cut and hard-won conditions removed (Gollan, 1960, ch. 8; Blainey 1980,
pp. 264–77; Svenson 1989).
The industrial chaos of the early 1890s led to a widespread acceptance of the
need for alternative ways of resolving industrial disputes. Discussions of vari-
ous systems of conciliation and arbitration were a major theme of public
policy debate throughout the 1890s and early 1900s. George Shaw frequently
spoke of the turmoil of 1890 when shearers, sailors, miners, and other key
groups of workers were all on strike or locked out, and enormous demonstra-
tions took place in central Melbourne. Living through this period had a strong
impact on him and left him—and many like him—open to new approaches to
industrial relations. H. V. McKay was in a minority in maintaining his com-
mitment to settling wages and conditions by direct bargaining between
employers and employees.
At a broader level, too, the crash of the 1890s was seen by many as demon-
strating the failure of the free market, and there was an increasing acceptance
of state intervention in the economy. Socialism was not yet damned by the
failure of communism and it attracted increasing support among workers and
intellectuals. But even many of those who remained wedded to capitalism
supported the extension of state ownership of such things as transport
systems, electricity generation, and even, in Queensland, a chain of butchers
shops, as well as active state promotion of irrigation and land settlement
(Eggleston 1932; Blainey 1994, pp. 125, 141). W. L. Baillieu of the‘Collins
House group’was one of Australia’s leading industrialists, a co-founder of the
Zinc Corporation (now Rio Tinto), the Herald & Weekly Times, Carlton &
United Breweries, and many other major companies, and his views largely
reflected those of the business establishment of his time. Baillieu was also a
Cabinet minister in Victoria from 1909 to 1917. As minister for public works,
he advocated the establishment of government-owned cool stores, and
responded when it was suggested that this investment should be left to private
enterprise:
Honourable members were now up against the old familiar controversy of Govern-
mentversusprivate enterprise, but he thought they had lived long enough to realise
that there were many things that the State had done with great advantage, and
many more things that the State would have to do. (Baillieu 1910, p. 3803)When a Farmers Union member interjected that‘The withering hand of
Government kills everything it touches’, Baillieu replied,
While he admitted that it was difficult in some matters to get the same manage-
ment under the Government as could be got in connexion with private affairs, he
also felt bound to say that, take it in the lump, the management of Government
business was more satisfactory than the management of a good many people
outside. (Baillieu 1910, p. 3803)Peter Yule