Not all 'labour' traditions are created, perpetuated or controlled by the labour movement and its members. Across 130 years, the National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland (NAIAQ) has established and maintained traditions relating to the display of the results of men's, women's and children's work through the annual Brisbane Exhibition. First held in 1876, this metropolitan show is one of the oldest annual events in post-contact Queensland society. Each year, it presents the outputs of the state's rural and urban industries for the education and entertainment of the thousands of visitors who enter the showgrounds. And each year, it variously reflects, endorses and promotes particular versions of Queensland society and its economy. While precisely assessing the impact of exhibition displays on their audiences is a task fraught with difficulty, it is appropriate to acknowledge the Exhibition as one of the sites which has mirrored and contributed to Queenslanders' definitions of and understandings of their society and its values. Its presentation of economic activity, then, is one of the many influences that has informed, mirrored and shaped local appreciations of who performs or should perform particular types of work and the value accorded such labour.

     This paper begins to unpack the presentation of work at the Exhibition through an analysis of how women's labour was displayed at the show during the first four decades of the twentieth century, from the creation in 1900 of the Women's Industries section to 1941; the following year the Exhibition was cancelled due to wartime exigencies and a comprehensive annual event was not reinstated until 1945. It adopts a broad definition of work that crosses class boundaries and includes unpaid labour and small-scale income-generation within the home, voluntary work, and participation in the formal economy. Nevertheless, this study also recognises the importance of a class-based analysis of the Exhibition, its organisers and its priorities. The display of the outputs of women's work both within and beyond the specific domain of Women's Industries suggests that the Brisbane Exhibition embraced the racial and gendered hierarchies of Queensland society, and adopted an increasingly rigid division of non-Indigenous men's versus women's spheres of activity. It located men within the public domain of the formal economy and positioned women primarily as current or future wives and mothers engaged in unpaid work within the domestic realm. The likelihood of women's participation in the formal economy being acknowledged and valued at the Exhibition was further reduced by the NAIAQ's practice of showcasing the outputs of the Queensland economy within a framework that, with occasional exceptions, effectively ignored the role of employees in the production of those outputs.

A non-labour institution and its annual show

Established in 1875, the National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland sought to 'promote the development of the agricultural, pastoral, and industrial resources of the colony'.^[1] The primary mechanism for achieving this aim was an annual exhibition in Brisbane 'for the display of horses, cattle, sheep, and other livestock; wool, agricultural produce of all kinds and machinery, together with such other objects of manufacture, produce, or the arts, as may be deemed desirable'.^[2] In 1876, the inaugural show was hailed as the most significant event in Queensland since the colony's separation from New South Wales.^[3] Across the period of this study, the Exhibition was the single largest event in Queensland. It celebrated the ideal of progress, with a focus on the economy, but was sufficiently inclusive to encompass social, educational and cultural progress. The Exhibition was fundamentally a showcase for the achievements of a British-derived colonial society, and it usually ignored the unpalatable processes that underpinned that society, such as the expropriation of land from Indigenous people.

     The Association's first Council, under the presidency of Governor William Cairns, consisted of leading members of colonial society, including major employers such as William Pettigrew, whose saw milling and associated operations, including a private railway and a shipping line, extended from Brisbane to Maryborough. Almost two-thirds of the thirty-five members were pastoralists and merchants. Other individuals on the inaugural Council included Brisbane Grammar School's headmaster, the general manager of the Queensland National Bank, and the editor of the Brisbane Courier and the Queenslander newspapers. Several members were or became parliamentarians, including grazier Arthur Hunter Palmer, later Queensland's Colonial Secretary, grazier Joshua Bell, merchants George Grimes and George Harris, and lawyers Charles Mein and William Hemmant.^[4]

     Evaluating the Council members' roles in Queensland through the contrasting approaches of historians Ronald Lawson and Bill Thorpe, emphasises the elite nature of the governing body of the National Agricultural and Industrial Association. While the Council's membership extended geographically beyond Lawson's focus on the 'status hierarchy' in colonial Brisbane, it nevertheless had considerable overlap with his list of 'the highest positions' in the capital city, which were occupied by 'leading merchants, financiers, professionals, a few large manufacturers, and some wealthy graziers'.^[5] Applying Thorpe's analysis of social structure, in which he identifies five classes or groupings within colonial Queensland, and situates Council members within the colonial ruling class and the managerial/professional grouping, the two most powerful sectors of society within Queensland. It is possible to identify individuals on the NAIAQ's first Council whose early class position was probably best defined as lower-middle class, but who achieved upward mobility, such as auctioneer James Dickson, one of the NAIAQ's first Vice-Presidents. Dickson later became Premier of Queensland.^[6] In summary, the Council was dominated by members of the ruling class and influential members of the middle class. By 1941, the endpoint for this study, the Council still derived its membership primarily from these two sectors of society. The President of the Association was pastoralist, E.J. Shaw, and the members included Jim Heading, an important cattle and pig stud breeder, who became a Country Party politician and government minister; Philip Symes whose commercial ventures included a major grocery business and the Queensland Cement and Lime Company; and pastoralist James Wilson who was an executive member of the United Graziers' Association for almost three decades.

     No woman achieved membership of the NAIAQ's Council until the 1990s. A small number of ruling and middle class women were able to exert some influence on the organisation of the Exhibition through their roles as jurors, judges and stewards in a limited range of exhibit classes, specifically those associated with women's and girls' work. Female jurors were appointed as early as 1878, when they assessed the entries in lace, fancy and plain work, millinery, ladies' underclothing, and girls' schoolwork. In 1913, Mrs Arvier, the wife of the Council's Secretary, became a steward for the 'One Woman's Work' competition, which promoted the achievements of farmers' wives. Ultimate authority, however, rested with the NAIAQ's Council which determined the categories of items for the Exhibition's catalogue and approved the inclusion of other displays and events at the show. Given the Exhibition's emphasis on economic progress and its reliance on objects and competitions to illustrate that progress, much of the content of the Exhibition derived from the labour of working-class men and women. However, as will be explored later in this paper, that labour was often rendered largely invisible.

The Women's Industries Section 1900-1940^[7]

Women had participated as competitors at the show from 1876. In that first year, they provided entries for the horse section, poultry, farm and dairy produce, horticulture, fine arts, furniture and other objects for the use of dwellings, clothing and other objects of personal wear, and fresh and preserved food. Additionally, one-third of the entries in the schoolwork section came from girls. Across the remainder of the nineteenth century, women constituted a minority of exhibitors and were entirely or almost absent from many of the Exhibition categories most directly linked to the colony's wealth. They were numerically dominant in a small number of classes, such as embroidery and homemade jam, and were well represented in decorative and fine arts categories.^[8] Across the period of this study, it is possible to identify occasional examples of individual women entering 'mainstream' categories of the Exhibition that celebrated major sectors of the economy such as pastoralism, but this paper concentrates on those sections of the show where women competitors and women's work were prominent.

     In 1900, the Brisbane Exhibition introduced a Women's Industry section. Surviving records are frustratingly silent on the impetus for this decision, but the inclusion of a comparable section at Queensland's 1897 International Exhibition was one factor, with the local show adopting the four classes of exhibits for women's work which were included in the 1897 event: needlework and knitting; mechanical works; decorative works and furnishings; and paintings, drawing and engraving. Perhaps the decision also reflected a level of uneasiness, particularly among Queensland's middle and ruling class men, over first wave feminism and the expansion of white women's legal, political and economic rights, and a consequent desire to reinforce gendered divisions. The introduction of the Women's Industries section coincided with the introduction of such hyper-masculine competitions as wood chopping. The Exhibition was endorsing a stricter separation of women's and men's spheres. There were just 44 entries in Women's Industries in 1900, but the new section largely, although not entirely, segregated female competitors from the mixed competitions in fine arts, furniture and clothing where they had previously been located.^[9] This analysis, however, ignores those commentators who identified the NAIAQ's decision as proof that women's labour was valued.^[10]

     The Women's Industries section did accord women's work, or at least particular aspects of that work, a degree of recognition and approval. Through its explicitly gendered title, it highlighted the presence of women as competitors at the Exhibition and confirmed that the results of women's work had a legitimate place at the show, alongside the displays which foregrounded the outputs of Queensland's pastoral, mining, forestry, agricultural and secondary industries. All of these sectors had a majority of male employees; the masculinity rates for the pastoral, mining, forestry and agricultural workforces exceeded 96 per cent.^[11] At the same time, the Women's Industries section segregated the outputs of women's work and encouraged audiences to accept narrow definitions of what constituted (valued) women's work. It seems likely that visitors to the Exhibition distinguished between women's work and productive, economically relevant labour, with the results of the latter on display in those sections of the Exhibition that concentrated on primary and secondary industries. Women's Industries was the only section of the Exhibition catalogue to highlight gender within its title; it was rare for the titles of individual classes within the primary and secondary industries' sections to allude to the exhibitors' gender.^[12] One newspaper applauded the creation of a separate women's section on the grounds that women's 'original talent and latent energies . would otherwise have been submerged had they been brought into competition with men', a claim that ignored women's previous successes in mixed competition at the show.^[13]

     The Women's Industries section primarily, although not exclusively, valued white women's work as housewives. There are no examples of regulations for the Women's Industries or any other sections of the Exhibition that specified the racial or ethnic identity of competitors, but in the period under examination, the Exhibition was a celebration of white society. When objects created by Indigenous Queenslanders became a significant feature of the show in the 1910s, they were confined within a designated Aboriginal Court; the rationale for that Court included the promotion of the achievements of state government and reserve and mission officials.^[14] Within Women's Industries, only certain elements of white women's domestic labour were represented. While it is possible to argue that the choice of elements partly reflected the value accorded different aspects of domestic labour, the choice was primarily determined by the practical necessity of which objects could be successfully and easily displayed during Exhibition week. Thus common and time-consuming aspects of women's household duties such as routine childcare and cleaning were not featured at the show, because those activities did not produce items suitable for display across a period of a week. Similarly, highly perishable items, such as hot, home-cooked meals, could not be exhibited.

     From its modest beginning in 1900, the Women's Industries section expanded in terms of its number of classes and competitors. By 1910, there were 71 classes and 275 entries; in 1939 there were 103 classes and 555 entries. While some classes were withdrawn and others added, the Women's Industries' main emphasis was on needlework. In 1933, for example, 69 of the 97 classes were for needlework and they attracted 70 per cent of the total entries.^[15] The competition categories encompassed practical items, such as hand-knitted socks; highly decorative items, such as duchess sets and pillow shams; and items that combined decorative and useful dimensions, such as hand embroidered petticoat slips, children's dresses and infants' outfits.^[16] Across the years, the needlework classes tended to demonstrate increasingly fine distinctions between items; whereas 'pillow shams' was a single class from 1902 to 1904, by 1905 it had been divided into four separate classes for Hardanger, crochet, drawn thread, and 'any other work' pillow shams.^[17] The emergence of these distinctions placed Women's Industries on a par with the other Exhibition sections which also subscribed to the principle of small differences among entries requiring separate classes for competition. Again as occurred in other parts of the show, the introduction of some classes reflected the intervention of commercial interests via sponsorship of prizes. In 1902 the Singer Manufacturing Company promoted its wares by offering prizes of 10s.6d. for art embroidery and drawn thread work 'executed by Exhibitor on Sewing machine'.^[18] Cookery became a significant category in Women's Industries from 1913 with competitions for home preserves, bottled fruits, pickles, home cookery and sweets. Arts and crafts other than needlework were also fairly common features within Women's Industries, including, for example, raffia work, pottery, wood carving and poker work.

     Although the Women's Industries section primarily celebrated women's unpaid domestic labour, in its early years there was some acknowledgment of self-employed women as well as a recognition of small scale income generation by women through informal economic activity. Until 1907, the Exhibition catalogues, which listed the names of competitors in each class, included prices against those items in Women's Industries that were for sale. In 1901, half of the entries had prices attached to them, ranging from a modest five shillings to a breathtaking £50 for an exhibit of 'Limerick, Old Irish Point, Honiton and Point Lace'.^[19] Information on competitors derived from the catalogues, although scant, suggests that the women who offered their entries for sale included individuals who were small business owners; individuals who would have defined themselves as wives and mothers but who earned some money through home-based activities such as sewing; and individuals, including some employees, who regarded the Exhibition as a 'one-off' opportunity to enjoy a small boost to their income. Some business owners used the section to publicise their wares. Miss E.J. Dewing, for example, a professional needleworker in Brisbane, was a regular entrant in the early 1900s, sending a glass case of her art needlework as a non-competitive display. In 1902, all of the items in the ladies' and children's garment category were by Madam Papprill of the Corset Company, based in central Brisbane.

     In 1907, the practice of including prices against Women's Industries items ended. By then, a series of regulations had been introduced that virtually severed any connection between women and commerce within the framework of Women's Industries at the Exhibition. Entries were restricted to women who were amateurs 'unless otherwise specified', with a further requirement that 'all work must have been the work of the exhibitor'. The 'unless otherwise specified' option was rarely invoked. There was also an explicit prohibition on 'factory made goods'.^[20] The Women's Industries section of the Exhibition now valued only the outputs of women's unpaid labour in their domestic roles, not women's contributions as employees, self-employed workers and employers to the Queensland economy.

     The degree of value accorded unpaid domestic labour by the only section of the Exhibition devoted solely to women's work may also be questioned. The prizes available to competitors, whether offered by the NAIAQ itself or private sponsors, were modest by Brisbane Exhibition standards, although it should be noted that the entry fees were usually also at the lower end of the Exhibition scale. Neither of these factors is surprising, given the emphasis on women's unpaid work and the culturally sanctioned view that women were or should be the dependents of men. With the exception of occasional age-specific classes for girls, married women typically constituted a majority of entrants in Women's Industries.^[21] Across the first forty years of the twentieth century, the standard first prizes for classes in this section increased from five to ten shillings, but there was considerable variation within individual categories. A first prize of ten shillings was the equivalent of about one-quarter of the female weekly basic wage in Brisbane.^[22] In 1921, while most of the needlework classes had an entry fee of 1s.6d. and offered first prizes of ten shillings, most of the home cookery classes offered prizes of between 1s.6d. and 5s. Certain Women's Industries competitions demanded higher entry fees but promised rewards of up to one guinea, prompting questions about who could afford to enter.^[23] One of the most valuable prizes in the period under investigation was offered by the Barry and Roberts department store in 1939. Competitors were invited to make an afternoon frock from material costing not more than ten shillings for the chance to win ten guineas. The money available to the Women's Industries section was a tiny proportion of the total prize pool for the Exhibition of £12,000 in 1939.^[24] As a comparison, prizes in other sections of the Exhibition that year included first prizes of fifty guineas for the Best Hereford Bull; £50 for the sheep shearing competition; a gold medal, an axe and £21 for the Queensland Champion Wood-Chopping Contest; and £60 for the handicap trot.^[25] The state weekly basic wage for Brisbane men in 1939 was between £4/1/- and £4/4/-.^[26]

Beyond the Women's Industries Section

While Women's Industries offered the most obvious and ongoing display of the outputs of women's work, the Exhibition also drew particular attention to female labour and its outcomes through its One Woman's Work competition in the 1910s, displays and events relating to women's domestic and voluntary work during the First and Second World Wars, and the presence from the 1890s onwards of exhibits relating to technical colleges. This last category was the main forum to acknowledge white women's contributions as employees. Additionally, the Aboriginal Court drew attention to Indigenous women and emphasised their employment as domestic servants. The arrangement of separate sections at the Exhibition for the Aboriginal Court and Women's Industries reflected the primacy of Queensland's racial hierarchy over its gendered hierarchy during this era. Indigenous women belonged in the Aboriginal Court, not in Women's Industries. Visitors to the show could also identify entries by women in a range of other sections, particularly fine arts, which, with its requirement of amateur status, pointed to leisure rather than work.

     Although it existed for only three years, the One Woman's Work competition is notable for its celebration of women within the yeoman ideal of family-owned and operated farms. According to one newspaper, 'this exhibit spoke better than could anything else of the worth of the Australian woman'.^[27] The competition was aligned with the District Exhibits section, which promoted Queensland's rural economy and was one of the most prestigious parts of the show. In its highly detailed regulations, the main District Exhibits competition directly acknowledged women's and children's work only in relation to domestic and school-based activities. One Woman's Work, which offered prize money of £50, similarly focused on domestic roles, ignoring women's active contribution to income generation on farms. The competition required that 'All exhibits . be the property of and grown or made by one woman only'; points were awarded for examples of fine arts, photography, needlework including darning and mending, preserved foods, baked goods, soap and candles, produce from the kitchen garden, and 'labour and time saving appliances'.^[28] The reality of female owners of grazing properties, farms, market gardens and apiaries in Queensland was ignored by the District Exhibits section and One Woman's Work which identified women only as homemakers and assumed that the 'real' work was undertaken and controlled by men.^[29]

     During World Wars I and II, the Exhibition highlighted women's unpaid contributions as wives and as voluntary workers on the homefront. During World War I, the Exhibition included a Red Cross Workers section. After the show, all items from this section were donated to the Australian Red Cross and the Soldiers' Comforts Fund. The classes included socks, mittens, knee and balaclava caps, vests, scarves, flannelette pyjamas and shirts. Similar arrangements were made during World War II. In 1941 Women's Industries was replaced by Women's War Work and War-time Cookery. The War Work consisted of inter-branch displays by the Queensland divisions of the Australian Red Cross and Australian Comforts Fund, with total prizes of £150. Apart from two classes for preserved fruits, both apparently prompted by the offer of prizes from organisations which promoted that product, the War-time Cookery competition offered trophies and a cash prize pool of £50 for a single class, 'Housewife's War-time Cookery Display'. Reminiscent of the One Woman's Work competition of the 1910s, the class required that 'Exhibits in this class must be the property of and be entirely cooked or prepared by ONE WOMAN only'. Competitors could achieve a maximum of 290 points for 31 items, including preserved fruits, candied citrus peel, steamed pudding and three varieties of scones. The competition noted the impact of war through the inclusion of a 'wartime loaf (cooked in billy can)', 'Evacuee Bread - Damper (baked in ashes)', a sponge sandwich made without butter, and a 'Soldier's Overseas Parcel' containing a fruitcake and shortbread.^[30]

     The Exhibition recognised that women's contributions during wartime could extend beyond the domestic realm and traditional voluntary work such as knitting socks for the troops. The 1941 program of events featured men's and women's war-related service. Women took centre stage in the Women's National Corps March, with members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, Women's Reserve Emergency Naval Service, Women's National Emergency Legion and Youth Movement, Women's Aviation and Motor Unit, Women's Air Training Corps, Women's Auxiliary Queensland Air Cadet Corps, and the Women's Auxiliary Transport Service. Women, including nurses, participated in a Civil Defence exercise that was conducted in the main ring.

     With occasional exceptions, such as the participation of nurses in the Civil Defence exercise, the Exhibition rarely acknowledged women's role as employees apart from the technical school displays, which emphasised training that would lead to employment and thus offered an incomplete snapshot of men's versus women's job options ranging from the male dominated fields of engineering and science to the female dominated areas of dressmaking and millinery. With its inclusion of commercial and business training, the technical education displays encompassed the service sector of the economy and the importance of office work for women seeking paid employment.^[31]

     Women's roles as employees were relatively invisible at the show, although they represented about 20 per cent of the Queensland workforce and were numerically dominant in a small range of industries.^[32] In part, the lack of visibility of female employees at the Exhibition reflected the horizontal gender-based segregation of the Queensland economy combined with the NAIAQ's emphasis on products that could be easily exhibited at the show. Approximately 40 per cent of female employees worked in the field of 'personal and domestic service', and significant numbers of women were also employed as office workers, shop assistants and teachers. With the partial exception of the technical education displays, the Exhibition appeared to have difficulty in devising means of representing the service sector.^[33] That difficulty, however, does not provide an adequate explanation. The Association's greatest commitment was to Queensland's primary industries, particularly pastoralism and agriculture, and, to a more moderate degree, secondary industries; the service sector was not of particular interest. The industries that the Exhibition most valued were those industries that, within the state's horizontally-segregated economy, were numerically dominated by male business owners and employees.^[34] In addition to this bias, however, it is important to note that the Association's emphasis on raw materials, technology and the items that were produced from those materials and technology, tended to minimise the visibility of the labour of Indigenous and non-Indigenous men, women and children whose work underpinned the production of items at the Exhibition. Aboriginal labour, for example, would have contributed to some of the rural outputs which enjoyed pride of place at the show. Focusing on outputs avoided particular attention being accorded the milieu of their production, including the working conditions of employees.^[35] Ownership of the items on display that represented the primary and secondary sectors of the formal economy rested with employers and individuals who were self-employed. The process of rendering work invisible was not limited to those parts of the show devoted to the formal economy. The labour of female domestic servants, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, doubtless freed the time of some ruling and middle class women from home duties, allowing those women to create items to enter in Women's Industries and other sections of the show.

Conclusion

The National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland offers an example of some of the ways in which an organisation that sits well outside the labour movement and the working class can initiate and maintain traditions that are of relevance to the labour movement and labour historians. Through its annual show, the NAIAQ influenced ideas about the economy, about women's versus men's work, and about the relative importance of different sectors of society. Across the first four decades of the 20^th century, visitors to the Brisbane Exhibition were presented with a vision of Queensland that prioritised primary and secondary industries, and celebrated the achievements of the ruling and middle classes while ignoring the extent to which employees contributed to the production of the objects at the show. The values upheld by the Exhibition, its focus on outputs that could be easily displayed, and the gender segregation that characterised Queensland society and its economy largely restricted the display of non-Indigenous women's work to examples of unpaid labour within the home. The Women's Industries section and the One Woman's Work competition provided forums in which selected elements of women's domestic labour were celebrated, but they simultaneously segregated women's work from the displays of mainstream economic activity at the show. Although particular aspects of Women's Industries, such as the fine distinctions between different classes of competition, placed it on a par with other sections of the show, the usually modest prizes within Women's Industries suggest that it had a relatively low status within the hierarchy of show categories. During wartime, recognition of women's labour was extended to include homefront contributions. With the exception of the Aboriginal Court, which presented Aboriginal women as domestic servants, and the technical schools' exhibits, which offered a glimpse of employment opportunities for non-Indigenous women, the opportunities for Exhibition audiences to identify examples of women's involvement in the formal economy were highly constrained.