract system and countenance non-union labour. The dispute lasted for 15 months and was marked by violent events, court cases and attempts by the Premier, the police and leading citizens to mediate a settlement. Although nationally the union had their hours set back to 48 by the Arbitration Court in 1922, locally it succeeded in having the non-union labour removed. The social character of the region helps explain why the dispute was so long and bitter. The paper concludes that future labour histories of the forest sector are likely to find that concentration/isolation of workers is an important parameter. There were three substantial problems that any similar studies would face: those of evaluating the influence of the social context, the limitations of historical sources and the specificity of the case study approach.
The Employers are now recognising that it is not easy work to even starve their Employees into accepting less than the Law provides.1
So wrote J.H. O'Neill, Acting Secretary of the Australian Timber Workers Union, No. 6 Tasmanian Branch, to the Premier, Sir Walter Lee, on 21 February 1922 when rejecting his offer to mediate a bitter dispute in the Southern Tasmanian sawmills and forests. Although the men had been locked out for almost eight months, they would not cave in; they lasted for another seven months but in the end gained only a pyrrhic victory. Their dispute was exceptional because nationally the timber companies and the union contained the general dispute about hours to a long-running case in the Commonwealth Arbitration Court.	1
This paper examines why the Southern Tasmanian dispute lasted so long and why it was so bitter. Local geography was an important factor. Southern Tasmania's landscape is dominated by the abundance of its natural forests, fertile soils and sheltered waterways. It was the context within which both the timber industry and an extensive fruit-growing industry developed. While the fruit was grown on family orchards, timber was cut in markedly different structures in terms of the size of enterprise, the form of capital involved, the relations between labour and capital, and the forest resources allocated by the state. These differences affected how the union and industry organisations developed, and help explain why the Tasmanian dispute occurred mainly in the southern region. The social context of the dispute contained many family linkages between the two industries which help explain its course.	2
As a local study, this paper brings out individual agency and the specificity of local conditions in a way that is rarely possible at the national or state levels where local variations must be subsumed in larger trends. Although exceptional, the local dispute was not isolated; indeed, it only ended when the national dispute was resolved. It was articulated to the world economy through company ownership and export markets in ways which put particular pressure on the mills.	3
Although this paper focuses only on a little-known dispute in a small rural region, it raises issues that may be of wider interest to concerns in recent labour history. Patmore and Bongiorno provide accounts of how these concerns have emerged, while Irving in his 1994 collection of essays on the 'challenges to labour history' depicts a 'crisis' in labour history as being part of a general crisis in history. Feminist, social, cultural, Aboriginal and postmodernist histories, for example, are taken as casting earlier labour histories as being too narrow in their focus on class struggles, labour organisations and industrial disputes. This is elaborated in two recent issues of Labour History.2 Calls to extend labour history beyond the workplace and its institutions have not necessarily meant that labour historians have considered its traditional concerns as redundant. We can see that today's lockouts, use of non-union labour, attempts to sideline unions and circumvent awards with individual contracts still echo events recounted in this paper. Traditional labour history might be seen as a continuing strand now enriched or accompanied by new strands, concerns and modes of writing. This paper follows a traditional strand in that it examines the institutions and structures of capital and labour. Although the paper studies a dispute in a small region, it is not intended as a study of localism per se, nor of social or community history in the Huon Valley directly.	4
The prime purpose of this paper is to record one aspect of the industrial history of the Australian forest sector. It follows from my earlier studies of the political economy and history of the Australian forest sector.3 I found that little had been written on the sector's labour history in the traditional sense. For example, the 1921–22 national timber dispute has not been analysed in the literature and little has been published about labour relations. Only the 1929 timber strike on the mainland is well known from the work of Dixson and van den Broek, and that strike was the culmination of the 1921–22 national dispute.4 Moreover, there is no general history of the Australian Timber Workers' Union (now part of the CFMEU). By contrast, there is a considerable industrial history on the processes of timber production, replete with images of axemen felling trees, bullocks 'snigging' logs, steam engines puffing through the forests, and incidentally on working and social conditions in sawmill settlements. Some company histories have been published, mostly sponsored for their anniversaries. Heritage studies over the last 20 years, notably those by Kostaglou in Southern Tasmania, have added a wealth of information on industrial archaeology, and new social insights are coming from recent archaeological work, such as that by Davies at an isolated sawmill settlement in the Otway Ranges of Victoria. Apart from environmental publications, the great bulk of the forest industry literature avoids the political concerns that pervade labour history.5	5
The scope of the paper is limited by the sources available for the small Huon region which at the time of the dispute had a population of only 4,015 people.6 The minutes of the Australian Timber Workers' Union in Tasmania and of the Tasmanian Trades Hall Council are sparse and oral history is no longer possible for the 1920s, although relatives of two participants provided some information. The author was unable to find diaries or similar sources that would have enabled the role of families to be revealed, although the close-knit nature of the rural community in the Huon Valley was clearly important in sustaining the dispute.7 However, the local and state newspapers give extensive coverage, including seemingly verbatim accounts of major court cases, and there are similarly detailed accounts of meetings in the Premier's Department's files, together with correspondence with timber companies and the union. These historical records are not unusual for the time, but appear startling now for the absence of women; only two are mentioned and only one of these, Mrs Double, is named.	6
This paper describes the structure of the industry for those unfamiliar with it before setting the context of the national dispute. The local context of the Huon Valley and the company at the centre of the dispute, the Huon Timber Company, and the dominant capitalist, Sir Henry Jones, are then described, and the Australian Timber Workers' Union is introduced. The paper recounts the course of the dispute through several stages to its final resolution. It draws some conclusions relevant to recent concerns and to possible further labour history studies of the neglected Australian forest sector.	7
Industrial Structure
The Australian timber industry was at an international disadvantage almost from its start because it was more difficult to exploit Australian forests than it was to exploit the vast coniferous forests of the Baltic and the Pacific Northwest of North America. There, most of the trees could be used and their easily worked softwood timbers suited builders and manufacturers. Where the topography was rugged, as in the Pacific Northwest, the volumes per hectare that could be felled were so large that expensive engineering and whole company towns could be afforded. Australian forests could not match them in quantity or quality. Most were a mixture of tree species, ages and sizes, only a small proportion of which contained sawlogs. The loggers had to 'pick them over' patch by patch, and many sawmills had to be small enough to be moved every few years. These remote 'bush' mills were sometimes accessible only by tramline or water. Living conditions were primitive and supplies commonly organised through a mill store run on the notorious truck system. Many of the loggers camped in the forest, only returning to settlements at weekends. The exceptions were the ash-type forests: the mountain and alpine ash forests of the Victorian highlands, the karri forests of Western Australia, and the ash, messmate and blue gum forests of Southern Tasmania. These had even-aged stands of huge trees, the tallest hardwoods in the world. Most were merchantable and the volumes per hectare high enough to warrant railways, tramlines, jetties and machinery heavy enough to handle their huge logs. Large permanent sawmills were built with better access and often settlements were provided complete with a school, a hall and even some recreational facilities, usually built by the workers.	8
Eucalypt hardwood timbers are more difficult to process and to use than the North American and Baltic softwoods with which they competed on most domestic markets after the 1850s. Unlike softwoods, which could be quickly sawn 'through and through' for boards, the eucalypts had to be more carefully 'quarter-sawn' if the boards were not to warp. Although green timber, fresh off the saw, could be sold for railway sleepers or used for house frames, better-valued uses such as boards required dry timber. Effective artificial kiln drying was still being developed for eucalypts in the 1920s, and the timber had to be carefully stacked to dry in the air for 12–24 months, depending on thickness. This was particularly important for Tasmania which exported its best timber to Melbourne and Adelaide firms which processed it into boards, flooring and mouldings. Moreover, air stacking for long periods tied up working capital that the smaller mills did not have but which merchants could finance. The Tasmanian mills were critically vulnerable to mainland market downturns during which they could easily find themselves with too much capital in their stacks. This amplified cyclical swings in production and employment, as mills were forced to close or work short time until stocks were reduced. A few Australian mills entered the international trade from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until World War II by exporting railway sleepers and heavy mining timbers for the boom in railway construction. They were larger concerns, typically financed by British capital, but were also vulnerable to economic downturns, as they too had to carry large stocks to be ready for shipment.	9
Five distinct structures or relationships between fractions of capital, and between capital and labour operated to produce timber in the 1920s (Table 1). Although the Australian Timber Workers' Union represented labour across the whole industry and capital could present a common front in the Arbitration Commission, the structural differences within the industry affected the course of industrial relations at both state and national levels. This was most apparent nationally in the Arbitration Court's treatment of the town sawmills and timber yards which continued to enjoy a 44-hour week until 1929, seven years after other timber workers had lost it. Indeed it was the reversion to a 48-hour week for these workers that caused the 1929 national strike. Structural differences were also apparent in the local dispute as town sawmills and timber yards, and most forest and small mills in the rest of the state, did not institute lockouts following those in the Southern Tasmanian mills. While the intra-class differences between groups of capitalists were important in the course of the local dispute, it was the inter-class differences between capital as a whole and labour as a whole that determined the final outcome.	10
Table 1. Industrial Structure with Typical Tasmanian Examples, 1920s8
National Context
The national and the local disputes originated from the employers' reactions to two judgements by Justice Higgins in the Arbitration Court: first in December 1920 when he reduced the hours of work for timber workers from 48 to 44 per week, and second in June 1921 when the engineers' hours were similarly reduced.9 Over 300 employers from the major timber regions and cities of every state were involved, as were the major employers in the engineers' case. The awards gave the men 'a clean eight hours day, with half-holiday on Saturdays'.10 It raised wages, although the workers' gains were quickly lost to inflation and they had to press fresh claims. Several conditions were improved of which the most important in rainy Southern Tasmania was that the bush workers were paid weekly rather than only for the hours they could work.	11
Hours were the central issue over which the employers waged a long and eventually successful campaign to reverse Higgins' decisions. Their political campaign persuaded the Hughes Federal Government to insist that only a full bench of three justices in the Arbitration Court could hear any case involving hours of work.11 Higgins resigned in protest and Justice Powers succeeded him as President on 30 June 1921. A series of cases followed through 1921 and the first half of 1922, some brought on by the Australian Timber Workers' Union over costs of living in bush mills and other matters, and some brought on by the employers seeking exemptions from the awards for 'mixed industries' and other matters. The employers' campaign finally resulted in a Full Court case in August 1922 which covered both the timber workers and the engineers. The judgement in September, discussed later, reversed most of Higgins' decisions and set the hours for most workers back to 48 per week. Thus the local dispute in Southern Tasmania took place in a national climate of conflict between the union and the employers, but one which was elsewhere contained within the Arbitration system.	12
Local Context
The local dispute centred on the Huon Timber Company's mill at Geeveston in the Huon Valley. It was one of only two large sawmills in the state and enjoyed the largest forest concession provided by a special Act of Parliament. It had been established with Scottish capital in 1902 when it was somewhat dubiously claimed to be the largest sawmill in the Southern Hemisphere, though far from large by North American standards at the time. It was certainly Australia's most technically advanced mill. Its enthusiastic promoter, Robert Affleck Robertson, had imported the latest American sawmill equipment including two very large band saws and had installed mechanical handling equipment, much of it driven by electric motors. It invested heavily in a railway system to bring logs to the mill by building a substantial 3 foot 6 inch (1.07 metre) gauge railway into the steep-sided Arve and Kermandie Valleys. The first ten kilometres of heavy construction were eventually extended by a further 54 kilometres of lighter construction. Tramways and a jetty were also built so that the timber could be loaded on ship. By 1911, £105,000 had been invested.12 It ran its logging and transport systems as a direct company operation. It was the largest employer in the industry and it was highly unionised.	13
Although the mill was technically advanced, its American band saws were unsuited to getting the best value out of the eucalypt logs by cutting boards. Instead it mainly cut large dimension timber and railway sleepers for export markets. In this it faced a further difficulty because only blue gum had the durability normally required, while ash, which comprised the major part of the resource, was a notably non-durable species. Financially the Huon Timber Company was a failure. By 1908, neither it nor the other large mill further south at Dover had paid a dividend and they were sold to another British Company, Millars Karri and Jarrah Ltd for about one-third of their cost. Millars' main mills were in Western Australia where they cut the durable timbers mainly for the international market. Millars appointed Henry Jones & Co. to manage their Tasmanian affairs but Henry Jones failed to make them profitable. The Geeveston mill was economically marginal in 1921 and Millars finally closed it in 1924.	14
Sir Henry Jones (1862–1926) was a wealthy and influential figure in Tasmania. His Tasmanian company, Henry Jones and Co. Ltd, was primarily a jam maker, but he had made money from mining in Thailand and had diversified into boat building and sawmilling, already owning other sawmills and some shares in the Huon Timber Company. He was energetic in developing other Tasmanian industries and had become a leading Australian financier and adviser. The Tasmanian company became a subsidiary of a much larger confederation of companies, Henry Jones Co-operative Ltd with headquarters in Melbourne and operations in all states, New Zealand and South Africa.13 Henry Jones was very much a self-made man having worked his way up through jam factories to own them. He was known for his uncompromising opposition to the Commonwealth Arbitration Court. He believed that by 'the fixing of a standard wage for workers, their ambition and initiative were destroyed', and that 'this evil' could only be 'removed by the abolition of the Arbitration Court'.14 With such attitudes, it is not surprising that the employers' national campaign against the 44-hour week was expressed strongly in the Tasmanian dispute that centred on the mills he controlled in Southern Tasmania.	15
The social character of the Huon region influenced the course of the local timber dispute. Notably, the main industries, timber and fruit growing, were linked through labour and capital. The major fruit crops were apples and pears for export to Europe and the mainland, and apricots, cherries and soft berry fruits for making jam. The Huon Valley was Tasmania's major producing area with numerous orchards of sizes varying from about 4 to 50 hectares, spread down the waterway. It was a region of family orchards and small farms interspersed with townships: Huonville, Franklin, Port Huon and Cygnet, with Geeveston, 60 kilometres south of Hobart, as the largest.15 These were small, peaceful places with only a single policeman stationed in each. Much of the work in the orchards was seasonal and the development of the smaller orchards often depended on the orchardists finding off-farm work in the timber mills. Many individuals occupied different positions as wage workers and as farmers at different times of the working day or year which made the area more sympathetic to working class interests than other rural regions of the state. Politically, the area supported the Labor Party more strongly than Tasmania generally did. In the 1919 state election, for example, the Electorate of Franklin returned 3 Labor members and 3 non-Labor members, whereas Tasmania as a whole returned 13 Labor members to oppose 17 non-Labor members in the House of Assembly.	16
Most of the orchardists were economically tied to Henry Jones. They sold their soft fruit to the two Hobart jam companies, Henry Jones and W.D. Peacock Ltd, which were linked through Henry Jones Co-operative Ltd. When they wanted to export their crop, the orchardists had to do so through Henry Jones and W.D. Peacock who jointly exerted a virtual monopoly over the refrigerated cargo space to Europe. It is hardly surprising that the Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Fruit Industry reported in 1913 that 'in Southern Tasmania a certain amount of timidity was manifested before the Commission by growers who were evidently somewhat nervous in speaking of present conditions', or, as one witness put it, 'very few growers dare come out in the open and declare themselves, because they would not get their stuff away'.16 Moreover, the growers were under contract to Henry Jones and usually received an advance on their fruit or were financed to develop their orchards — Henry Jones held mortgages or the title documents over the property of 204 growers in 1913.17 While the growers were certainly under Henry Jones' thumb, they also benefited from the efficiency of the firm and the way it had promoted and secured reliable refrigerated shipping. While they could not overtly oppose Henry Jones, the orchardist families gave tacit and no doubt practical support to many timber families.	17
Numerous sporting events reported in the Huon Times evince the many social interactions and accommodations in the area. Football was particularly popular and star players were encouraged and supported by Sir Henry Jones, a former player. What emerges from a general reading of the period is a picture, doubtless repeated across settled rural Australia, of a busy region with many personal links through family, sport, shopping and daily familiarity that sometimes cut across class interests and at other times provided solidarity and support for workers.	18
The Timber Workers Union
The scattered and small-scale structures in which most timber was produced made it difficult for workers to unite. A society that probably included timber workers was formed in 1890 but did not last, and the Axemen's Association was limited to sporting contests.18 The creation of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court in 1904 was followed by the creation of State Wages Boards in Tasmania in 1910, however the latter could only determine wages and conditions by agreement between representatives of employers and workers. With mainland help, new unions were established in Tasmania that could represent workers' interests before the Boards or in the Court.	19
A union of timber workers was established in 1908 with help from the Australian Workers' Union that had itself been established in Tasmania the previous year. By 1911, the Tasmanian Branch of the Federated Sawmill, Timber Yard and General Woodworkers Employees' Association of Australasia, known as the Federated Timber Workers' Union, had 633 financial members, equivalent to about one-third of the sawmill workers. Little appears to have been achieved through the State Wages Board during the War. In 1918, 'the men were thoroughly disgusted with the conditions under which they were working' and 'bitterly complained' about the administration of the Board and the lack of protection under the Workers Compensation Act, a serious matter in a notoriously dangerous industry. The Union was reorganised as the No. 6 Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Timber Workers' Union, and an energetic Secretary, Bill Scanlon, elected. He almost doubled the membership within a year.19	20
Awards were one thing, but the reality of petty chiselling in the remote forests and small isolated mills was another. Even when employees were not too scared for their jobs to give evidence in court, the fines imposed for breaches of the Award were paltry. The truck system was formally broken by Tasmanian legislation in 1920, but lingered on. The union pressed disinterested Health Inspectors to visit the remote sawmill settlements and it fought never-ending battles for better safety standards and against unfair dismissals. The union organiser's life was one of incessant travelling and small-scale activities: visiting mills, signing up members, collecting dues, getting the award rates paid, checking on the first aid boxes, and so forth.20	21
The operation of the union and the course of the dispute discussed in this paper was shaped by the skewed structure of the industry (Table 1). The 100 or so small bush mills run by working proprietors and the small logging contractors were scattered through the forests. Few of the workers in similar operations today are union members and it is reasonable to assume that a similar situation applied in the 1920s. At the other extreme were a few sites with more than 100 workers. The Huon Timber Company at Geeveston had the largest sawmill and its logging was done as a company, not as a contract operation. It was completely unionised. The other large sawmill further south at Laprena was also owned by Millars and managed by Henry Jones. It and some satellite bush mills supplying it were only accessible by water or foot at the time. This made workers and their families dependent on the company and its mill manager, Mr Leitch, for accommodation, transport and stores. Although the truck system had been formally abolished, the store was still run by the mill manager's wife. And workers who crossed the manager would have to walk out, leaving whatever furniture they had behind as it would not be taken on the company's barge. Although the workers were at a severe disadvantage, most or all were union members. The union was thus strongest in the state's major producing region of Southern Tasmania and weakest in the scattered small mills.21	22
The union covered the town sawmills and timber yards, some of which had sizeable workforces. These firms supplied the domestic Tasmanian market and were more diversified, typically having drying facilities and joinery shops, and handling hardware and general builders' merchandise. Being higher up the supply chain, they were less vulnerable to the fluctuations in interstate and foreign export markets than the other mills. Their distinct advantage was to lead to their being treated separately by the Arbitration Court between 1922 and 1929, as mentioned earlier.	23
The old ways of Tasmanian sawmillers were challenged in the 1920s by the post-war mood, an ascendant labour movement with an active union and by the Commonwealth Arbitration Court more powerful than the State Wages Boards. The Tasmanian employers responded by contesting the Arbitration Court decisions, by associating, by introducing a 'contract system' and directly by lockouts. Paradoxically, given Sir Henry Jones' views, they were most successful in the Arbitration Court in the long-term. In the short-term, the unequal and competitive structure of the industry limited them to forming small regional associations of timber merchants and sawmill owners.22 The Southern Tasmanian Sawmillers Association included the group of firms owned by or associated with Sir Henry Jones. These were the Millars' mills including the Huon Timber Company, and the McDougall & Co.'s mills which John or 'Jock' Hay took over. Hay was also a director of Henry Jones & Co. and it appears that Sir Henry Jones had some investment in his mills. It was this alliance which drove the industrial agenda.	24
Hay had introduced a group piecework or 'contract system' in several small mills in the north-west of the state where the union was weakest. The system operated, or so the union claimed, to cut wages to well below the legal minimum.23 However, the employers needed another strategy where the union was strongest in the large sawmills in Southern Tasmania. This was direct action to lock the men out; if they would not work the old 48-hour week, they would not work at all. But this was a risky strategy that could only be tried when the market was weak and they had little trade to lose.	25
The post-war economic recovery had been good for the Tasmanian timber industry. By 1919–20 the sawmills were working full time, new mills had been built, and there was a good trade in exporting boards to the mainland. Although the workers had their award, the labour market was strong and a shortage of experienced bush workers was reported. However, the recovery was short-lived and by February 1921 the Premier, Sir Walter Lee, alarmed at 'stringency in the money markets', was worried enough about looming unemployment to ask 54 leading employers to report on market trends and prospects. The 40 who responded had recently discharged 1,013 workers, still had 7,421, but expected to discharge a further 1,019; an overall drop of 24 per cent. Henry Jones & Co. and W.D. Peacock said that they expected to close their jam factories due to increased international competition. The falling labour market represented a chance to roll back some of the labour gains and they advised the Premier to hold a conference with them before talking to employees.24	26
Only the larger timber firms were surveyed and they reported few recent lay-offs. However, looking to the future, Crisp & Gunn, who employed 135 people, saw that their future depended on the building trade, which was 'likely to ease off because of the money market'. Cumming & Co. who employed 250 people, saw the financial position in their interstate markets as 'very acute' and reported that large quantities of cheaper imported timber had 'almost caused the cessation of the export of Tasmanian timber'. They expected to layoff 150 workers. Two firms, Henry Jones in the south and H.T. Russell in the north, added the provisions of the 1920 federal award to their list of problems. Russell thought that '25% to 50% of the country mills will have to close down' because the bush workers would have to be paid even in wet weather. They can hardly have guessed how determined the workers and the union would prove to be in defending their award.25	27
July 1921: the Lockout Starts
By the middle of 1921 the sawmill industry was 'experiencing a decided slump' which was of 'larger degree than the general trade depression' due, so the Industrial Department reported, to a flood of cheap imported timber.26 Stocks quickly built up in the southern mills. The Huon Timber Company had 9 million super feet (21,000 cubic metres) of sawn timber in its stacks, McDougall's mills under John Hay's control had 6 million (14,000 cubic metres) and Henry Jones' own sawmills had a year's supply of case timber for the apple and fruit industry on hand. With few sales to lose, the Southern Tasmanian millers finally had their stage set.	28
The time was politically propitious. In Tasmania, Sir Walter Lee's Nationalist Government naturally favoured the employers, while federally the Hughes' Government, by then also Nationalist, had changed the operation of the Arbitration Court, as mentioned earlier. A week after Justice Higgins resigned, the Southern Tasmanian Sawmillers Association met. This may have been triggered by a dispute over conditions at the Laprena sawmill as well as by the general depression in the industry. The Association discussed closing its sawmills and the Huon Timber Company started the action. First, it pressed the bush workers to camp out in the forest during the week: they refused. Then, it pressed the mill workers to work a 48-hour week: they refused. And on Saturday 30 July 1921, it closed the Geeveston mill, locking the men out.27	29
The impact on the men was not too severe at first. Many of them found some work in the orchards, while others drifted away from the district. In August, a Board of Reference comprising representatives of the union and the company, with W.O. Wise, Tasmanian Deputy-Registrar of the Arbitration Court, as chairman, visited Geeveston and inquired into conditions, but no resolution was negotiated.28 John Hay then widened the dispute by closing five of his sawmills but kept his other two mills open with men working on the contract system, discussed later.	30
October 1921: the Embankment
The Huon Timber Company retained or reinstated 20 or 30 men to effect repairs and alterations while the mill was shut. One of the jobs was to realign 70 chains (1.4 kilometres) of tramway, which included building an embankment and a bridge. The company expected them to work 48 hours a week claiming that they were labourers under the State Wages Board determination rather than timber workers covered by the federal award. When they refused, the company engaged a contractor, Frederick Alfred Carpenter, to do the job with non-union labour working a 48-hour week. The union felt that it was the company rather than Carpenter who was insisting on the 48-hour week.29	31
The work started about the middle of October but was 'abruptly terminated'.30 Union officials visited, but no agreement was reached. Carpenter must have been nervous, because he drew a revolver on John Jones, the union organiser, when he visited again. Little good it did him as Jones 'closed with him and severely handled him' before handing the revolver to the police. Carpenter was never charged with firearm offences and the case he brought against Jones was dismissed.31	32
Carpenter found it extremely difficult to get men to stay on the job. Even though the State Labour Bureau, aided by J.W. Whittle VC, employment scout for the RSL, sent men down to Geeveston to work, they were 'interviewed' by the unionists who 'explained their position' and 'persuaded' them to return. The union saw the Labour Bureau's actions as being steered by the Government.	33
January 1922: the Dispute Spreads and the Premier Confers
By the end of 1921, the timber trade was showing signs of improvement, but the lockout at Geeveston, now in its sixth month, continued. Most of Hay's mills had been closed since at least August and at some stage the closures spread to Millar's other mills run by Henry Jones. The full extent and timing of this is not clear, nor is the extent to which some closures were driven by market circumstances. As 1922 started, some 500 men had been stood down. It was well beyond the capacity of the orchards or other sectors to take up this level of unemployment and many families were facing severe hardship. The Trades Hall Council, which had stood aloof from the dispute, supported and took charge of a Timber Workers' Relief Fund.32 Nearly £900 was collected from other unions, numerous small donations and street collections. The consequences of the dispute were starting to attract public sympathy. Even the restrained and conservative Mercury captioned its sympathetic editorial 'Starving timber workers'.33 Notably, it reiterated a statement that the employers were 'deliberately locking out their men in order to bring about a reduction in wages ... in breach of the Arbitration Court award'. This called into question the legitimacy of the employers' action and implicitly of the Government's inaction. The dispute was moving into the political sphere. The hardship of the unemployed timber workers was raised in the House of Assembly which urged the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition, Joe Lyons, to bring the parties together. Although the debate caused considerable disagreement within Labor ranks, the Premier could not ignore it. He convened a conference on 1 February 1922.34	34
The strength of the unionists' resolve not to work for less than the federal award conditions may well have surprised the Henry Jones-Hay-McDougall group who advanced their second strategy—the contract system—as a breakthrough in the dispute. Hay, with two of his mills already on the system was the spokesman. He claimed that the workers would earn as much or more money and Sir Henry Jones backed this up by guaranteeing to make up their wages for a month if they did not. The contracts were to be negotiated directly with the men, thus sidelining the union. At the lengthy conference, the astute Premier forced Hay to reveal that he had kept the conditions of the contracts hidden from the men he had approached. The Premier also noted that he had received a report from another major timber company which did not support the Hay proposal. The conference failed to resolve the dispute, but the Premier persisted in trying to keep it in the state's jurisdiction and proposed a second, broader conference of the whole timber industry. This the union rejected, as noted at the start of this paper. Although the Acting Secretary may have been over-optimistic in replying to the Premier, donations to the Relief Fund were coming in, the workers were resolute and as summer progressed there would doubtless be more casual work in the orchards. The strength of their position lay in having a federal award, or so they may have thought.35	35
June to December 1921: in the Arbitration Court
The union's position in the Arbitration Court was difficult not only because of the energetic opposition of the employers, but also because their 1920 award did not automatically apply to all the firms in the industry. Without fully elaborating the legalities here, there were three types of cover. First were the firms which had been party to and were named in the award; second were firms which had entered into certified agreements to be bound by the award; and third were firms still outside the formal award cover, many of which did not pay the federal award rates. Moreover, the varied structure of the industry and its national scope made the proceedings complex.	36
A series of hearings was held between June and December 1921 related to cost of living increases, payment of back pay and the correction of anomalies, some of which were found in favour of the union. An important hearing was held in November when the union applied for a conference with employers who were not paying the federal award. The General Secretary, H.C. Leonard, and the National Executive, including W. Scanlon from Tasmania, represented the union, while the employers were represented by a solicitor, F. Derham and state employer representatives including J. Moore from Tasmania. While Scanlon was repeatedly away on the mainland, the Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades Hall Council, J.H. O'Neill, stepped into the breach as Acting Secretary for the Australian Timber Workers' Union in Tasmania. Not surprisingly, no agreement was reached and the matter was referred to the Full Court. Meantime, the dispute in Southern Tasmania continued.36	37
April 1922: the Embankment Again
The Hay-Jones attempts to force the contract system having failed, they returned to their strategy of employing non-union labour. The first attempt by the Huon Timber Company with Carpenter had failed when he had buckled to local pressure without completing the job. This time they picked a determined character, Louis Rapp. He had not started long before the union made it clear that building the new bridge came under their federal award. Rapp would not agree and work temporarily stopped until he brought in ten non-unionists from other districts. These were tougher characters than Carpenter's men and had, it transpired, equipped themselves with revolvers. The company provided Rapp with a house and his men were boarded in Mrs. Double's Boarding House in the village.37	38
The lockout had been going for almost ten months so that having 'scabs', as the unionists called them, living right in Geeveston made the situation very tense. First, the unionists tried to starve them out by blacklisting any storekeeper who supplied them. But the situation erupted one Saturday night when Rapp's men and one of the company managers went to a picture show in the Town Hall. 'Some of the wilder spirits', as the Huon Times put it, persuaded them and the mill manager to leave. The fracas continued as the scabs were chased back to their boarding house. Although the union urged restraint at a mass meeting the next day, that night someone with a few sticks of gelignite blew part of the kitchen off the back of Mrs. Double's Boarding House. A girl in a back bedroom was badly shocked, but otherwise no one was injured. In spite of a £200 reward, no culprit has ever been found.38 We might reflect that the explosive charge must have been nicely calculated for it not to have caused more damage and that calculating charges was an everyday skill for many bush workers at the time.	39
June 1922: Police and Citizen Brokers
The police immediately sent two senior officers, Superintendent Browne and Chief Detective Oakes, to investigate the incident. They probably already knew that they would get little evidence, as no local residents would offer it or admit to knowing anything about the explosion. Police reinforcements were also sent as guards for Rapp and his men. Given the social structure of Southern Tasmania and the relations of local people with Henry Jones, Browne must have known that police would have to be kept in Geeveston as long as the dispute continued. While Oakes tried unsuccessfully to gather evidence, Browne took the unusual step for a Police Superintendent of trying to broker an agreement between the parties to keep the peace. It took him a few days acting as an intermediary between the contractor, Rapp, and the union represented by Scanlon and A.G. Ogilvie who was both a Labor member in the House of Assembly and a lawyer. They eventually agreed to a settlement that would have enabled Rapp to finish the bridge, provided that the 44 hours a week condition was observed. The police agreed to drop a series of summonses resulting from the fracas outside the picture show. It seemed a remarkable breakthrough, but the next day and to the surprise of the Police Superintendent, the company's manager denied that Rapp had ever agreed. While the hand of the company is clearly evident, Rapp's personality doubtless contributed. He was clearly an arrogant and confrontational man who would walk down Geeveston's main street in spite of police advice and would later write irate letters to the Premier.39	40
With the collapse of the police agreement, the assault cases proceeded to such local interest that they had to be heard in the Town Hall. Much of the evidence was weak or contradictory and the upshot of further negotiations by the Police Magistrate was that only one conviction was recorded, one judgement was reserved and the remaining cases were withdrawn on the understanding that there would be no interference with Rapp's men. Nevertheless, local pressure was such that most of his men told Rapp that they would only work the 44-hour week. As Rapp would not agree, and no doubt sensing that local tempers were far from cooling, Superintendent Browne and Chief Detective Oakes returned to Hobart, leaving Rapp working under police protection.40	41
A group of Geeveston's leading citizens then attempted to mediate the dispute that was rocking their village. Their conference in Hobart with company and union representatives also failed to make any progress. They returned, apparently disgruntled at the company's attitude.41	42
Fiery disputes continued. Rapp was assaulted in the main street, tools were thrown in the river, timber was burnt and an explosion one night near Rapp's house startled him and his police guard. The most serious occurred on 15 June when Rapp's men were walking to work unaccompanied by their police guard on this occasion. A group of men armed with sticks attacked them. One of them, young Vernon Rooke, fell and was hit repeatedly, while one of the unionists, Frank 'Poppy' Thompson, was shot in the leg. When the police arrived, the attackers fled carrying the wounded Poppy Thompson over Dodies Hill to the Six Mile Road, or so local legend has it. Superintendent Browne and Chief Detective Oakes returned to Geeveston. More charges were laid, most seriously against two timber workers, Justin Webb and his brother Charles, of feloniously wounding Vernon Rooke with intent to murder. Other people including Scanlon were charged with aiding and abetting the attack. It is paradoxical that such a serious charge was advanced over an assault when previously Inspector Browne had attempted to mediate the local hostility. By contrast, Frank Burbury, who shot Thompson, was only charged with wounding with intent to do grievous bodily injury. In the event he was acquitted after claiming that he was acting in self-defence. The Government's interest might be inferred, as it was the Crown Solicitor, Banks Smith, rather than Superintendent Browne, who prosecuted the case against the Webb brothers. However, the evidence from local people was again contradictory and the prosecution's case failed.42	43
July 1922: the Premier Again
The state government was concerned at the cost of keeping extra police in Geeveston. The Premier again proposed a conference between the company and the union under an impartial chairman, but this time the Premier also invited Rapp. In replying to the Premier, the union stuck to its position that the company's actions were a 'dastardly attempt to defeat the provisions of the Federal Arbitration Award' and could see 'no good purpose in your vague proposal'. Louis Rapp wrote a long, irate letter denying that there was a dispute and rejecting the Premier's proposal as 'calculated to promote rather than reduce lawlessness'. The company saw that the conference would have 'no legal validity' and advised that it intended to ask the Federal Arbitration Court to convene a Board of Reference as provided under the award. This was a significant change in that it recognised the Federal award rather than the State Wages Board, and it sidelined the Premier.43	44
August–September 1922: in the Arbitration Court Again
Whatever struggles were taking place in Tasmania, the decisive action took place in the Commonwealth Arbitration Court in August and September 1922.44 As with the 1920 decision, the timber workers' case was run with the nationally more important engineers' case; it was national in scope, lengthy and complex with many employer representatives appearing for various states and structures.45 Preparations for the case had been gathering momentum, probably since the end of 1921. The case absorbed the resources and time of the union officials, requiring Scanlon to spend long periods in Melbourne, and the Tasmanian Branch having to appoint the Tasmanian Trades Hall Secretary, J.H. O'Neill, as its Acting Secretary again. It is only necessary here to summarise the main findings as they applied to the timber workers, especially those in Southern Tasmania.	45
The Timber Workers' Union had put two claims to the Court. First, they addressed the problem of partial coverage, mentioned earlier, and asked for 1,640 employers not included in the original 1920 award to be required to provide the same rates of pay and conditions, including the 44-hour week. Second, they asked for renewal of the original award, which was about to expire. As both claims involved the hours of work, they were heard in the Full Court. Extensive evidence was presented. The final judgement noted the 'great depression in the Tasmanian timber industry' and the position of the Huon Timber Company which had produced 9.1 million super feet (21,700 cubic metres) of sawn timber in 1921, but only sold 1.9 million (4,400 cubic metres), leaving them with several years stock on hand.46	46
The eventual award on 22 September restored the 48-hour week for the sawmill workers and the loggers, but not for the workers in the town timber yards. It was a substantial win for the employers and a defeat for the union nationally. The engineers were similarly defeated in the Court, but took industrial action against the judgement in several states.47	47
October 1922: 'A splendid win' and a Pyrrhic Victory
The engineers continued the struggle in Tasmania with strike action to defend their 44-hour week at Electrolytic Zinc and elsewhere. They pressed the Timber Workers' Union in the Trades Hall Council to follow suit, but it seems that the timber workers more or less accepted the decision as inevitable. Their immediate concern was that they were still locked out and that the scabs were still working on the Geeveston deviation. The timber market was recovering somewhat and, as men found work in other mills, few families were left on the Relief Fund.48	48
The Henry Jones-Hay group had won their hours campaign and must have been keen to end the dispute when they saw orders that they could have supplied being filled by their competitors. The Tasmanian Government also was keen to end the dispute and reduce the cost of policing Geeveston. At the beginning of October, the Attorney-General, W.H. Probsting, had discussions with the Huon Timber Company and the union, and formally asked the Industrial Registrar of the Arbitration Court, A.M. Stewart, to take steps to resolve the Geeveston dispute. This was an inevitable but significant recognition by the Tasmanian Government that the dispute was not only beyond its jurisdiction, but also apparently beyond the capacity of the Court's Deputy-Registrar for Tasmania, W.O. Wise.49	49
The Registrar convened a Board of Reference which met in Melbourne on 13 and 14 October. It reached an agreement that Rapp and his men would be paid off and that members of the Australian Timber Workers' Union would carry out the Huon Timber Company's work. To make a fresh start, the company brought a new manager, a Mr. Duncan, from Western Australia to manage the mill. It might take two or three months to complete the reorganisation of the mill and the tramline deviation, but the Geeveston mill would cut timber again.50	50
Bill Scanlon told his union executive that 'winning this fight against the combined effort of the employing class was brought about through the unity and solidarity of the Geeveston Comrades'.51 And Trades Hall sent a telegram with their congratulations to the Geeveston workers on 'their splendid fight and the victory they have won'.52	51
In spite of resolving the long dispute, the re-organisation, the re-routed tramline, the new manager and the introduction of a skyline logging system by two American loggers, the Geeveston mill was still an economic failure. In 1924, Millars finally shut it, dismantled the machinery and shipped some, it was believed, to its mill in the Philippines. In 1929 the employers finally succeeded in having the Arbitration Court impose the 48-hour week on the timber yard workers, a decision which precipitated the better known, but ultimately failing, mainland strike in 1929.53	52
Conclusions
The prime purpose of this paper is to contribute to the history of the forest sector which, in spite of its otherwise rich history, has received little attention from labour historians. The rising interest in local labour history is particularly apposite to redressing the situation because the forest sector has always been widely dispersed across the Australian landscape so that local histories are needed before the whole can be properly understood. At the scale of local government areas for example, the timber industry employs fewer people than agriculture, almost without exception in rural Australia.54 However, its place in the predominantly agricultural regions appears to range from isolated enclaves to strongly linked parts, as in Southern Tasmania. A number of local histories, such as this, are needed before the range can be understood in any detail. It is hoped that the conclusions from this study may inform further work.	53
This study was concerned with only one of the structures of the timber industry — the large sawmills, owned by British capital and oriented to international exports. Clearly, the concentration of workers on one site at Geeveston facilitated union organisation and worker solidarity. The importance of concentration can also be seen in the 1929 timber workers strike on the mainland, referred to earlier, which originated in Sydney's large timber yards and re-sawing mills with a significant concentration of workers. By contrast, the difficulties of union organisation across the small, scattered forest mills could be seen in the Tasmanian records and could doubtless be seen in other states. The effects of concentration/isolation on forest worker solidarity and union organisation would appear from this study to be an important parameter for studies of the other structures.	54
In trying to answer the question of why the Southern Tasmanian dispute lasted so long, and why it was so bitter, the study examined the social context of the area and the character of some of the people involved. In doing so, it echoed the attention that labour historians have given to localism and community in recent studies.55 As Patmore points out, this 'does not mean that labour historians are no longer interested in labour institutions', and the union was prominent in the narrative of this study.56 However, while describing the social context in a general way was relatively straightforward, determining its influence on the course of the dispute was not. There were three substantial problems that any similar studies will inevitably face: those of evaluating the influence of the social context, the limitations of the historical sources, and the specificity of the case study.	55
In this study, only one rather weak action fell readily into the category of localist politics. That was when the group of leading citizens—shopkeepers, orchardists and the Warden—attempted to mediate the dispute. Although a sense of local belonging may well have been, and probably was, strongly held by Huon Valley residents in the 1920s, no studies were located which had investigated it. Although it is likely to be an important descriptor in studies of isolated forest communities, its influence on outcomes is problematic, as the long history of mill or mine closures attests.	56
The over-use, multiple meanings and ambiguities of 'community' have been widely discussed. Taksa has set out many of its features in relation to labour history and has stressed exclusion as important.57 The Huon Valley could be called a community by many of the features that Taksa set out. Two aspects revealed strongly in this study were the exclusion of the scabs from normal life in Geeveston, and the inability of the police to get local people to testify against the timber workers. The label of community does not imply unvaried harmony. For example, the timber workers attempted to boycott the shops supplying Mrs Double's Boarding House and someone attempted to blow it up. Necessary alliances must have also existed concurrently, as between the shop-keepers and the timber workers — the former needing custom, the latter needing credit — but only a local anecdote was found to demonstrate this. Less obvious or researched in this study is the complexity of family connections. For example, different members of the Geeves families were a local sawmiller and Justice of the Peace, a store owner, and a timber worker.58 And family and individual connections between the timber and fruit-growing industries were almost certainly important. Individual positions were not necessarily immutable. For example, Vernon Rooke, the lad of 17 from nearby Huonville who took a job with contractor Rapp and was badly beaten, became a committed unionist in later life.59 While the study noted these interactions, none of the sources used the term 'community' and little evidence was apparent that people in the Huon thought of themselves in this way at the time. However, Taksa's emphasis on the complexities and ambiguities inherent in the concept of 'community' is useful in alerting us to those in the historical record and should be born in mind for any future studies of other timber regions.	57
The second problem caused by the limitations of the historical record has been noted in this study, particularly in relation to the nature of the social fabric and its influence on the course of the dispute. A difficult aspect of the study lay in deciding how far reasonable inferences might be drawn from the limited records collected. The nature of the linkages between the fruit-growing and timber industries was the most important inference drawn, although it was reasonably supported by the work of Young, referred to earlier and a general knowledge of Tasmanian history. Different authors take different attitudes as to how far it is useful or proper to go beyond reasonable inference into the realm of speculation. Although speculation may create new ideas for research, it may also mislead by inadvertently distorting the historical picture. This paper lies at the cautious end of the range of attitudes that can be taken.	58
The third problem that any case study encounters concerns discriminating between what is specific to the case and what is part of wider forces. The dominant economic position and personality of Henry Jones, the social characteristics of the Huon Valley and the inefficient technology of the Geeveston mill emerged as specific features that influenced the course of the dispute. Henry Jones, self-made, puritanical, hard working and conservative was totally opposed to unions, awards and the Arbitration Commission. His influence pervaded life in the Huon Valley, sometimes paternalistically in his support for promising footballers, sometimes far-sightedly in securing reliable shipping, and sometimes viciously in his treatment of the Laprena workers. Few dared speak against him or his managers, and it took a year before the leading citizens attempted to negotiate with the company. Yet the community supported the locked out timber workers unobtrusively in many ways, finding work on the orchards, contributing to relief funds and, silently or subversively, by not giving evidence against the timber workers. But irrespective of whatever Henry Jones, the timber workers or the Huon people did, the engineering of the Geeveston mill made it only economically viable when the international timber market was buoyant, as Millars recognised a few years later by closing it.	59
Such specific features of the case were articulated to wider forces. For example, Henry Jones operated on an Australia-wide basis and the Southern Tasmanian dispute was finally settled as part of the nation-wide case in the Federal Arbitration Court. Beyond these was the downturn in the international economy. The depressed timber market caused many of the state's mills to be shut or to work part-time. Some of the southern mills would probably have been shut anyway, so the lockout can be seen as an employers' strategy in which they had little or nothing to lose. The union was also caught by economic circumstances. It could hardly expect to win a dispute in a falling market when the yards were overstocked; yet if many of the mills were likely to close, it could gain little by conceding to the employers' demands.	60
The course of labour history ran differently in other regions and timber industry structures. It is hoped that the small case recounted here will stimulate other studies and lead to comparative or synoptic studies of the forest sector. There is much to be done.	61
Endnotes * I am deeply indebted to Dr R. Geeves and many people in Geeveston who brought the disputes there to life again in a dramatised version of this paper that was performed in the Geeveston Town Hall on 21 February 2002. John Dargavel, 'Hard Work to Starve: a Tasmanian Play' in John Dargavel, Denise Gaughwin and Brenda Libbis (eds), Australia's Ever-Changing Forests V: Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Australian Forest History, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 2002, pp. 228–250. I gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of three anonymous referees and helpful comments from Ruth Barton and John Young. Mr C.D. Bannister, former State Secretary of the Australian Timber Workers' Union, No. 6 Tasmanian Branch (now part of the CFMEU) gave permission for the union's records in the Noel Butlin Archives of The Australian National University to be used. 1. J.H. O'Neill to Sir Walter Lee, 21 February 1922, Premiers Department (hereafter PD), 1/372/4/22, Tasmanian State Archives (hereafter TSA). 2. G. Patmore, Australian Labour History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991, Ch. 1; F. Bongiorno, 'Labour History', in G. Davidson, J. Hirst and S. Macintyre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 369–371; Labour History, no. 78, May 2000, pp. 1–162; and Labour History, no. 82, May 2002, pp. 109–36. 3. John Dargavel, Fashioning Australia's Forests, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995. 4. Miriam Dixson, 'The Timber Strike of 1929', Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand vol. 10, no. 40, 1963, pp. 479–492; Diane van den Broek, 'Partners in Protest: the Case of the 1929 Timber Workers' Strike', Labour and Industry vol. 7, no. 2, December 1996, pp. 145–163. 5. Jenny Mills, 'The "Teddy Bears": a History of the South West Timber Hewers Co-operative Society, Western Australia' in K.J. Frawley and N. Semple (eds), Australia's Ever Changing Forests, Dept. of Geography and Oceanography, Australian Defence Force Academy, Campbell, ACT, 1988; John Dargavel, 'The First Timber Firm in Van Diemen's Land' in John Dargavel (ed.), Sawing, Selling & Sons, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1988; John Dargavel, Fashioning Australia's Forests; Katherine Prichard's novel, Working Bullocks, Angus and Robertson, London,1980 (first published in 1926) is set in the 1920s at one of the large sawmills and great karri forests of Western Australia. It tells of working life, of mood and passion, of the haunting presence of the forest, and of a strike which petered out when the men rejected the organiser; Edward Trautman and Jean Trautman, Jinkers and Jarrah Jerkers, Gannet Press, Freemantle, 1980, provides an insider's view of life in a sawmill settlement in the Western Australian jarrah forests; Parry Kostaglou, Historic Timber-Getting between Cockle Creek and Lune River Block 1, Forestry Commission of Tasmania, Hobart, 1994, Archaeology of the Tasmanian Timber Industry Report no. 4; Peter Davies, 'Forest Communities: Real or Imagined?' in Dargavel, Gaughwin and Libbis (eds), Australia's Ever-changing Forests V, pp. 311–323. 6. Statistics of the State of Tasmania 1920–21 (Blue book), Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 1921–22, vol. 85, no. 5. 7. The importance of informal structures shaped by gender relations is brought out by van den Broek, 'Partners in Protest', note 4. 8. This view of industrial structure owes its theoretical origins to K. Gibson's work on the Australian coal industry. The manner of allocating forest resources is set out in John Dargavel, Jane Goddard, and Sonia Caton, Allocating Forest Resources in Tasmania: Guide to Legislation, Regulation and Administrative Practice, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1987, CRES Working paper 1987/2. 9. Australian Timber Workers Union and John Sharp and Sons Ltd and others, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol. 14, 1920; The Amalgamated Society of Engineers and The Adelaide Steamship Company Ltd and others, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol. 15, 1921. 10. Henry Bournes Higgins, A New Province for Law and Order, London, Constable, 1922, pp. 124–125. 11. Heather Radi, '1920–1929', in Frank Crowley (ed.), A New History of Australia, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1974, pp. 370–371. 12. Margaret Row, 'The Huon Timber Company and the Crown: a Tale of Resource Development', Papers and Proceedings of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association, vol. 27, no. 3, 1980, pp. 87–102. 13. John Reynolds, 'Sir Henry Jones', Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1891–1939, vol. 9, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1966- ; Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, vol. 2, Colony and State from 1856 to the 1980s, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983–1991, pp. 270–277. 14. John Reynolds, 'Sir Henry Jones, K.B.', Papers and Proceedings of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association, vol. 20, no. 1, 1973, pp. 21–41. 15. Some of the character of the region is depicted by John Young, 'Franklin: Back to the Future', Tasmanian Historical Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 1995, pp. 114–131. 16. Commonwealth of Australia, Royal Commission on the Fruit Industry, 'Progress Report and Minority Report', Papers Presented to Parliament, vol. 4, 1913, p. 9; also Evidence John Gibson Whittle, 15 January 1913, p. 584. 17. Ibid., Evidence, Henry Jones, 18 January 1913. 18. The Amalgamated Society of Mill Hands, Carters and Labourers, Tasmanian News, 5 April 1890; The Sporting News and Axemen's Journal was published in Tasmania 1901–1904. The Axemen's Association was presided over by Sir E.N.C. Braddon, a former Premier. 19. M.D. McRae, 'The Tasmanian Labor Party and Trade Unions, 1903–1923', Papers and Proceedings of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association, vol. 5, 1956, pp. 4–13, Australian Timber Workers Union, Tasmanian Branch, (hereafter ATWU-T), E124/4, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University (hereafter NBAC); The Federated Timber Workers Union—Tasmanian Branch's 'Register of Members 1911–1918' lists 1,209 names of which 633 had paid subscriptions 1912–17. It was registered as an organisation under the Commonwealth Arbitration Act in 1912, ATWU-T, E124/2, NBAC; Minutes of Management Committee, 15 June 1918, Report of Secretary, W. Scanlon, Minutes of General Meeting, 23 February 1918, Minutes of Management Committee, 15 June 1918, Minutes of Executive Committee, 16 September, 11 November 1918, ATWU-T, E124/2, NBAC. 20. The World, 13 February 1922. 21. Interview, W. Leitch, former General Manager, Henry Jones IXL Timbers Pty Ltd, Hobart, 15 November 1979. 22. Premier to G. Kemp, Southern Tasmanian Sawmillers Association, 22 February 1922, and Premier to W. Scanlon, Secretary, Australian Timber Workers Union, No. 6 Tasmanian Branch, 21 February 1922, PD 1/372/4/22, TSA. The Tasmanian Timber Organisation was not formed until 1928 and the Australian Federated Sawmillers Association until 1935. 23. The World, 7 February 1922, reported W. Scanlon as saying that 'the contract system had been tried at 17 different mills on the NW Coast where it (wages) had panned out at about £2.17.0 per week'. This was compared to the minimum basic wage of £3 18s 0d per week. 24. Tasmania, Industrial Department, Annual Report, 1919–20, PD 1/361/84/3/21, TSA. 25. PD 1/361/84/3/21, TSA. 26. Tasmania, Industrial Department, Annual Report, 1920–21, PD 1/361/84/3/21, TSA. 27. The World, 20 February 1922; Board of Management, Minutes, 4 May 1921, ATWU-T, E124/2, NBAC; Huon Times, 2 August 1921. 28. Huon Times, 26 August 1921. 29. The World, 12 November 1921. 30. Huon Times, 28 October 1921. 31. Huon Times, 8 November 1921; Mercury, 16 November 1921. 32. Tasmanian Trades Hall Council (hereafter TTHC) Minutes, 21 January 1922, 18 February 1922, microfilm, NBAC. 33. Mercury, 6 February 1922. 34. Huon Times, 27 January 1922. 35. The company sought an injunction to prevent John Jones, the organiser, Bill Scanlon, the Secretary, and John O'Neill, the Acting Secretary, from 'inducing' the men to leave Carpenter's employment. An attempt to prevent anybody walking on the company's wharf or especially its tramline which crossed a public road was represented as a 'cheap form of reprisal' by the local paper, Huon Times, 20 January 1922; J.H. O'Neill to Sir Walter Lee, 21 February 1922, PD 1/372, TSA; Minutes 21 January 1922, and 4 March 1922 (when £988 13s 6d had been collected), microform, TTHC, NBAC. 36. Australian Timber Workers Union v. John Sharp and Sons Ltd and others, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol.15, various dates between 10 June and 20 December 1921. Australian Timber Workers Union and W. Angliss and Company and others, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol.15, 11 November 1921. 37. Huon Times, 12, 23 May 1922. 38. Huon Times, 23 May 1922, 3 October 1922. 39. Huon Times, 2, 6 June 1922. 40. Huon Times, 1 September 1922. 41. Huon Times, 20 June 1922. 42. Interview, R. Geeves, Port Huon, 24 October, 2001; Huon Times, 7, 8 July 1922; The World, 15 July 1922. 43. W. Scanlon, Secretary, Australian Timber Workers Union, to Premier, 1 July 1922, PD 1/372/84/10/22, TSA. Louis F. Rapp to Premier, 12 July 1922, PD 1/372/84/10/22, TSA. 44. Australian Timber Workers Union and John Sharp and Sons Ltd and others, 1 August to 22 September 1922, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol. 16, 1922. 45. For example, F. Derham appeared for both some of the timber companies and some of the engineering companies. 46. Australian Timber Workers Union and John Sharp and Sons Ltd and others, 28 April 1919 to 22 September 1922, Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Transcripts of Proceedings, B1958/15, 1919–1922, National Archives of Australia, Melbourne. Australian Timber Workers Union and John Sharp and Sons Ltd and others, judgement by J. Powers, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, vol. 16, 1922, p. 684. 47. Ian Turner, In Union is Strength: a History of Trade Unions in Australia 1788–1978, Nelson, Melbourne, 2nd edn, 1978, pp. 76–77. 48. Minutes, 19 August, 2, 30 September 1922, microfilm, TTHC, NBAC. 49. Mercury, 5 October 1922. 50. The World, 25 October 1922. 51. Board of Management, Minutes n.d. October 1922, ATWU-T, E124/4, NBAC. 52. Ibid.. 53. See Dixson, 'The Timber Strike of 1929' and van den Broek, 'Partners in Protest'. 54. John Dargavel, Fashioning Australia's Forests, pp.128–131. 55. See for example the collection of papers in Labour History, no. 78, May 2000, and particularly the papers by Erik Eklund, 'The "Place" of Politics: Class and Localist Politics at Port Kembla, 1900–30', pp. 94–115; Greg Patmore, 'Localism and Labour: Lithgow 1869–1932', pp. 53–70; and Lucy Taksa, 'Like a Bicycle, Forever Teetering Between Individualism and Collectivism: Considering Community in Relation to Labour History', pp. 7–32. 56. Greg Patmore, 'Working Lives in Regional Australia: Labour History and Local History', Labour History no. 78, May 2000, p.2. 57. Lucy Taksa, 'Like a Bicycle'. 58. Interview, Dr R. Geeves, Port Huon, 24 October, 2001. 59. Information forwarded by his widow, Mrs Rooke, Geeveston, 21 February 2002.

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