Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

The New Woman of South Australia: Grand Old Woman of Australia
process of capital accumulation in the developing manufactures, which
were inefficiently structured, subject to price and quality competition
from overseas, relatively labour intensive, and, unlike other sectors, relied
largely on domestic capital formation even prior to the cessation of British
capital inflow in the 1890s. 22
Markey was discussing changes in New South Wales and, secondarily, Victoria.
Despite South Australia’s continuing reliance upon pastoralism and mining for local
capitalist survival, similar developments in manufacturing also appeared there,
though on a very small scale, in the late 19 th century. Markey’s comments are as valid
for South Australia as for New South Wales or Victoria.
Spence had commented on a change from domestic to industrial production of
pickles and preserves for household consumption. The vines and fruit trees being
grown on the outskirts of Adelaide, to the north in the Barossa Valley, and around
Renmark near where the Murray crosses the South Australian border, were providing
the means for development of a growing industry in preserving fruit. Like many
other managers of households in Adelaide in the 1870s, she had probably found
that jam could appear on the tea-table with far less effort and little more cost when
bought ready-made from a local retailer than when made at home. 23 Workshops
established in Adelaide to make biscuits and confectionery and to roll and pack tobacco
undoubtedly had the same effect. 24 The jobs made available in such workshops
must often have been casual seasonal work, but they were jobs for the unskilled, and
since women could be paid more cheaply than men, those jobs offered to workingclass
women some small alternative to domestic service which was still the principal
opening for women needing to earn wages. A job in a jam factory was, unlike domestic
service, beyond the confines of the domestic sphere.
In the provision of clothing, the change was both more marked and more complicated.
Machinery was introduced into the clothing industry in South Australia in
the 1870s and 1880s, encouraging, and encouraged by, a tariff which the local capitalist
legislators imposed on imported garments in 1887. 25 Industrialisation led to
increasing specialisation of tasks in clothing factories and workshops, together with
a breakdown in old apprenticeship systems and abandonment of the ‘one man one
garment’ principle. Such de-skilling generated a demand for cheap female labour.
The harsh conditions, long hours and monotonous repetitive work were still attractive
when compared with the hours, the personal subservience and indignity com-
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