Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Prophet of the effective vote
shoulder. It was not quite healed by the time she reached South Australia again, so
the rest of her journey must have been very uncomfortable. This did not prevent
her visiting Zurich in search of English-speaking supporters of her cause, nor from
discussing electoral systems with Ernest Navelle in Geneva. As Alfred Cridge had
remarked, ‘She was almost constantly at work’. 79 In London, and on her journey
home, she laid the foundation for the correspondence which enabled her to belabour
South Australia with examples of electoral reform all over the world. 80 She reached
South Australia in December 1894, in the eyes of many colonists, an international
celebrity. 81
By that time the Reform Movement had already passed its peak. Groups like the
Single Tax League and the Adelaide Democratic Club remained active and influential,
but the fervour of 1890-94 had evaporated and many smaller groups had died.
Attempts to continue campaigning for effective voting while Spence was away faded
out two months after she left. The movement’s paper, Voice, was absorbed in the
Weekly Herald, the ULP paper. Medway Day went to live in Sydney. E. J. Hickock,
secretary and driving force of the Single Tax League, died. The village settlements on
the Murray were suffering from internal squabbles, and there were reports of dissension
and secession from Paraguay. The hopes of the fragmenting Reform Movement,
like those of the ULP and the Liberals, focussed for a time on the Liberal Kingston
ministry. But as the decade wore on, and the bills passed through the House of Assembly
but rejected by the Legislative Council mounted, disillusion set in. The fall of
the Kingston government in November 1899 did nothing to revive the Utopianism
of the early 1890s. It appeared that different kinds of action were needed. 82
Spence redirected her efforts to the movement that was forming a federation of
the British colonies in Australia into the Australian Commonwealth. She badgered
Kingston, at the Premiers’ Conference in Hobart early in 1895, with letters and telegrams
exhorting the use of effective voting for elections to the federal Convention.
When Kingston, with George Turner, drew up a bill intended to ensure equitable
representation for each colony by adopting a list-system for elections, Spence decided
that he was spineless and campaigned against the system. ‘Federation would
have been more acceptable to Australia’, she stormed, ‘if the large numbers and large
interest of wage-earners had been adequately represented’. 83
Her efforts did not stop at meetings, deputations, handbills and letters to the
press. Urged by her new friend and colleague, Jeanne Young, and undoubtedly en-
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