One of the key characteristics of late nineteenth century labour was its youth. During the period 1885 to 1900 this attribute was particularly pronounced in Queensland where nearly half the population was under 20 years-of-age. While labour historians have long recognised that child and youth labour was associated with sub-standard employment, little attention has been paid to the ways in which this disproportionately large demographic shaped both the operation of the overall labour market and patterns of trade union organisation. This paper argues that both can only be understood in the context of the labour supply pressures exerted by an exceptionally large youth cohort. The wide-scale use of youth labour was, however, a product of specific temporal and geographic experiences. By 1900 the nation's demographic profile was rapidly maturing as the birth rate slowed dramatically.

In recent years, studies of late nineteenth century employment have increasingly drawn our attention to workforce divisions based upon gender and race. In a recent article on the role of union organising activities in rebuilding labour's strength between 1900 and 1910, for example, Cooper pays considerable attention to union agitation among female workers. But, despite observing that 'unorganised labour posed a threat to … the survival of unionism', there is no discussion of the youthful composition of this 'unorganised' sector or of union attitudes towards it.¹ Such oversights are unfortunate as nothing so differentiates the labour force of this period from our own time as its age. In reflecting upon the key features of the American industrial working class during the late nineteenth century, David Montgomery has observed: 'The world of the operative was dominated by youth'.² However, in comparison with their Australian counterparts, American workers were positively geriatric. While the median age of American male non-agricultural workers in 1890 was 33.3 years, Queensland's Registrar-General noted in 1886 that 'nearly half the population … included children and youths under 20'. He went on to state that 'it will be perceived that in almost every class and order of occupations many males and females of the youthful division … even from 10 years upwards, are employed'.³ Not only did those aged between 12 and 20 years represent almost 25 per cent of the colony's total population aged over 12 years, 34,516 of the 56,025 youths in this cohort were already actively engaged in the labour force. Of the remainder many would have been active in the home or on the family farm. In Brisbane, the colony's expanding capital, the population's median age was, by 1891, just 21.6 years.⁴ The situation was broadly similar in the southern colonies. In New South Wales, 45 per cent of the population in the early 1890s was under 20.⁵ By the end of the century, in all eastern mainland colonies, the largest cohort was that aged between 10 and 14 years, followed by those aged between 15 and 19 years.⁶

Labour historians have long appreciated that child labour was a significant factor in late nineteenth century Australia. In 1971, G.P. Walsh remarked: 'Child labour under bad conditions was a feature of factory employment in the second half of the nineteenth century'.⁷ Nevertheless the focus of inquiry has been narrow. Studies have largely revolved around how, in the absence of effective factories and shops acts, child labour posed an often insurmountable problem for union organisation. With regard to the Victorian printing trade during the 1880s, Hagan concluded that what the union 'could not control was the unlimited employment of boys'.⁸ Similarly, Frances has observed that in the clothing trade 'the employment of cheaper juvenile labour in place of adults was probably the most popular [employer] strategy in the 1890s depression'.⁹ To the extent that broader labour market factors have been considered it has largely involved analysis of changing labour demand resulting from new technologies. Markey, for example, has noted that the increase 'in cheap female and juvenile labour' was an 'indication' of the deteriorating position of craft workers resulting from increased mechanisation.¹⁰ Although studies by both W.A. Sinclair and Frances have stressed the role of demographic factors in shaping female workforce participation rates, their analysis operates within what Sinclair refers to as 'a modification of the conventional supply and demand schedules'.¹¹ Seen from this perspective, the participation of youthful females primarily reflected utilitarian labour market decisions by households as to how to best utilise this internal resource. As Sinclair observes, changes 'resulted from the degree to which women's wages were regarded by the households to which they belonged as a desirable addition to their incomes'.¹²

If, for labour historians, child labour has largely been considered with an eye to its impact on adult workers and households, those few works that have made child labour their central focus have paid scant attention to the functioning of the labour market. Instead, authors such as Barbalet, Horsburgh, Davey and Larson have examined how the state dealt with child labour through either its welfare or educational provisions.¹³ In consequence, as Murray has observed, 'there is little Australian historiography concerning the place of children in the general workforce'.¹⁴ Despite Murray's own work, which has been restricted to New South Wales, this summation still holds true.¹⁵ We know precious little of the pathways by which young people entered the workforce. Nor is there a proper understanding of the factors that saw industries that had been dominated by youth in the late nineteenth century, as evidenced by the testimony at numerous official inquiries, once again dominated by adult labour in the early years of the twentieth century.

Although an in-depth investigation is not possible in a paper of this length, this study will explore the issue of child and youth labour by examining the Queensland experience between 1885 and 1900. For the purpose of this paper child and youth labour will be defined as non-adult labour, ie, those under 21 years. While most factories and shops acts tended to define a 'child' as someone under 14, it was also recognised that youths over this age were exposed to different working experiences than adults entitled to a full-wage.¹⁶ A 16-year-old seeking employment experienced broadly similar problems to a 13-year-old entering the workforce. In exploring these experiences, particular attention will be given to shop assistants, the clothing trade and the boot trade – all industries where the employment of youth labour was particularly significant. It will be argued that, in these trades, the working conditions and patterns of union organisation that prevailed can only be understood in the context of the labour supply pressures exerted by an exceptionally large youth cohort. It will also be argued that while only legislative enactment could provide for effective regulation of the employment conditions that resulted from these supply pressures, in the final analysis the problem of child and youth labour in the late nineteenth century is best seen as a demographic anomaly. After 1900, the workforce's age profile rapidly matured as economic depression brought about a permanent decline in the Australian birth rate.

'Industrial parasitism': the ideology and practice of child and youth labour

After reflecting upon the patterns of economic organisation applying at the turn of the nineteenth century, Beatrice and Sidney Webb penned a stinging denunciation of what they termed 'industrial parasitism', by which they meant those trades that failed to fully recompense society for their costs of production. The 'most obvious' form of 'industrial parasitism', the Webbs argued, was 'the employment of child-labour'.¹⁷ They noted:

When an employer, without imparting any adequate instruction in a skilled craft, gets his work done by boys or girls who live with parents and work practically by pocket-money, he is clearly receiving a subsidy or bounty which gives his process an economic advantage worked by fully-paid labour.¹⁸

While child and youth labour had always been an essential part of all pre-industrial societies, the Webbs rightly recognised that the traditional pathways by which children had acquired skills and entered the labour force had collapsed with industrialisation. In part this simply reflected the demise of family-based domestic production But it also reflected the erosion of 'the old system of individual apprenticeship' to the point where it became in 'nearly all trades, dead and past reviving'.¹⁹ The latter's demise reflected not only the introduction of new technologies that reduced the need for skilled handicraft but also a sustained assault on any 'restrictions' that inhibited the free movement of labour. In his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith provided the ideological justification for the dismantlement of the laws protecting the apprenticeship system, declaring: 'Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary'.²⁰ Rather than providing socially necessary skills, Smith argued that the real effect of the apprenticeship system was 'to prevent the market from being overstocked … which in reality is to always keep it understocked'. The result was that craftsmen were able to 'reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves, and raise the price of their labour much above what is due to the nature of their work'.²¹

In Britain, the repeal of the Elizabethan Statute of Apprentices in 1813 left the apprenticeship system reliant for its survival upon a combination of custom and practice and the residual industrial strength of craftsmen in each trade. In Australia, the enforcement of effective apprenticeship provisions proved particularly problematic. As Patmore has observed of nineteenth century Australia: 'There was minimal use of fixed-term indentured apprenticeships … Many apprenticeships were nominal, providing employers with cheap child labour'.²² For those opposed to child labour, whether due to its detrimental effects on the wages of adult workers or upon the children themselves, the most typical response was restriction. This normally took one of two forms. First, the passage of Factories and Shops Acts prohibited the employment of children in factories below a certain age whilst also limiting the hours of work of older youths. In Australia the first such act was passed in Victoria in 1873 with other colonies gradually following Victoria's lead. Secondly, craft unions attempted to directly control the engagement of youth labour by demanding that employers restrict their hiring of apprenticeships or 'learners' to an agreed ratio.

In what remains the most detailed assessment of the policy of restricting child labour the Webbs declared this strategy to be not only ineffective but also misguided. Legal prohibition of the employment of children below a certain age merely postponed their entry into the workforce and, in the absence of major educational changes, did little to provide for a more prosperous and socially useful working career.²³ The Webbs were particularly scathing of union attempts to restrict the entry of youths into a given trade through a 'limitation of numbers', enforced either through apprenticeship provisions or by setting ratios that restricted youth numbers. Such an approach, they noted, even where it was effective, could only assist a select minority at the expense of those who were arbitrarily excluded. This, and the apprenticeship system upon which it was based, they denounced as: 'Undemocratic in its scope, unscientific in its educational methods, and fundamentally unsound in its financial aspects'.²⁴ Instead of pursuing a policy of restriction, the Webbs argued that unions would be better placed if they supported 'the enactment of a definite sum of earnings per week below which no employer should be allowed to hire any worker'.²⁵ Such a move, they believed, would force employers to pay greater attention to the nurturing of this non-adult labour force. In Queensland, as elsewhere in Australia, the size of the child and youth labour force during the 1880s and 1890s ensured that a consideration of such strategies would be matters of pressing concern.

'They are turning out the men': growth and variance in use of child and youth labour in Queensland, 1885-1900

In testifying before a Royal Commission into Factories and Shops in 1891, a compositor complained that in the Queensland printing trade 'they are turning out the men' in order to replace them with boys. One of his colleagues added that things were particularly bad in rural areas, noting: 'The inland papers are worked almost solely with boys'.²⁶ A baker pointed to a similar pattern in his trade, stating: 'They get a boy at low wages in Brisbane, work him long hours; in a few months, when he wants a rise, get a cheaper one'.²⁷ That this was not a transitory problem restricted to a few trades is indicated by the fact that five years later one Member of Parliament (MP) observed: 'At present it was the custom to employ children in shops and factories for 12 or 18 months without paying them any wages'.²⁸ No one contradicted the accuracy of this observation. In 1900, despite the passage of Queensland's first Factories and Shops Act in 1896, not much appeared to have changed. Speaking of the thousands employed as apprentices or 'learners', another MP remarked: 'He did not think there were more than six factories in the city where anything was paid to those boys and girls'.²⁹ Again, no one contradicted this comment.

While the problem of child and youth labour in Queensland was, at this time, deep-seated and persistent, it was nevertheless one that was relatively new for the colony. Significantly, in 1871 Queensland was characterised by a relatively mature demographic profile. Considered in five-year age cohorts, the largest group was that aged 30 to 34 years, followed in order by those aged 25 to 29 years, 35 to 39 years and 20 to 24 years.³⁰ The variance in the demographic patterns applying in Queensland from the early 1870s to a decade or so later highlights the fact that child and youth labour was, in colonial Australia, a product of specific temporal and geographic experiences. These varied from one decade to the next and from one colony to another. In Queensland, four factors were principally responsible for the expansion in the youth workforce after 1880. Importantly, Queensland's birth rate spiked upwards. In 1879 the colony's Registrar-General commented: 'We have had a high birth-rate in Queensland as compared with other Australian colonies'.³¹ Then, the age of the population was, as Lawson has noted, 'skewed by the heavy immigration' of young adults and children during the 1880s.³²

The growth in Queensland manufacturing, particularly after the protective tariff of 1888, produced a demand for unskilled labour that could be met by juveniles. Finally, the provisions of Queensland's Education Act, 1875 did not require students to attend school after their twelfth birthday. The Act's impact was further diminished by the failure of successive governments to proclaim its compulsory clauses. Even among those who chose to be on the school rolls attendance was poor. Of the 4665 boys enrolled in inner Brisbane in 1885 1,000 were away on any given day. Those not in gainful employment tended, it was recorded, to roam the streets together, or spend their days 'lounging at the door of a Chinese gambling den'.³³

If child and youth labour was commonplace in Queensland's shops and factories by the late 1880s there were significant variations from industry to industry in terms of the degree of youth penetration and the gender of those engaged. The use of child and youth labour was most pronounced in the clothing trades. Among milliners and dressmakers, who were the largest sector of the industry, those aged 20 or under comprised 1,572 of the 3202 employed in 1886. All of these were females. Even among those listed as tailors almost a third were aged between 15 and 20. Again, females predominated, there being 242 females to 81 males of this age. By contrast, boys predominated in the youthful boot industry (workers between 15 and 20 were the largest cohort in this industry in Queensland). Of the 1,232 employed in this industry in 1886, there were only 30 females aged 15 to 20 years compared to 184 males. Regarding the largest category of retail workers – drapers and their assistants – there were also more boys than girls. In this sector there were 155 males aged 15 to 20 compared to 61 females in a total workforce of 982.³⁴

In terms of union organisation the impact of the growth in child and youth labour also varied from industry to industry. The direst effects were felt in the clothing trade. Here the Tailors' Society, which represented Brisbane's journeymen tailors, had attempted to regulate employment conditions through a 'log' negotiated with the city's master tailors since 1872. From 1883, however, this body's influence went into what one member described as a 'very great decline', as needlework was displaced by sewing machines operated by young females.³⁵ By 1891, only two Brisbane workshops were still recognising the Society's log. Although a Tailoresses' Society was established on 5 August 1890, becoming part of the newly formed Women's Section of the Australian Labour Federation, its industrial influence was minimal.³⁶ In one of Brisbane's largest establishments the proprietor declared in 1891 that he set wages according to 'what I think a fair thing'.³⁷ No union influenced his decision. At Brisbane's most modern clothing factory, D.L. Brown and Co., the absence of any form of industrial regulation was also evident as 14-year-old Charlotte Bishop informed inquiring commissioners that she did not even know when she would be next paid.³⁸

While the use of child and youth labour undermined previous patterns of union organisation in the clothing trade, in the boot trade the Operative Boot Trade Union (OBTU) initially limited the inroads of this demographic. Indeed, in May-June 1890 the union cleverly played on public disquiet about the use of juvenile labour to win a raft of concessions from Brisbane's employers, most of which had little to do with child labour. During a mass rally to pressure employers, citizens were called upon 'to assist the bootmakers in their attempt to stamp out child labour and obtain a fair day's pay for a fair day's work'.³⁹ Among the concessions in the settlement of the dispute was an agreement by employers to strictly limit the engagement of 'boy labour'. This victory, however, proved short-lived. As the economy slipped into depression the temptation to lower production costs through the use of juvenile labour proved too strong. By September 1891 one of Brisbane's largest manufacturers, Astill, had cast aside the earlier agreement so that 28 of his 47 workers were now recorded as 'boys'.⁴⁰ After the failure of a strike aimed at bringing Astill into line, other employers followed his lead. By the decade's end it was reported that in 'factories where machinery is largely in operation boys and youths are mostly employed'. As a result: 'The conditions of the boot operatives in Queensland is positively appalling. Any thing worse could not be imagined'.⁴¹

Although in many trades the engagement of youth labour was associated with the deterioration in both working conditions and patterns of union organisation, with regard to shop assistants there were considerable differences between the circumstances applying in the large department stores vis-à-vis the smaller retail shops. Department stores such as Finney Isles and Edwards & Lamb in Brisbane, and Cribb & Foote in Ipswich, were significant employers of juvenile labour. But those engaged by these firms at least benefited from early closing, a half-day holiday on Saturday, water coolers, dining rooms and even prepared meals.⁴² These firms also tended to be active supporters of the Shop Assistants' Early Closing Association. In addressing his employees on the anniversary of the firm's introduction of early closing, Thomas Finney, Brisbane's leading retailer, declared: 'He was sorry to hear that the employees did not assist the early closing movement with all their power. It was their duty to do so'.⁴³ Similarly, the leadership role of Frank McDonnell in the Association from the late 1880s reflected the active support of his employer, Edwards & Lamb. As the Worker noted in 1896: 'Much of his success in Brisbane is due to the action of his employers, Edwards and Lamb, who have always shown generous and kindly sympathy in all democratic movements'.⁴⁴ Such attitudes, however, reflected only the benevolence of the most prosperous section of the retail trade. In small and medium-sized shops the hours worked by young shop assistants were not only long but also totally at their employer's discretion. When in mid-1890 the first large-scale agitation for a Factories and Shops Act threatened to limit juvenile working hours, shop owners reacted in horror. The Brisbane Traders Association (BTA), which represented more than 270 owners, declared that any such action 'would paralyse trade'.⁴⁵

'Work six months for nothing': common employment characteristics

If there were variations within the various trades in the hours and working conditions of juvenile workers, when we consider the overall terms under which younger workers were employed a number of common features nevertheless stand out. Formal indentured apprentices were relatively rare. Instead, children and juveniles typically entered the workforce through an extended, and unpaid, probationary period. During this period, or at its completion, they were designated as either a 'learner' or an 'improver', being employed on this basis for up to 12 months. Only rarely did this work attract any remuneration. Significantly, such practices applied even in the 'better' establishments such as Finney Isles and Cribb & Foote.⁴⁶ Often young workers continued as unpaid or low-paid 'learners' for years. When one employer was asked when this unindentured learning period ended, he bluntly remarked: 'Until they leave us, or until we sack them'.⁴⁷ In defending the practice of employing youths without pay, leading employers argued that the benefit they were providing to their employees was educational, rather than monetary. As Finney noted in 1896:

children came long distances to businesses by train and 'bus, and it might seem hard to make them work six months for nothing, but it must be remembered that in learning their business they engaged the time and attention of skilled hands, and were thus a source of expense.⁴⁸

Despite Finney's claims that employers diligently provided youths with new skills, real opportunities for anything other than cursory training appear to have been few. It was widely accepted that employers took on young workers 'for 12 months, give them a small wage, discharge them and take on others'.⁴⁹ Although some managers claimed that the absence of formal apprenticeships reflected the fact that, among young workers, 'a great many do not care about being bound down', the floods of unskilled youths desperate for any 'situation' belies this.⁵⁰ At more prestigious establishments, employers were able to demand the payment of a 'premium', ranging from ₤50 to ₤100, for taking on an apprentice. Such payments, however, did not necessarily guarantee proper training. As one cynic remarked: 'It is a rule of the firms to take a premium, but not to teach the boys the trade … the boys sweep out the place, and never get taught the trade'.⁵¹

If the entry of young people into the workforce was often associated with unpaid labour, wages typically remained low even for those retained after the completion of their period as a 'learner'. Whether in retailing, the clothing or boot trades, or some other industry, young females normally received between 2s/6d and five shillings after their first year – barely enough to pay the bus or tram fares to and from work.⁵² This made them particularly attractive to employers, one of whom candidly informed commissioners to the 1891 Royal Commission into Factories and Shops: 'We expect to get cheaper work from the girls because it is the ordinary thing'.⁵³ Few females, in any industry, could expect more than 15 shillings unless they obtained a supervisory position. For such wages employers demanded high performance levels. One manufacturer declared: 'If they are not worth 15 shillings I tell them they must improve or go'.⁵⁴ For boys, wages were somewhat higher, although still well below the ₤2-3 received by an adult male. The 18 shillings received by James McCarthy, an 18 year old who had completed four years as a 'learner' at Neighbour's Boot Factory, one of Brisbane's largest, appears typical for a youth with this level of experience.⁵⁵ For employers, child and youth labour was also more easily managed than adult workers. 'I prefer the girls because I can manage them better', one employer stated.⁵⁶ When times were slack, young workers could also be easily dispensed with, either temporarily or permanently.⁵⁷

For employers the benefits of employing children and youths in lieu of adult workers were obvious. They were cheaper and more easily replaced during periods of economic fluctuation. What is less immediately obvious is the benefit to non-adult workers of entering into employment relationships that offered little in the way of either immediate economic reward or long-term job prospects. Three factors suggest themselves in explanation. No doubt the income from child and youth wages, however minimal, was an important component in the household budget, and one young female shop assistant remarked in 1891, 'we all do our duty in supporting the family'.⁵⁸ Next, with even the nominal requirement to attend school ending on the twelfth birthday, most families appear to have concurred with Montgomery's assessment that the route to a successful working career 'passed through apprenticeship and experience, not school-rooms'.⁵⁹ Defenders of youthful entry into the workforce pointed to the 'very dangerous period in the lives of those children' who were allowed 'a hiatus' between their twelfth birthday and their first job.⁶⁰ No factor, however, seems as significant as the demand for jobs produced by this disproportionately large demographic. Child and youth labour was so cheap primarily because it was so plentiful. Nowhere is there any evidence that employers had any difficulty in replacing a child or youth worker no matter how little he or she paid. Indeed, there was always 'more applying' for work than there were jobs available.⁶¹

'To protect the weak against the strong': regulation and its opponents

In their treatise on the economic effects of child labour, the Webbs concluded that 'there is no chance of the parasitic trades raising themselves from their quagmire by any sectional action of their own'. Instead, they argued, only the enactment of a minimum wage for all workers could rescue these trades and the workers found within them.⁶² By June 1890, Queensland's labour leaders had come to similar conclusions. A committee was established under the secretaryship of Albert Hinchcliffe, who was also Secretary of the Australian Labour Federation, to agitate for a Factories and Shops Bill. While an initial bill was rejected in 1890, the government nevertheless agreed to the holding of a Royal Commission in 1891. This body's majority report recommended the immediate introduction of a bill aimed not just at protecting children under 14 years, but also 'young persons' aged between 14 and 18 years. The election of a bloc of 16 Labor MPs at the 1893 General Election ensured that the government remained under pressure to act on these recommendations. In arguing for reform, Labor MPs were supported by middle-class reformers who found child and youth labour morally repugnant. Reflecting this middle-class opinion, one Government Minister argued that a Factories and Shops Bill was simply 'a means to protect the weak against the strong … This Bill will protect those who are not able to defend themselves by means of combination'.⁶³

Despite the constant pressure for reform, no Factories and Shops Act was passed until 1896. Even when action was taken the resulting legislation was condemned as 'a mere apology for a Factories Act'.⁶⁴ Not only did it impose no restrictions on the use of child labour in shops, its provisions also did not apply to outwork or factories with less than four employees. The result, as one critic later remarked, was that children or young people could end up 'going across the road and getting employment at an exactly similar trade, perhaps under more severe conditions'.⁶⁵

The absence of any effective constraints on the use of child and youth labour in Queensland prior to 1900 reflected the view among business leaders and their representatives that all such matters should, in the words of Adam Smith, be 'trusted to the discretion of the employers'.⁶⁶ In opposing a raft of Labor amendments aimed at strengthening the 1896 Act, the Colonial Secretary, Horace Tozer, observed: 'Why should they stop a child from learning a trade?'⁶⁷ Four years later a Ministerial colleague warned that 'such drastic legislation as is proposed will drive business away from our factories'.⁶⁸ There is little doubt that such opponents of reform shared a genuine belief that any regulation of child and youth labour was wrong in principle. As the Minority Report to the Royal Commission into Factories and Shops stated in 1891: 'State interference tends to hamper trade and to discourage enterprise and self-reliance'.⁶⁹ Such views were even shared by traders recognised for their benevolence. Thomas Finney, while granting shorter hours to his workers, was nevertheless opposed to such conditions being compulsorily imposed on his competitors, declaring:

I think legislation of that kind is utterly inconsistent with personal liberty … It would be better for the people to be left to their own resources … instead of looking to the Government to wet-nurse them.⁷⁰

Despite the sustained opposition to an effective Factories and Shops Act in Queensland the opponents of reform were forced to steadily give ground during the 1890s. In 1900 a series of conferences between the Shop Assistants' Early Closing Association and the Brisbane Traders Association heralded a fundamental realignment of forces, as the latter indicated its willingness to accept an array of legislative changes in pursuit of its goal of a half-day shop holiday.⁷¹ The election of Frank McDonnell – the long-term leader of the Shop Assistants' Early Closing Association – as the Labor MP for Fortitude Valley also added a highly articulate champion for change to Parliament's ranks. When an amendment bill was introduced in 1900, McDonnell's influence was most clearly seen in his ability to shepherd through Parliament a clause that stated that: 'After one month's probation, no person under the age of twenty-one years' could be employed in factory or shop 'unless in receipt of a weekly wage of at least two shillings and six pence'.⁷² This clause, which provided for the first legislative regulation of wage levels in Queensland, highlighted a recognition that the problem of 'child labour' could not simply be dealt with by prohibiting employment below a certain age. Instead, Parliament needed to also look to the ways in which all non-adult workers were treated. Among the other changes to the 1900 Act – applauded by Pember Reeves as 'one of the best Factories Acts in Australia' – were an extension of its provisions to shop assistants and outworkers, a ban on the payment of premiums for apprenticeships, and shorter hours for 'young persons' (defined as persons between 14 and 16 years).⁷³

The passage of the Queensland Factories and Shops Act, 1900 effectively brought to an end the unregulated use of child and youth labour in Queensland. Even prior to this, however, the proclamation of the compulsory clauses of the Education Act had already restricted employers' access to this pool of labour. But, as politicians grappled with the problem of child and youth labour that had blighted the labour market during the 1880s and 1890s, fundamental changes were occurring within Australia's households that were to have an even greater impact. As a result of depressed economic circumstances there occurred during the 1890s, as Hicks has recorded, 'a spectacular decline in the Australian birth-rate'.⁷⁴ Whereas a woman who completed her childbearing years in 1891 would have had, on average, at least seven children, women whose peak childbearing years were in the early 1900s had only 3.6 children. The impact of this unprecedented fall in the birth rate was exacerbated by the virtual total curtailment of overseas immigration.⁷⁵ In consequence there began, from 1900, a maturing of Australia's demographic profile as those born in the 1870s and 1880s entered adulthood. As the pool of cheap, plentiful youth labour dried up, employers were of necessity forced to turn again to adult workers. If the late nineteenth century had produced a world dominated by youth, the maturing of this population helped ensure a position of primacy for the adult male in the new regulated labour market.

Conclusion

The role of demographic factors in shaping the labour market within which both trade unions and employers operated at the turn of the last century has received scant attention from labour historians. By contrast this paper argues that, in late nineteenth century, the issue of child and youth labour posed a particularly pronounced problem for trade union organisation due to the fact that those aged 20 years or less comprised such a large component of the potential labour force. While contemporaries condemned child labour as an example of 'sweating', and the Webbs denounced it as 'industrial parasitism', only the most principled or foolhardy employers could forsake using this labour pool because of the relative shortage of adult workers. Given that the demand for jobs among the youthful labour force typically exceeded the supply the result, in the absence of effective state regulation, was the entrenchment of a set of employment relationships that placed considerable downward pressure on adult wages.

In exploring the use of child and youth labour in late nineteenth century Queensland this paper argues that the problem was a product of specific temporal and geographic experiences. These varied from colony to colony and from decade to decade. Queensland, for example, had one of Australia's more mature demographic profiles in the early 1870s. Yet by the 1880s it had one of the youngest. This change reflected the combined impact of a high natural birth rate and the arrival of a wave of youthful immigrants and their families. The use of younger workers also varied from industry to industry and, indeed, within the same industry. In the clothing trades the replacement of handwork by machine sewing resulted in the rapid collapse of union organisation as adult males were displaced by young females.
By contrast, in the boot trade, adult unionists were initially able to resist the inroads of 'boy' labour into their industry. Even here, however, union organisation alone eventually proved powerless as youthful entrants flooded the labour market.

As the 1890s progressed, condemnation of the labour practices associated with child and youth labour – by both labour activists and middle-class reformers – produced progressively more effective regulation through successive Factories and Shops Acts. But, in the final analysis, the issue of child and youth labour was the product of a demographic anomaly. Paradoxically, effective regulation occurred at the very time when the nation's demographic profile was being reshaped by a dramatic decline in the birth rate as a result of the 1890s Depression. As Hicks has remarked, 'the speed and wide extent of the decline in the birth rate produced a loss of confidence in national vitality'.⁷⁶ Within a few years, concerns about child labour were replaced by a new industrial focus – the protection of a 'family' wage based upon the earnings of the adult male breadwinner.