Joy Damousi | Agnes Milne : the Factory Inspector as Political Agitator, 1896–1906 | Labour History, 87

Agnes Milne : the Factory Inspector as Political Agitator, 1896–1906

Joy Damousi^*

Aagnes milne was the second female factory inspector to be appointed in Adelaide and in this article I explore how she redefined the parameters of factory inspection by infusing the role with a radical agenda. Through a consideration of Milne's activism, we can see how she politicised the position of factory inspection. I argue that Milne acted as a trade union advocate and radical social reformer in her capacity as inspector. This article also situates the factory inspector within the emerging practice during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of the creation of certain classifications and categories which have been termed 'political arithmetic'. Through an examination of Milne's activities we can see how factory inspectors paradoxically used similar techniques of classification and observation — often associated with social control — to argue for the regulation of working hours and improved conditions on behalf of the working classes.

To Miss Milne it seemed that human flesh and blood were being bought and sold too cheaply in Adelaide.¹

In 1899, Agnes Milne, the second female factory inspector to be appointed in South Australia concluded one of her rousing articles on women and sweated labour with a call for industrial reform. 'The real remedy lies in a quickening of an industrial evolution', she declared. Only with this, she believed, could there be decent wages for women workers.² During her ten years as a factory inspector from 1896 to 1906, Milne was an outspoken advocate of women's unionism, an opponent of sweating, and a supporter of co-operative ventures.

In this article, I wish to explore the ways in which Milne redefined the parameters of factory inspection by infusing the role with a radical agenda. Through a consideration of Milne's activism, we can see how she politicised the position of factory inspection. I would argue that Milne acted as a trade union advocate and radical social reformer in her capacity as inspector. Moreover, I wish to highlight the ways in which individual inspector's reports, such as those written by Milne, could be highly influential in provoking debate and awareness of industrial issues. Milne attempted to exert considerable individual power in the way she represented the conditions of the working classes, and used the information she gathered through her work to promote radical causes. By repeatedly raising the problem of sweating in her reports and in strenuously arguing for this working experience to be fully documented, Milne used her position to advance the rights of the woman worker. Milne was an inspector turned working-class advocate.

A biographical study of a factory inspector such as Milne can illuminate ways in which an individual activist could radically reconfigure her position to work on behalf of sweated workers; define and articulate the industrial struggle to improve the working conditions of women; and bring this issue to the attention of the legislators. A consideration of her activities and her political vision can also emphasise how categories, statistics and 'facts' are arranged to articulate perceptions of experience and explore the ways in which Milne's inspectors' reports effectively exploited this mode of representation. This article is an exploration of the intersection of these two dual aspects: that of the factory inspector as both agitator and as interpreter of working-class experience.

Factory Inspectors

Factory inspectors were appointed by state governments between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century often as a response to investigations that exposed the abysmal working conditions and subsistence wages of workers in factories and workshops in cities around Australia. Their role was to inspect these places of work and report on the conditions therein. In many cases inspectors had broad powers and were expected to enforce the various colonial and State acts governing factories and working conditions.

Yet, despite their obvious influence, factory inspectors have hardly captured the imagination of labour historians. Little attention has been given to them apart from short references to their role in implementing workplace legislation.³ Inspectors have also been ignored in their status as state workers and as public servants. In her pioneering work on the history of state officials and gender, Desley Deacon observed in 1989 that the public servant is 'almost a forgotten figure in current studies of the state'.⁴ This in large part continues to be the case; her call to rescue the 'anonymous women and men of the new middle class more completely' does not appear to have been heeded by historians of any persuasion.⁵ Feminist historians have more eagerly taken an interest in their activities, usually linking their inspectorial work to the wider feminist and labour movements.⁶ Given that the reports of factory inspectors often formed the basis of investigations into working conditions, especially that of working women, there is certainly scope to explore the role they played in representing working-class experience and agitating on their behalf.

Given the often scant biographical material and information available on labour activists in the form of letters and diaries scholars are limited in their analysis to the public rather than private lives of activists. Whilst this lends itself to short biographical pieces, larger studies are rendered more difficult. In such instances a methodology which is framed around biography necessarily focuses on process, structure and political activism rather than on the various complex layers of individual subjectivity. What these biographical studies can illuminate however, is the ways in which political agency was exercised and the material conditions which inspired and allowed for such manoeuvrings.

This article situates the factory inspector within the emerging practice during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of the creation of certain classifications and categories which have been termed 'political arithmetic', that is, the ways in which numbers, statistics and 'facts' constructed certain ideologies and perceptions. Historians have interpreted the collection of such material as a political exercise. Joan Scott has highlighted how statistical information on various aspects of economic and social life involved 'a question of the power to define reality itself'. Such reports, argues Scott, 'exemplify the process by which visions of reality, models of social structure, were elaborated and revised'.⁷

Agnes Milne
Adelaide Chronicle, 27 September 1919 Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia

More recently, Mary Poovey has argued that the emergence of state bureaucracies during the nineteenth century ushered in the politics of numbers and representation. Numbers, she argues are interpretive 'for they embody theoretical assumptions about what should be counted, how one should understand material reality, and how quantification contributes to systematic knowledge about the world'.⁸ Poovey links the emergence of governmentality and the state to the way in which 'political arithmetic' and 'facts' constructed certain knowledges.⁹

This analysis relates closely to how the state came to be configured as 'rational' through such reportage and classification, a process Foucault has described as the ways in which humans are 'made into subjects'. Foucault examined how dividing practices, observation, individuation and social scientific forms of classification were developed into techniques of domination of the working classes, vagabonds and those on the margins of society. He explored this process in a variety of contexts such as the rise of modern psychiatry and its influence in hospitals, prisons and clinics and the medicalisation of sexual deviance.¹⁰ But as Foucault himself acknowledged and others such as Ian Hacking have pointed out since Foucault's work was published, the application and collection of such knowledges was not always applied as a form of manipulation, domination, and containment. Hacking wrote:

It is certainly not true that most applications of the new statistical knowledge were evil. One may suspect the ideology of the great Victorian social reformers and still grant that their great fight for sanitation ... was the most important single amelioration of the epoch.¹¹

Indeed, I would argue that in Milne's reconfiguration of her role as radical inspector, she did not objectify the workers as 'other' – as later accounts of industrial inspection, especially in Britain by middle-class reformers, seem to suggest was frequently the case.¹²

The mode of representation of working-class life adopted by Milne needs to be understood in the context in which she assumed the role of inspector. There are three significant moves in this history which took place during the late and early twentieth centuries. The first was the early Victorian legislation in Britain which was established during the 1830s to 1860s and which included inspectorates of factories, prisons, schools, mines and railways. Arising out of a need for social reform to address the problems of industrialisation and urbanisation this legislation established a mechanism whereby inspectors could intervene in certain activities to ensure a range of requirements were being met.¹³

The second aspect of inspection — that of factory legislation within Australia — was established about 50 years later. During the 1880s and 1890s, pressure was exerted from predominately the Protestant churches and the emerging labour movement to appoint factory inspectors to allow them to enter premises and provide a reporting mechanism.¹⁴ Both in Britain and Australia these legislative reforms were designed to protect predominately women and children from the horrors of industrial exploitation whilst at the same time upholding the bourgeois notion of the family wage economy by excluding women and children from waged work.

Finally, from 1905, the Federal system of arbitration that was established in Australia set the stage for not only women and children to be protected, but all workers. In South Australia, the Industrial Court retained powers of enforcement for inspectors and was responsible for administering laws relating to industrial issues.¹⁵ Broad powers of inspection remained a central aspect of the Court's jurisdiction as inspectors could

enter any place, or premises ... .wherein ... any industry is carried on ... and inspect and view any work, material, machinery, article, matter, or thing whatsoever ... and interrogate any person ... in respect of...any matter or thing of which the Court has cognisance.¹⁶

At the turn of the twentieth century, factory inspection was part of the growth of state bureaucracy and public administration. As Hacking has argued, when new kinds of people came to be counted during the nineteenth century, factory inspectorates in England and Wales 'created ... the official form of the class structure of industrial societies'.¹⁷ Counting created new ways for 'people to be'. It was not the case that people

spontaneously come to fit their categories. When factory inspectors in England and Wales went to the mills, they found ... people ... loosely sorted according to tasks and wages. But when they had finished their reports, mill-hands had precise ways in which to work, and the owner has a clear set of concepts about how to employ workers according to he ways in which he was obliged to classify them.¹⁸

Through the exploration of the activities of one factory inspector — Agnes Milne — we can see how factory inspectors paradoxically used similar techniques of classification and observation — often associated with social control — to argue for the regulation of working hours and improved conditions on behalf of the working classes. Milne became a factory inspector precisely at the time when factory regulation was expanding; the systematic collection of factual information of the daily lives of working people in the industrial arena was in its embryonic form in Australia. I argue that rather than use the information gathering exercise and observation techniques as a way in which to exercise control over the working classes Milne drew on these very practices and information to agitate for social reforms. She took the additional step of interpreting workers' experiences and so exposed herself to accusations of bias, inadvertently entering into what became a battlefield of interpretation between opponents of sweating and those who did not believe it existed.

The Factory Inspectorate and Inspector Milne

Agnes Milne was appointed female factory inspector on 22 July 1896, aged 46. Described as a 'keen, alert-looking woman, with abundant energy and a "go" to put into affairs that she considers of importance',¹⁹ Milne had considerable experience working with, and agitating on behalf of, female factory workers. She took up the job 'vigorously, and with marked success'.²⁰

Agnes was born in 1850 in Lambeth, London, and five years later, she and her family emigrated to Hindmarsh, South Australia. Described as 'the best known working-class suburb in nineteenth century South Australia', Hindmarsh became the home of the dispossessed and outcast. The urban labouring poor resided there and it became a 'haven' for those affected by the depression of the 1890s.²¹

Agnes married Henry Milne, a saddler. A devout Christian all her life she was a member of the Congregational Church which was prominent in the Hindmarsh area,²² then shifted her allegiance to the Church of Christ. Milne was a long-time member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and took an active role in youth affairs, running the WCTU Boys' Club in Bowden. Her Christian principles translated into a fervent industrial radicalism, but her own working experience would have also radicalised her. Milne worked as a shirt maker before the death of her husband and four children. She returned to this job after she had lost the last of her four children by the age of 24.²³

When giving evidence to the 1892 Commission of Enquiry into Shops and Factories, Milne presented a figure of sheer fatigue and exhaustion. As a cutter, she was working 14 to 16 hours a day, when her 'health broke down', and she 'knew that I should soon be dead if I worked longer'.²⁴ This, she impressed on the Commission, was commonplace in the clothing trades. She spoke of cases where women had to leave their jobs because of 'long hours and ... [an] insanitary building'.²⁵ Influenced by these experiences, Milne was committed to improving the working conditions of women. She was a founding member of the Women Workers Trade Union (WWTU), formed in 1889 as a response to increasing concern over such wages and conditions for women.²⁶ Through the WWTU she represented this cause in various forums including in her capacity as a delegate to United Trades and Labour Council. Her interests in the welfare of working women extended beyond political representation to providing social and cultural pursuits for them. In May 1901, she helped to establish a Working Girls' Club in Adelaide. Its purpose was to provide a 'place where working girls may meet weekly for recreation and mutual benefit', towards a 'common humanity' rather than 'parading the streets'.²⁷ In 1906 she resigned from the WWTU to manage the South Australian Co-Operative Clothing Company, which was owned by and run for women.²⁸ A factory under its auspices was established in 1902. In the words of Catherine Helen Spence, one of its chief supporters and financial backers, it was designed so that women could 'ensure for themselves a degree of protection against oppression'.²⁹ Although the Company was initially a success, it could not withstand competition from larger factories and, after 11 years of operation, it went into liquidation in 1913. The survival of the Co-Operative Clothing Company for this length of time was a remarkable achievement; although some of its founders were bitter about the reluctance of workers to embrace the enterprise, judging its endurance by the length of the survival of similar ventures, its longevity is striking. When the company folded in 1913, Milne was 63. She then chose to retire next door to the Hindmarsh school, serving lunches to boys and selling them sweets. She remarked in her year of retirement that these children provided her with an 'ever increasing family'.³⁰ In 1916, she married Hartley Wright Edwards, a confectioner, and remained with him until her death on 10 August 1919.³¹

Milne was the second female factory inspector to be appointed in South Australia. The first inspectors — Thomas Farrell and Augusta Zadow — were both appointed following the revelations made by a Shops and Factories Commission established in 1892 by the Play ford Government that sweating existed in Adelaide; that working conditions were extremely poor; hours were long; and wages were pathetically low in some factories.³²

The Factory Act of 1894, which was a response to these findings, insisted on the implementation of a range of new conditions which governed factories, and included the establishment of all workshops employing six or more employers, as well as the appointment of a female factory inspector.³³ The powers of inspectors introduced by the Act were broad. They permitted inspectors to 'enter, inspect, and examine, at all reasonable times, any factory and every part thereof'; to make 'such examination and inquiry as may be necessary to ascertain whether the provisions of this Act ... are complied with'; to question 'every person whom he finds in a factory', although 'no person shall be compellable to answer any question asked by the inspector'. Other conditions which were stipulated included: no child (defined as a boy or girl under the age of 13 years) was to be employed in a factory; no young person or woman should be employed for more that 48 hours in a given week, or for more than five hours without an interval; any person who breached the Act was 'liable for each offence to a penalty not exceeding Five Pounds'.³⁴

Various aspects of inspectors' powers were questioned and challenged in the South Australian parliament in 1894 when a lengthy and at times heated debate took place. Some parliamentarians believed that 'the wrong kind of inspector could easily be appointed ... a member of a union [who] would enter on his duties with a prejudiced mind'.³⁵ There was a fear that 'inspectors would undoubtedly be appointed under the political influence of a certain section' and so during an election 'these inspectors might visit the factories for the purpose of influencing votes'.³⁶ H.E. Downer expressed further opposition when he insisted that inspectors would be invested with too much power and there was no right of appeal. 'We should all like to protect the worker', he argued, 'but there should also be some protection for the employer'.³⁷ Mr Ash was far more alarmist in his predictions of the impact of the Act. 'Under such law', he predicated, 'personal liberty and the individual freedom of both workmen and employers would disappear, and everyone would live under a most irksome tyranny of official inspectors'.³⁸ Dr Magarey feared that if

the inspector were not an honest man he might make himself a great nuisance to both employers and employees, and there should be some appeal from his decisions, as he was given great power.³⁹

There were also doubts aired that inspectors might not be trusted with certain information. J. Darling raised the concern that supposing employees

were making inventions, or perfecting them, would it be right for the inspector to be allowed to go in there? ... Would it not tend to the raising of spies and telltales?⁴⁰

Amidst this chorus of opposition, Farrell and Zadow assumed their roles in February 1895. The decision to appoint a woman to bring a feminine perspective to the position was applauded by Farrell.

The wisdom of appointing a female inspector has been made manifest in several instances, as many matters on which female workers felt aggrieved have been confided unreservedly to one of their own sex; and where the grievance has come within the scope of Mrs. Zadow's duties she has endeavoured to remedy the matter complained of, and in several instances with success.⁴¹

The call for a female inspector also came from leaders of the women's movement such as Mary Lee who was active in agitating for improved conditions for women workers from the 1880s.⁴² Sanitation, for instance, was an area that needed immediate attention. Farrell reported that in the Adelaide arcade,

there are several factories in which large numbers of women and girls are employed. Here sanitary conveniences were either absent altogether or totally insufficient ... numerous instances were reported of an insufficiency of water for flushing w.c. pans in elevated workrooms.⁴³

The physical layout of some workplaces also created difficulties. Privacy for women workers was also identified as an issue:

It is not uncommon for the entrance to the w.c. to be within a few feet of where men are employed; and although the inspectors have had no serious complaints of females having been wantonly annoyed by the males in this vicinity, still it is obvious that the conveniences will not be availed of by timid or shy girls. The scarcity of outside space is the real difficulty, but when it becomes necessary to erect sanitary conveniences within the various workroom a portion should be partitioned of from the floor to ceiling to form a retiring room for females, and within this space the closet and lavatory conveniences could be provided.

Conditions such as overheating (temperatures soared to as high as 108 Fahrenheit in one factory) and cleanliness was further identified as problems which required urgent reform.⁴⁴

Zadow set an exemplary model for Milne to follow as a factory inspector. A fervent activist for women's rights in the clothing trade, Zadow helped to establish the Working Women's Trades Union in 1890; she was a delegate to the United Trades and Labour Council; collected evidence of sweating with which to pressure government into legislative action; and fought for women's suffrage. Tragically, she contracted influenza and died in July 1896, aged 50.⁴⁵ Her obituary in the South Australian Register observed that she was a 'most capable woman ... and it will be hard to find a suitable successor'.⁴⁶ However, this did not prove to be the case, and Agnes Milne was almost immediately identified as someone who could indeed succeed Zadow.

The job of inspection was intensive, tiring and demanding work. In her first six months, Milne made 342 visits of inspections to factories.⁴⁷ Within a year she had visited 784 factories and workrooms. She had found 'utmost courtesy' by factory owners, 'while many of the workers look forward to my visits with much pleasure, and in some cases I do not visit often enough'. But she simply did not have the time to visit socially: 'I find in the execution of my duties I cannot spare time simply to visit; it must be inspections'.⁴⁸ Helen Jones has observed that the appointment of female factory inspectors served as a 'strong educational force' surrounding issues such as sweating.⁴⁹ This was certainly the case, but Milne was determined that whilst she was inspector her role would extend beyond that of simply exposing a public disgrace.

Sweating

During the 1890s sweating became a central concern for feminist and labour activists throughout Australia. It involved usually female labourers undertaking work in their own homes thus employers saved on overheads and did not have to comply with state regulations governing wages and conditions. The prevalence of sweating provided the motivation for legislation to regulate the labour market.⁵⁰ In Sydney and in Melbourne, the 'lot was cruel' of single women, widows and deserted wives; in Brisbane, 'the 'hard cases' were also found among women and children.⁵¹ The 'migration' of sweating to Adelaide, observed W. Pember Reeves, the New Zealand politician and social reformer, could be attributed to the restrictions placed upon the sweater in Melbourne and Sydney. 'The sweater, hampered elsewhere,' observed Reeves, 'was beginning in 1899 to look upon Adelaide as a city of refuge'.⁵²

In response, an Anti-Sweating League was formed in Adelaide in July 1900. Up until this time, South Australia, 'radical and progressive as it was', opined Reeves, 'lagged behind in the regulation of factories and shops'.⁵³ The aim was to publicise the plight of sweating and pressure legislators to regulate wages and conditions. As elsewhere in Adelaide much of this debate took place with reference to the clothing trades, where sweated outworkers — predominately women — were underpaid.⁵⁴ Legislative response was slow, but in reaction to ongoing public pressure, in 1892 the Playford government established a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Shops and Factories, which investigated the poor working conditions of women. It found that women suffered most as sweated labourers and that most of this occurred as outwork.

After almost a decade of agitation and public pressure, the Legislative Council accepted the findings of its own 1904 Committee of Enquiry into the Alleged Sweating Evil, and applied regulations to workers in certain industries. The regulations stipulated in this report were administered through elected boards which had representatives of four employers and four employees.⁵⁵ But evidence of outwork and sweating continued. One of the frustrations for inspectors was that it was simply beyond their control to improve conditions. This was partly because they often assumed that sweated workers were exploited by 'foreigners' reflecting the antagonism towards immigrant employers as well as employees in Australia. The circumstances of sweated conditions were outlined thus by J. Bannigan, the Chief Inspector of Factories:

Mrs. Inspector Milne & myself have devoted some time to enquiry respecting the conditions under which Syrians, Chinese, & Indians get their stock made up in the city & the result goes to show that considerable hardships & suffering to sewing women are too often the outcome of the cheap rates of pay brought about by their foreigners. The trade principally in women's underclothing, & rates at which they pay for this class of work is too scanty to enable any woman to live decently. We find that low as the prices already are, competition is so keen that women frequently apply for work at a still lower rate.⁵⁶

Sweating continued unchecked. Inspectors reported that the

earnings of a woman working long hours in their own home do not average more than about 10/- per week. Out of this house-rent has to come instalments for sewing machine, after which there is very little left for food

and the 'low prices paid to home workers & the miserable conditions under which many of them live'. But they conceded, 'unfortunately the Inspectors have little power in such matters'.⁵⁷

In a series of articles published in 1899, in Journal of Agriculture and Industry, Milne called for the end of sweating through regulation and the factory acts; and for work to be performed in factories rather than workshops and homes where they could not be regulated. It was through 'judicious legislation' that she believed 'the toiling masses, both male and female' would be emancipated.⁵⁸ Not only did Milne match her predecessor, Zadow, in her enthusiasm and commitment to the position, but she extended the duties of inspection beyond those that Zadow had established within its parameters. As Zadow had done, Milne ensured that employers conformed to the conditions laid out in the Factory Acts. Her reports indicate a meticulous and scrupulous approach in ensuring that employers conformed to government regulations of 'hours of work, cleanliness, sanitary facilities, ventilation and light in workshops and factories'.⁵⁹ However, in addition to this she also agitated against, publicised, and politicised the cause of sweating.

Taking such an overt political and at times militant stance was unusual for a factory inspector at this time. Unlike her Victorian counterpart, Margaret Cuthbertson, who rose to the position of factory inspector through the public service (she was a telephone switchboard attendant in the Postmaster-General's department), Milne came through working-class ranks and radical politics. She used her position to promote alternative political programmes and workers' rights in ways which Cuthbertson would have deemed inappropriate. Historically, inspecting was an acceptable form of political and public activity for middle-class (rather than working-class) female reformers involved in charity work. 'Lady supervisors' assumed considerable power in their supervisory role, and the reformers perceived of their role akin to professionals such as medical officers and official inspectors.⁶⁰

In South Australia at this time Milne was one of the few women who held a public position which was remunerated. Visits undertaken by reformers such as Mary Lee to lunatic asylums and Catherine Helen Spence to the Destitute Board, were unpaid. Inspection of prisons was also actively undertaken by feminists at this time. The move to appoint female police to deal with women prisoners emerged from visits conducted by female reformers in the early twentieth century.⁶¹ Milne's appointment sat at the cusp between a system of voluntarism and an emerging professionalisation of inspection amongst women.⁶² It was still more commonplace for women reformers to enter institutions and workplaces voluntarily.

Christian reformers, for instance, extended this practice to the workplace during the 1890s. The Young Women's Christian Association visited factories distributing flowers and literature to the workers. But the workers did not embrace the evangelical message and resented the assumption that they read 'poor' material, and were in need of charity. Justice, not charity, was what they demanded and wages which allowed them to live respectably.⁶³ Factory 'inspecting' derived from this tradition, for whilst it signified an important entree of women into the industrial field, it did so in terms similar to that of the premise of earlier female 'inspectors': that they would bring a feminine quality to a social problem concerning women.

However, in practice, an effective inspector did not require 'feminine' qualities. Generally Zadow met with no opposition, but on occasions when occupiers of factories showed an inclination to be obstructive, she had been 'firm in the discharge of her official duties'.⁶⁴ Still, some owners continued to obstruct inspectors' work — an experience Milne encountered in 1898. J.A. Sullivan, a tailor, refused Milne entry into his rooms. She was 'not being satisfied that the place was not a Factory with the meaning of the Act' and was refused entry a second time. Bannigan accompanied her to inspect the property:

On her reasons for desiring to see the work rooms, viz. to ascertain the number of women working there, being communicated to me I arranged to accompany her on a subsequent occasion ... I told Mr. Sullivan who we were, & stated our business. After some demur, & being shown my commission under the Factories Act, he partly withdrew his objection to myself, but declared that he would not allow Mrs. Milne to see the workrooms.

He eventually allowed them to pass, but prosecuted in this case.⁶⁵ In October 1898, Bannigan reported that inspectors needed firm direction on how to deal with resistance, as they were 'meeting with a good deal of stubborn opposition with regard to the safeguarding of dangerous machinery, & am placed at considerable disadvantage owing to the absence of any rules or diagrams to guide me in this important part of my duties'.⁶⁶ In recalling her period as a factory inspector, it was, in fact, this aspect which made the position both demanding and rewarding. 'I always liked the rough and tumble battling', Milne remembered, 'and there was plenty of it, for opposition was strong'.⁶⁷

She recalled that 'the first compulsory inspections of the factories was greatly resented', ⁶⁸ thus she needed to be firm but calm and above all, fearless:

The sweaters did not like their dealings exposed, and they tried their best to break me. I have had them swear at me, threaten to kick me downstairs, and bolt the door against me. But I always know how to keep cool and hold my own, and these men could not hold out in their defiance. I was prepared to carry out the law.

One sweater in particular was abusive:

I remember the man who was the vilest in his attitude to me and my interference. After a storm of abuse I went up to him quite fearlessly, and, putting my hand on his shoulder, said in a very quiet voice, 'My man, you know, I could immediately get you six months for this abuse'. His wife made him understand, and begged for leniency for him.⁶⁹

Milne had no interest in providing a female sensibility to the inspector's job — in fact she at times accused women workers of indifference and of being complicit in their own oppression. How did she view her position from a so called 'woman's standpoint'? The real enemy of women workers were the women themselves, she argued.

So long as there are women (married or unmarried) eager and able to take work to their homes, and do it in the intervals of another business, domestic service, or home duties, the true workers will never disentangle themselves from the vicious circle in which low wages tend to bad work, and bad work compels low wages.⁷⁰

She was disappointed with the indifference of the workers she was protecting:

I am of [the] opinion that it is in a great measure the fault of the workers themselves, who clamor for cheap bargains, not caring how little their fellow workers get their labour.⁷¹

What Milne brought to inspection as an activist in an official position with labour sympathies, marked her out from her middle-class counterparts. The intersection of class and gender around factory inspection points to a distinctive working-class radicalism. Factory inspection created new categories of activity and classified these in ways which was different to previous categorisations. As Ian Hacking has observed of counting and classifications, in the nineteenth century,

numerous kinds of human beings and human acts come into being hand in hand with our invention of the categories labelling them ... our spheres of possibility, and hence ourselves, are to some extent made up by our naming and what that entails.⁷²

Milne manipulated these representations for social change and a new vision for working-class industrial organisation.

This was most apparent in the way in which the category of 'outdoor worker' was especially discussed through Milne's reports. She did not invent the category, but her discussion of it within her inspection reports provided the framework from which she argued for reform. The various activities which she identified to be within this category and her views of this assumed a form of representation which as we shall see, offended others. What was represented as 'facts' and 'interpretation' became blurred in Milne's reports. Although inspection was meant to be a subjective activity of reportage, she used it to construct knowledge in a particular way about health and safety and working conditions which promoted her cause. As Gerald Rhodes observes, inspection in the late nineteenth century involved 'persuasion rather than prosecution, and ... prevention of breaches of the law rather than their detection'. But Milne saw it as her role not only to scrutinise and assess working conditions and to 'promote the underlying purposes of the legislation',⁷³ but also to 'emancipate' the workers.

The inspector, she believed, played a key role is this endeavour. Milne's reports read more like a list of demands on behalf of the workers than it did as a document of whether employers had complied with certain regulations. The outworkers, she reported in 1898,

still complain bitterly of the very low process obtained for work done ... [I]t is still true that Hood's well know 'Song of the Shirt' has certainly not ceased to apply to these colonies ...

She also argued that there was a case for immediate reform:

if the amendments suggested from time to time by the factory inspectors ... were only converted into law, they would to a large extent assist the employees and ameliorate in some degree the hardships under which they labour ... It is still obvious that low prices at starvation wages are ruling, and nothing will stay their downward course but legal enactment.⁷⁴

Milne increasingly politicised the position and pushed for further legislative changes. In 1897, her inspector's report included a rousing call for wider reforms of the economic system:

To-day the workers are groaning under the oppression of unjust competition; and, while our merchants can be feted and flattered, and give large sums of money to this charity and that institution, it is noticeable and deplorable that those who make the wealth for them can get very little consideration at their hands.⁷⁵

Milne conducted her own investigations into sweating through her position. In 1899 she reported that she had the

opportunity during the past year to again visit, with Mr. Inspector Bannigan, the Assyrian and Chinese hawkers, and we find that the trade is gradually but surely going into their hands. Although they state the pay a fair price for work done — and it is all done by European women — yet their statements and the employees' do not correspond.⁷⁶

It was the case that the

prices quoted and placed on 'sweated' goods are still in existence, and the 'sweater' is till alive and flourishing in our midst, while his victims are slowly but surely dying ... It is ... still obvious that low wages at starvation prices are ruling, and nothing will stay the downward course but legal enactment.

She used evocative, powerful, emotive language of the day. In citing sweating cases, it was

enough to make the very stones of our streets cry out ... 'Oh God, that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap?' And from what cause? 'man's inhumanity to man', whereby thousands are made to mourn.⁷⁷

In her initial report it was sweating that she pointed to as the issues, created by so- called 'foreigners':

I am of the opinion that a great deal of 'sweating' is carried on in some of these places, and in going my rounds I hear many sad complaints of the difficulty to make a bare living. Foreigners are chiefly blamed for the sad state of things, but I am of the opinion that it is in a great measure he fault of the workers themselves, who clamour for cheap bargains, not caring how little their fellow workers get for their labour.⁷⁸

Milne also hoped to extend the duties of an inspector. On the question of safeguarding dangerous machinery, and the arbitrary notion of what is safe and unsafe machinery, she believed that 'the only satisfactory way out of the difficulty is by the adoption of legislation similar to that of the neighbouring colonies, which gives the inspector power [to] declare any machine dangerous if in his opinion it is so'. Being met with the view that improvement is resisted on the basis that there has been no need in the past to improve the machinery, she cites the example of where

it is not unusual for two or three men to hang on the spokes of a large engine flywheel to get it over the dead centre in order to start, when the outlay of a few shillings would provide a starting lever that would accomplish the object with a hundredth part of the trouble and little or no risk.

Another obstacle to reform was the 'self-styled practical machinist' who believes that 'his own machine, whatever it may happen to be, to be the essence of perfection'.⁷⁹

Milne was not alone at this time in using her position as a public servant to widen her brief and promote her causes. It was at this time that the NSW statistician Timothy Coghlan emerged in the Public Works Department to transform his role during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into one where he became what Desley Deacon has described as 'one of the most respected authorities in New South Wales on social and political issues'.⁸⁰ Coghlan expressed distinct views on state intervention, political economy and worked to restructure the public service to make it a base from which to introduce social reforms.⁸¹ He was influential in supporting and introducing a number of progressive reforms which redefined the role of the state and benefited the working-class.⁸² Milne was not in such a powerful position within the organisation as was Coghlan nor did she assume such an influential role and so was far more vulnerable when she was inevitably criticised for her representation of working conditions.

The Politics of Inspection

Milne's crusading zeal to extend the parameters of her inspection, reflected her belief that the aim of her work was to have 'all wrongs righted, as far as it is in the power of inspectors to do so'. Inevitably, there was growing disquiet that Milne was taking matters in her own hands and conducting inspection business beyond her position. Bannigan wrote to the Ministry about some of her activities.

I do not wish [you] to infer ... that there is any friction between us. On the contrary Mrs Milne & myself work together most amicably. I find her very ready and willing to assist in any way in her power ... It appears [however] to have been the custom for some time for Mrs. Milne to conduct certain correspondence in connection with factory matters, as well as writing to & interviewing the Officers of the local Board of Health re suggested improvements in connection with factory premises, & in various ways we seem to act independently of each other without any recognised system.⁸³

An instance of Milne using her position as factory inspector to act independently can be seen in her lobbying of powerful and influential women such as Lady Tennyson, the wife of the Governor, whom she convinced to donate money to her anti-sweating cause. In August 1899 she wrote to Lady Tennyson:

You were pleased some few weeks ago, when I had the honour of waiting on you respecting the evil of 'sweating' in the Clothing trade, to express your desire to help any deserving case of distress that might come under the notice of the Factories Inspectors in the course of their investigations ... '⁸⁴

Two weeks later, Milne wrote to Lady Tennyson

to gratefully acknowledge receipt of cheque for £3 ... The women desire me to convey to your Ladyship their heartfelt gratitude for you kindly act in assisting them over their difficulties, & to this I desire to add my most sincere thanks for your Ladyship's kindly interest in these poor people.⁸⁵

Milne would most probably have also used her inspector's job to promote the establishment of the Working Girls' Club which she helped to set up to provide a place 'where working girls may meet weekly for recreation and mutual benefit', 'independent of religious instruction or trades unionism', in order to find a missing link 'to weld together the great practical needs of our common humanity'.⁸⁶ The aim was to allocate a space for girls to go when they have 'no social attractions in the home' and instead to avail themselves of such a place, 'where they can spend a quiet and enjoyable time, instead of parading the streets, as so many are induced to do through having no better place to go to'.⁸⁷

Even more alarmingly for the factory inspectorate, Milne began to agitate amongst the workers for the formation of a Shirtmakers' Association. Bannigan sought advice from the Minister of Industry as to whether it was acceptable for inspectors to be involved in such activities. In October 1899, he forwarded a summary of reports for September, noting that Milne had made 59 inspections throughout the month. In particular, she had devoted a good deal of attention to home workers and their grievances, particularly in the direction of low rates of pay, '& is now taking an active interest in the promotion of a scheme for the formation of a Co-operative Shirtmakers Association'. Bannigan was

rendering such assistance to the promotion of the scheme, by way of information & advice, as I deem prudent, but before identifying myself further than this with the matter I would like to know what might be the wishes of the Minister of Industry in regard to the Factories Inspectors taking part in the movement ... .

Attached to his letter was a notice, most probably drafted by Milne:

In consequence of the cruel hardships which the sweating evil has inflicted on a large section of the working women of Adelaide, it is proposed that an effort should be made to start a small Shirt Factory on principles which will give to the workers the full fruits of their labour ... The objects of the Association — which it is proposed shall be called the 'Working Women's Shirt Making Association' — is to establish under competent management a Shirt Making Factory, consisting of about eight women including the manager for a start, the number to be increased later on according to requirements ... An earnest appeal is hereby made to all lovers of fair dealing to help this worthy object by taking a few shares in the Association, though the efforts of which the promoters are hopeful that an initial blow will be struck at the pernicious evil of sweating.⁸⁸

Milne's strident reports did not escape the attention of legislators. In 1904 she defended the nature of her reporting to the 'Select Committee of the Alleged Sweating Evil' stating that 'Those reports are made up from nothing but solid facts, and I do not draw upon my imagination one iota'. In particular, she was asked to defend her statement — 'I say most unhesitatingly that the condition of the workers is worse to-day than in 1899' — that she had made in one of her reports. She replied that: 'Low prices and the way in which the workers have to grind out, not a living, but starvation wages. They are worse off than in 1899'.⁸⁹ The interrogation by the commissioner continued throughout the examination which focused on the accuracy of her statements.⁹⁰ The Committee's report was discussed in the South Australian parliament and the authenticity of Milne's reports was questioned. Parliamentarian E. Lucas argued that the case that sweating exists comes only from the reports of factory inspectors. He questioned how authentic these reports were as he believed that inspectors subliminally internalised the atmosphere in which they worked:

[I]f the inspector lived in an atmosphere in which he came in contact with individuals who were constantly pouring into his ears the fact that they were sweated, he naturally became biased in that direction.

Although Lucas did 'not wish to impute to the inspector any unfairness or misstatements', he believed that the reports of the Inspectors of Factories 'were a little highly coloured'. Lucas argued that the evidence was 'slight and inconclusive' and he would need 'further evidence' to bring in a set of regulations to 'dispense with homework'.⁹¹

Earlier, Bannigan had agreed that such evidence was often difficult to obtain. But while there were some instances where there were was little or nothing to complain about, this did not necessarily mean that sweating did not exist. Bannigan agreed with Milne:

Some doubt has been expressed as to the existence of sweating in Adelaide, and it has been asserted that the factories inspectors have produced no facts concerning the evil ...

But it is difficult to ascertain facts, and

[a]nyone who has the slightest acquaintance with the conditions under which the people are employed who suffer most from the effects of the system must know full well that the publication of any facts that would disclose the identity of the persons concerned, could not fail to injuriously affect ... the very persons they were intended to benefit.⁹²

Bannigan believed that 'if the homeowner could be dispensed with, or brought under strict factory legislation, there would be very little sweating'. There was the argument that this would then deny widows struggling with young families, women with invalided husbands, and many others who would be precluded from working in factories. Bannigan was also outspoken about the issue.

I am no believer in depriving anyone ... of the means of earning an honest living; but I strongly believe in the necessity for regulation to prevent a few in their struggle for the crumbs to become the means not only of making their own lot worse, but also dragging others down to the same level.⁹³

He went on to say that although conditions are not as bad as in other states,

it is no use shutting one's eyes to the fact that the drift is fast setting in a downward direction, and the sooner something is done to stem he current the easier it will be to cope with. Factory legislation in most of the other colonies appears to be gradually making the sweaters' position untenable, and as this progresses there is a danger that the most undesirable of the class may move to this colony, where their operations are at present less restricted.⁹⁴

Bannigan recommended that anybody working in the system should be registered and a list of all the salaries paid out should be documented, and the list made available to inspectors, so that inspectors were not accused of exceeding the powers conferred on them.⁹⁵ Bannigan was outspoken in his reports, but Milne was especially pro-active in agitating for change.

Undeterred, Milne continued her political agitation during the early years of the twentieth century. She became more explicit in her campaign against sweating, although there was a surprising tempering of her tone with regards to employers. It would come as no surprise if she had been requested to balance her reports. In 1901 she reported that the 'sweating evil' continuously 'fell to my lot', although factory inspection was not originally intended to serve as a platform for the expression of explicit workers' demands. She reported it was 'very pleasing' that 'a strong Anti-Sweating League was formed during the year, which has done much to help the inspectors, and from which much assistance is still expected'. What is less expected in this report is that she observed that:

it is frequently brought under my notice that workers are very careless over their work, and do not consider their employers sufficiently. This should not be so, for an employer has a right to expect a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, and employees should ever remember that the interests of the employers are the interests of themselves.⁹⁶

The tone of this report is in sharp contrast to her report the year she was attempting to mobilise charity from the governor's wife and support for the Shirtmaker's Association. Earlier, her tone had been emphatic and assertive, and she adopted the radical political rhetoric of the day. After 1901, her individual reports were summarised by Bannigan, although he did occasionally include some of her more outspoken comments, like the following comment from Milne:

I am still opinion of the opinion that some better system could and should be organized for the help and assistance of our female workers, and to bring them more in touch with our department. Trusting to see a female bureau established in our State at some future time.⁹⁷

In June 1898, Bannigan wrote to his Minister reassuring him that the

greatest care is at all time taken by Inspectors to act with courtesy and forbearance towards all parties, and rather to educate them up to the requirements of the Act than to detect them in the committal of offences against it.⁹⁸

It is beyond doubt that Milne fulfilled her duty in policing the implementation of the provisions in the Factory Acts. In the details of her voluminous inspector's reports another voice — that of a radical reformer — emerges.

Although female factory inspectors were appointed to bring a feminine sensibility to the position, what were actually required were qualities of independence, strength and forbearance. As Milne recalled, it 'was enthusing to work there, [sic] among the beginnings, for better working conditions, but it took some nerve to keep steadily at it'.⁹⁹ Industrial reportage was in its embryonic stage at the time Milne was promoting the worker's cause. Her efforts point to the ways in which the production of facts about working-class experience — disseminated through her reports — did not classify workers in order to contain them, but was seen by herself and others as leading radical reform.

When considering 'the individual' in labour history through a biographical prism, Milne's political crusade sheds light on the ways in which an individual can contribute to politicising a position of influence to promote social change, as, I would argue, she did so forcefully and uniquely in her role as factory inspector. Beyond this, Milne's lifelong involvement in trade union politics and the women's movement were fuelled by a fervent late nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian feminist ethic, which was also influenced by a commitment to collectivist ventures. Agnes Milne's political citizenship of these causes suggests the ways in which a female activist exercised and negotiated political agency at the turn of the last century.

Endnotes

^*� This paper has been peer-reviewed for Labour History by two anonymous referees.

^1.� W. Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, Volume 2, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1969, p. 27.

^2.� Agnes A. Milne, 'Woman's Work and Wages', Journal of Agriculture and Industry, vol. 3, no.1, August 1899, p. 102.

^3.� Rae Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880–1939, Cambridge, Melbourne, 1993, p. 77.

^4.� Desley Deacon, Managing Gender: the State, the New Middle Class and Women Workers 1830–1930, Oxford, Melbourne, 1989, p. 3.

^5.�Ibid., p. 17.

^6.� Kay Whitehead, 'Post-Suffrage Factory Inspectors in New South Wales', Labour History, no. 80, May 2001, pp. 157–172; Phillipa L. Fletcher, 'An Adelaide Woman of Interest: Agnes Milne, Inspector of Factories, 1896–1906', in Robert Nicol and Brian Samuels (eds), Insights into South Australian History, Volume One: Selected Articles from the Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, Historical Society of South Australia, Adelaide, 1992, pp. 23–27. This was originally published in Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, no. 15, 1987, pp. 54–64; Joy Damousi, 'Margaret Cuthbertson, Factory Inspection and the Political Lives of Working Women, 1890–1914' in Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore (eds), Working the Nation: Working Life and Federation: 1890–1914, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 249–263; Helen Jones, Nothing Seemed Impossible: Women's Education and Social Change in South Australia 1875–1915, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1985, pp. 111–120.

^7.� Joan Scott, 'A Statistical Representation of Work', in Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988, p. 115.

^8.� Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1998, p. xii.

^9.�Ibid., xii– xix.

^10.� Paul Rabinow, 'Introduction', in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, Penguin, London, 1986, pp. 7–11.

^11.� Ian Hacking, 'How Should we do the History of Statistics?', in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1991, p. 183.

^12.� Angela Woollacott, 'From Moral to Professional Authority: Secularism, Social Work, and Middle-Class Women's Self-Construction in World War 1 Britain', Journal of Women's History, vol. 10, no. 2, Summer 1998, p. 101.

^13.� Gerald Rhodes, Inspectorates in British Government: Law Enforcement and Standards of Efficiency, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981, pp. 1–3; Arthur J. Taylor, Laissez-Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Macmillan, London, 1972, p. 56.

^14.� Wilfrid Prest, Kerrie Round and Carol Fort (eds), The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2001, p. 526–527.

^15.� George Anderson, Fixation of Wages in Australia, Macmillan/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1929, p. 98–99.

^16.�Ibid., p. 100.

^17.� Hacking, 'How Should we do the History of Statistics?', p. 183.

^18.� Ian Hacking, 'Making Up People', in T.C. Heller, M. Sosna, and D.E. Wellbery (eds), Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1986, p. 223.

^19.�Daily Herald, 14 June 1913, p. 13.

^20.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', Proceedings of the Parliament of South Australia (hereafter PPSA) 1897, vol. 2.

^21.� Kerry Wimshurst, 'Inequality and Power in Hindmarsh Municipality in the 1890s', in Mark Blencowe and Rob van den Hoorn (eds), South Australia in the 1890s, Constitutional Museum, Adelaide, 1983, p. 357.

^22.�Daily Herald, 26 April 1913, p. 11.

^23.� Helen Jones, In Her Own Name: a History of Women in South Australia from 1836, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1986, p. 203.

^24.� Report of the Shops and Factories Commission, South Australian Parliamentary Papers, vol. 37. Minutes of Proceedings, Evidence and Appendices, Government Printer, Adelaide, 1892, para. 4915.

^25.�Ibid., para. 4950.

^26.� Fletcher, 'An Adelaide Woman of Interest: Agnes Milne', pp. 23–25; Jones, In Her Own Name, p. 201; Phillipa Fletcher, 'Agnes Milne', in Heather Radi (ed.), 200 Australian Women: a Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press, Sydney, 1988, p. 54–55.

^27.� Mrs Inspector Milne, 'Working Girls' Club', Journal of Agriculture and Industry, July 1901, vol. 4, no. 12, pp. 1039–1040.

^28.� Fletcher, 'Agnes Milne', p. 55; Daily Herald, 14 June 1913, p. 13.

^29.� Jones, Nothing Seemed Impossible, p. 123.

^30.�Daily Herald, 14 June 1913, p. 13.

^31.� Fletcher, 'Agnes Milne', p. 55.

^32.� Jones, In Her Own Name, p. 70.

^33.� Helen Jones, 'Women at Work in South Australia, 1889–1906', Nicol & Samuels (eds), Insights into South Australian History, p. 98.

^34.�Factories Act 1894 (SA).

^35.� House of Assembly (hereafter HA), South Australian Parliamentary Debates (hereafter SAPD), vol. 2, 23 October 1894, p. 1924.

^36.�Ibid.

^37.� HA, SAPD, vol. 2, 31 October 1894, p. 2092.

^38.�Ibid, p. 2093.

^39.� Legislative Council (hereafter LC), SAPD, vol. 2, 14 November 1894, p. 2304.

^40.� LC, SAPD, vol. 2, 28 November 1894, p. 2578.

^41.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1896, vol. 3.

^42.� Jones, Nothing Seemed Impossible, p.113.

^43.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1896, vol. 3.

^44.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1899, vol. 2.

^45.� Helen Jones, 'Augustine Zadow', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12: 1891–1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1990, p. 604.

^46.�South Australian Register, 9 July 1896, p. 6.

^47.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1897, vol. 2.

^48.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1898–99, vol. 2.

^49.� Jones, Nothing Seemed Impossible, p. 112.

^50.� Stuart Macintyre, Winners and Losers: the Pursuit of Social Justice in Australian History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985, p. 43.

^51.� Reeves, State Experiments, p. 21; pp. 23–24.

^52.�Ibid., p. 25.

^53.�Ibid., p. 68.

^54.� Prest, Round & Fort (eds), The Wakefield Companion, p. 526

^55.� Jones, Nothing Seemed Impossible, p. 111.

^56.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 6 December 1898, Factories Inspection Record Book (hereafter FIRB), vol. 2, 1898–1901, GRG 64/1/2, State Records Office of South Australia (hereafter SRSA).

^57.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1899, vol. 2.

^58.� Agnes Milne, 'Woman's Work and Wages', Journal of Agriculture and Industry, vol. 3, no. 3, October 1899, p. 343.

^59.� Jones, In Her Own Name, p. 71.

^60.� Jane Finnis, Louisa Twining and the Workhouse Visiting Society, MA thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1995, pp. 39–40.

^61.� See Woman's Sphere, 10 May 1903, p. 302.

^62.� Jones, In Her Own Name, p. 331.

^63.�Ibid., p.71.

^64.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 27 September 1895, FIRB, vol. 1, 1895–96, GRG 64/1/1, SRSA.

^65.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 21 June 1898, FIRB, vol. 2.

^66.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 4 October 1898, FIRB, vol. 2.

^67.�Daily Herald, 14 June 1913, p. 13.

^68.�Ibid.

^69.�Ibid.

^70.� Agnes Milne, 'Working of the Factory Act', Journal of Agriculture and Industry, vol. 2, no. 4, November 1898, p. 387.

^71.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1897, vol. 2.

^72.� Hacking, 'Making Up People,' p. 236.

^73.� Gerald Rhodes, Inspectorates in British Government: Law Enforcement and Standards of Efficiency, Allen and Unwin, London, 1981, pp. 64–65.

^74.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1899, vol. 2.

^75.� 'Report of Inspectors of Factories, Annual Report for 1899', PPSA, 1900, vol. 2, p.11

^76.�Ibid.

^77.�Ibid.

^78.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1896, vol. 3.

^79.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1899, vol. 2.

^80.� Deacon, Managing Gender, p. 113.

^81.�Ibid., pp. 119–125.

^82.�Ibid., pp. 125–126.

^83.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 7 January 1897, FIRB, vol.1.

^84.� Agnes Milne to Lady Tennyson, 13 August 1899, FIRB, vol. 2.

^85.� Agnes Milne to Lady Tennyson, 29 August 1899, FIRB, vol. 2.

^86.� Mrs Inspector Milne, 'Working Girls' Club', p. 1039.

^87.�Ibid., p.1039.

^88.�Ibid.

^89.� 'Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on the Alleged Sweating Evil, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence', PPSA, 1904, vol. 2, Evidence of Agnes Milne, p. 8.

^90.�Ibid.

^91.� LC, SAPD, 31 August 1904, p.110.

^92.� 'Report of Inspectors of Factories, PPSA, 1901, Annual Report for 1900'.

^93.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1899, vol. 2.

^94.�Ibid.

^95.�Ibid.

^96.� 'Report of Inspectors of Factories, PPSA, 1901, Annual Report for 1900'.

^97.� 'Reports of Inspectors of Factories', PPSA, 1902, vol. 2.

^98.� Chief of Inspector of Factories to the Ministry of Industry, 9 June 1898, FIRB, vol. 1.

^99.�Daily Herald, 14 June 1913, p. 13.

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