Footnotes
*The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their time and suggestions, as well as the editorial and administrative staff at Labour History. He would also like to thank Julia Martínez, Jane Carey, Claire Lowrie and Zhong Huang for advice on drafts of this article, and Kate Bagnall, Juanita Kwok, Michael Williams, Paul Macgregor and Mei-fen Kuo for help with the research. The author is particularly grateful to Wang Feng-i (王鳳儀), Feng Zhuqin (锋竹沁), You Mengyun (游梦云), Tian Ye (田烨) Huang Kai (黄开) and He Anyuan (何安圆) for their assistance with Chinese-language sources. This work was funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Award at the University of Wollongong.
1.“Chinese” and “Chinese Australian” are contested terms; see Jen Sen Kwok, “Postscript: Beyond ‘Two Worlds,’” in Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Resistance, ed. Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 290–307. “European,” “British,” “Anglo Celt” and “white” are also contested terms; see Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 75–94. “Factory” is taken as any place where four or more “persons” - or one or more “Chinese” - were engaged “working at any handicraft,” as per the 1896 New South Wales Factories and Shops Act, 2. (a), (b).
2.Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 3 April 1911, vol. 2, pt 8 (Melbourne: J. Kemp, 1911), 1022. Chinese furniture manufacturers were concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne. Chinese workers rarely, if ever, worked in European factories.
3.There were 7,000 market gardeners in Australia in 1911, but a large proportion of these were equal partners in gardening operations rather than employees; see, for instance, Joanna Boileau, “Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand, 1860s-1960s: A Study in Technological Transfer” (PhD diss., University of New England, 2014), 75–78.
4.William Holman’s Testimony, 17 December 1891, Report of the Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality and Charges of Bribery against Members of the Police Force (hereafter NSWRC) (Sydney: Government Printer, 1892), 432–36. Plank 15 of the electoral platform NSW Labour Electoral League in 1891 was “stamping of Chinese-made furniture”; see “Labour Electoral League,” Australian Star, 1 April 1891. “White-Australian” industrialisation also had tremendous symbolic value, meaning that not only the labour movement opposed Chinese furniture factories; see Denise Hutchinson, “Manufacturing,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Australia, ed. Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 290. Refer also to Phil Griffiths, “‘This is a British Colony’: The Ruling-Class Politics of the Seafarers’ Strike, 1878–79,” Labour History, no. 105 (November 2013): 131–52.
6.I use period Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin where period transliterations are unavailable.
7.John Hoe had an interest in Sydney’s Tung Wah Times (東華報) (hereafter TWT), which published articles condemning discrimination against Chinese factory workers; see, for instance, “Maltreatment of Woodworkers” (苛待木工), TWT, 9 January 1901. He also participated in a Sydney Morning Herald (hereafter SMH) debate on this issue in 1908; see “The Chinese Question,” SMH, 1 July 1908; “Chinese in Waterloo,” SMH, 2 July 1908; “The Chinese Question,” SMH, 27 July-15 August 1908. European supporters opposed this kind of discrimination, too; see J. L. Clarke, The Chinese Case against the Chinese Employment Bill (Melbourne: Arbuckle, Waddell and Fawckner, 1907).
8.See, for example, Ray Markey, “Populist Politics: Racism and Labor in NSW, 1880–1900,” in Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class, ed. Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1978), a special issue of Labour History, no. 35 (November 1978): 66–79.
9.Victoria Factories and Shops Amendment Act 1887, 3; Victoria Factories and Shops Act 1896, 3 (1a), 23 (1), (3), 56, 57; NSW Factories and Shops Act 1896, 2 (a), (c). Similar laws followed in other parts of Australia. The zenith of official discrimination in NSW, providing for Chinese-only working hours, was the NSW Factories and Shops (Amendment) Act 1927. While furniture factories were largely unique to Australia throughout the Pacific Rim, garment and boot factories in San Francisco, and the workers therein, attracted comparable controversy; see, for instance, Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: UC Press, 1975).
10.William Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia & New Zealand, vol. 2 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1903), 61–62.
11.Andrew Markus, “Divided We Fall: The Chinese and the Melbourne Furniture Trade Union, 1870–1900,” Labour History, no. 26 (March 1974): 7; Ching-Fatt Yong, The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia, 1901–21 (Richmond: Raphael Arts, 1977), 41–45, 63–70.
12.Marilyn Lake, “Challenging the ‘Slave-Driving Employers’: Understanding Victoria’s 1896 Minimum Wage through a World-History Approach,” Australian Historical Studies 45, no. 1 (2014): 87–102.
13.Ibid., 99–100. See also John Leckey, “Low, Degraded Broots? Industry and Entrepreneurialism in Melbourne’s Little Lon, 1860–1950” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2003), 305–57.
14.I am inspired in this approach by Carlo Ginzburg’s account of the trial of Domenico Scandella, or Menocchio, a sixteenth-century Friulian miller; Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
15.NSW Bankruptcy Act 1887, 45–47. Bankruptcies were common in industrial manufacturing of this period, including in the furniture industry amongst Chinese and non-Chinese operators alike. Chinese factory bosses attributed their bankruptcies to economic issues, especially a lack of capital, that were only partially related to “White Australia.”
16.Nadia Rhook, “Speaking in Grids: Race, Law and Audibility in late colonial Victoria” (PhD diss., La Trobe University, 2015), ch. 4; Mark Finnane, “Law as Politics: Chinese Litigants in Australian Colonial Courts,” in Couchman and Bagnall, Chinese Australians, 117–37.
17.Mei-fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese-Australian Identity, 1892–1912 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2013).
18.Edgar Cutler’s Testimony, 6 December 1891, NSWRC, 428.
19.Ben Maddison, “‘The Skilful Unskilled Labourer’: The Decline of Artisanal Discourses of Skill in the NSW Arbitration Court, 1905–15,” Labour History, no. 93 (November 2007): 77–84.
20.“The Chinese Question,” SMH, 30 July 1908; “The Chinese Question,” SMH, 15 August 1908.
21.Affidavits of Debt, 7 March-7 April 1876, Chow Young Insolvency, 13654–2/9598–12761, 71–96, NSWSR.
22.Affidavits of Debt, 27–28 November 1890, Man Sing Bankruptcy, 13655–10/22675–3020, 33–57, NSWSR.
23.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 11 December 1891, NSWRC, 388.
24.Klaas Ruitenbeek, Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenter’s Manual Lu Ban Jing (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 15–24.
25.See, for instance, “Chinese Invents New Machine” (華人製造新式機器), TWT, 29 September 1906 and “Woodworker Union Secretary Interviewed by Sydney Newspaper” (木匠工黨會之司理人對雪梨某報訪事人), TWT, 17 January 1903. Advertisements portrayed woodworkers as being highly skilled, too; see “John Hoe’s Wood Factory Advertisement” (俊豪號木廠廣告) TWT, 9 February 1924.
26.Chi-Kong Lai, “Xiangshan County and the 1911 Revolution,” New Asia Review, 13 (2012): 162–67; see also David Faure, Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 291–347.
27.Melbourne workers, though, seem to have been more active in promoting their Lu Ban Day celebrations; see “Wood Industry Association Announcement” (木行大慶會廣吿), Chinese Times (愛國報), 1 July 1911.
28.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 390–91.
29.Yong, The New Gold Mountain, 41. Louis Ah Mouy, a spokesperson for the Chinese community in Melbourne, had migrated to Australia to build houses when the first gold rush began in the early 1850s; see Paul Macgregor, “Chinese Political Values in Colonial Victoria: Lowe Kong Meng and the Legacy of the July 1880 Election,” in Couchman and Bagnall, eds., Chinese Australians, 72.
30.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 388.
31.Yuen Tah’s Testimony, 2 October 1891, NSWRC, 119.
32.James Broadbent, Suzanne Ricard and Margaret Steven, India, China, Australia: Trade and Society, 1788–1850 (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of NSW, 2003), 31–64.
33.Lay Jong’s Testimony, 27 July 1893, Lay Jong Bankruptcy, 13655–10/1022864–06597, 40, NSWSR.
34.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 391. It was also normal in San Francisco’s Chinese garment industry for workers to buy their own sewing machines; see Him Mark Lai, “Chinese Guilds in the Apparel Industry of San Francisco,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 21 (2008): 21.
35.“Among the Chinese,” SMH, 8 February 1879; see also “The Furniture Trade,” SMH, 1 November 1886.
36.Affidavits of Debt, 9–14 March 1910, Henry Louey Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23603–18391, 77–89, NSWSR.
37.Chan King’s Testimony, 31 March 1913, Willie King Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23691–19488, 66–7, NSWSR.
38.“The Furniture Board,” SMH, 14 April 1897. See also Report on the Working of the Factories and Shops Act (hereafter FSA Report) 1897 (Sydney: Government Printer, 1898), 33.
39.On inspectors’ efforts to publicise the 1896 Act in Chinese factories, see, for example, FSA Report 1897, 24; FSA Report 1898 (Sydney: Government Printer, 1899), 23.
40.Nora Ah Toy’s Testimony, 31 December 1891, NSWRC, 463.
41.Pennell v. Quong Wing, trading as W. Rising and Co., 18–19 October 1926, 2713–6/1309, NSWSR.
42.Willie Wing’s Testimony, 9 March 1906, Furniture Trade Union v. Ah Wong, Court of Arbitration, 5340–2/74–18, 167–75, NSWSR.
43.Maddison, “‘The Skilful Unskilled Labourer,’” 73–86. Chinese furniture factories, however, mechanised less than European ones; see FSA Reports 1897–1930.
44.Mei-fen Kuo, “Confucian Heritage, Public Narratives and Community Politics of Chinese Australians at the Beginning of the 20th Century,” in Couchman and Bagnall, Chinese Australians, 156. Factory mechanisation was another source of increased Chinese-European worker interaction. Indeed, factory operator Zhao Hao Tian (趙浩天) from the Gaoyao area told the Tung Wah Times in 1909 that he had employed a European machinist to help him mechanise his operation; see “Chinese Invents New Machine (華人新欵機器之發明),” TWT, 23 January 1909.
45.Sidney Jack’s Testimony, 30 March 1909, Jack Lem Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23574–17992, 111–12, NSWSR.
46.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 391.
47.Yee Lim’s and Ah You’s Affidavits of Debt, 27 April 1889, Yee Wye Insolvency, 762–335, 123, 162, Public Records Office of Victoria.
48.Willie Wing’s Testimony, 167.
49.Affidavits of Debt, 17 February 1908, Harry Kow Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23541–17604, 6–15, NSWSR.
50.Sing Leng’s Testimony, 5 March 1896, Sing Leng Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23072–10431, 3, NSWSR.
51.Boileau, “Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand,” 46–85.
52.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 390.
53.Ibid. On sales to Marcus Clarke and Co., see, for example, Harry Kow’s Testimony, 18 February 1908, Harry Kow Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23541–17604, 46, NSWSR.
54.Ah Hing’s Testimony, 28 May 1883, Ack Chow Insolvency, 13654–2/9993–17928, 14, NSWSR.
55.Seck Fan’s Testimony, 9 March 1906, Furniture Trade Union v. Ah Wong, 175.
56.Ah Fat’s Testimony, 9 March 1906, Furniture Trade Union v. Ah Wong, 149.
57.Ah Wah’s Testimony, 20 March 1896, Sun Hap On Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23079–10554, 4, NSWSR.
58.Yit Yung’s Testimony, 10 August 1915, Jan Way Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23778–20439, 156, NSWSR.
59.Seck Fan’s Testimony, 183.
60.Zhong Huang, “Representations of Chinese Masculinity in Chinese Australian Literature, 1978–2008” (PhD diss., University of Wollongong, 2012), 43–44.
61.Ah Fat’s Testimony, 152.
62.Ibid.
63.Ching-Hwang Yen, Ethnic Chinese Business in Asia: History, Culture and Business Enterprise (Singapore: World Scientific, 2013), 31–33.
64.Yit Yung’s Testimony, 156.
65.Edgar Cutler’s Testimony, 428, 431.
66.See, for instance, “Mongolian Sweating,” Worker, 4 February 1905.
67.Lake, “Challenging the Slave-Driving Employers,” 100–102.
68.“The Chinese Question,” SMH, 30 July 1908. See also Chinese Chamber of Commerce, A Chinese Appeal (Sydney: Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 1926), 14–16.
69.Affidavits of Debt, 27–8 November 1890, Man Sing Bankruptcy, 33–57.
70.Affidavits of Debt, 10–3 April 1893, Leong Dong Bankruptcy, 13655–10/22844–6266, 9–24, NSWSR.
71.Ding On’s Testimony, 10 August 1915, Jan Way Bankruptcy, 151.
72.This refers to the minimum remuneration for adult journeymen; see “Blessings of Protection,” Evening News, 15 July 1879; “The Furniture Trade,” SMH, 30 October 1886. See also William Holman’s Testimony, 433.
73.Mok Leong Shing’s Affidavit of Debt, 12 December 1883, Kum Leong Insolvency, 13654–2/10028–18374, 12, NSWSR.
74.Judgement of Court, The United Furniture Trade Society of New South Wales v. Anthony Hordern and Sons, 2/5714–11/12–1904, 9, NSWSR. Historians such as Joe Isaac have disputed the impact of minimum wage law, although Andrew Seltzer and Jeff Borland have shown that such laws were successful at increasing wages in Melbourne; see Joe Isaac, “The Economic Consequences of Harvester,” Australian Economic History Review 48, no. 3 (2008): 280–300; Andrew Seltzer and Jeff Borland, “The Impact of the 1896 Factory and Shops Act on Victorian Labour Markets,” IZA Discussion Paper Series, no. 10388 (November 2016).
75.Affidavits of Debt, 9–14 March 1910, Henry Louey Bankruptcy, 77–89; Affidavits of Debt, 6 November 1914, Charles Lum Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23741–20077, 56–71, NSWSR.
76.The popular “credit-ticket system” of the gold rushes, whereby passage to Australia was paid for Chinese workers by employers on the understanding that they would have to work off the cost, is unlikely to have been in use in the factories because this system had all but ceased to exist in Australia by 1880; see, Macgregor, “Chinese Political Values in Colonial Victoria,” 89.
77.My claim is based on earnings data provided by 93 Melbourne furniture factory workers in court. See also Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories, Work-Rooms, and Shops 1900 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1901), 14.
78.David Faure has talked briefly about subcontracted workforces in factories in China, particularly in Shanghai, where successful Chinese Australians did business, yet such arrangements do not seem to have been usual in Australia. Workers appear in most cases to have worked directly for factory proprietors. See David Faure, “Beyond Networking: An Institutional View of Chinese Business,” in Chinese and Indian Business: Historical Antecedents, ed. Medha Kudaisya and Ng Chin-keong (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 35.
79.Affidavits of Debt, 7 October 1911, George Suey Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23646–18951, 25–40, NSWSR.
80.Ying Sing’s Testimony, 5 March 1896, Sun Hap On Bankruptcy, 29.
81.Louie Fook’s Affidavit of Debt, 7 October 1911, George Suey Bankruptcy, 32.
82.“Furniture Trades Award,” SMH, 10 September 1909.
83.Hing Pound’s Testimony, 17 March 1909, Hing Pound Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23578–18024, 45, NSWSR.
84.Ding On’s Testimony, 151.
85.See, for instance, Workers’ Affidavits of Debt, 3 May 1889, Quong Lee Insolvency, 762–338, 49–55, Public Records Office of Victoria.
86.Ah Hing’s Testimony, 14.
87.Yit Yung’s Testimony, 165.
88.“Oppressed Chinese Overseas Woodworkers’ Severe Rules” (取締華僑木工之苛例), TWT, 13 December 1913.
89.“Furniture Trade,” SMH, 9 January 1906.
90.FSA Report 1897, 1.
91.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 389.
92.Ah Wah’s Testimony, 5–6.
93.Ding On’s Testimony, 155.
94.Hong Bow CEDT Application, B13/0–1925/10543, National Archives of Australia (NAA) Melbourne. See also CEDT applications by Hong Sing, B13/0–1924/26848, NAA Melbourne; also Louey Foo, B13/0–1925/10588, NAA Melbourne.
95.Ching Yow CEDT Application, SP42/1-B1907/2726, NAA Sydney.
96.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 390.
97.Michael Williams, “Destination Qiaoxiang: Pearl River Delta Villages and Pacific Ports, 1849–1949” (PhD diss., Hong Kong University, 2002), 106–64.
98.Affidavits of Debt, 27–8 November 1890, Man Sing Bankruptcy, 33–57.
99.Hing Pound’s Testimony, 17 March 1909, Hing Pound Bankruptcy, 44, 46.
100.NSW Factories and Shops (Amendment) Act 1927, 5. 49 (4); Victoria Factories and Shops Act 1896, 19.
101.See, for instance, Kwong Sing Loong and Co.’s Accounts, 16 February 1889–5 December 1889, Ah How Bankruptcy, 13655–10/22653–2602, 2, NSWSR. Practically identical arrangements have also been identified by Him Mark Lai in San Francisco garment factories; see Him Mark Lai, “Chinese Guilds in the Apparel Industry of San Francisco,” 20.
102.Ding On’s Testimony, 152.
103.“The Rent Problem,” SMH, 19 March 1912; “Cost of Living,” SMH, 2 March 1915. Certain retail stores, including David Jones, provided senior employees with accommodation and food during this period, yet the practice was not widespread; see, Peter Bastian and Victor Quayle, “An Ambivalent Relationship: Thomas Caddy, the Drapers’ Association and the Sydney Trades and Labor Council’s Forgotten Cooperation over Early Closing,” Labour History, no. 110 (May 2016): 23.
104.On “larrikin” attacks in Sydney, see, for example, Philip Bramble, “‘Too Muchee Dam Lallikin’: Chinese and Larrikins in 19th Century NSW,” Locality 11, no. 2 (2001): 19–23.
105.One example is William Yee Sing, who lived, unhappily it would appear, with his European wife, Alice; see “Murder and Suicide,” Evening News, 15 November 1920. Regarding cramped dormitories, see, for instance, “The Furniture Trade,” SMH, 1 November 1886.
106.Sun War Hop’s Testimony, 12 December 1891, NSWRC, 396.
107.Chow Kum’s Testimony, 12 December 1891, NSWRC, 394.
108.William Holman’s Testimony, 434.
109.Willie Wing’s Testimony, 175.
110.Ah Fat’s Testimony, 152.
111.FSA Report 1899 (Sydney: Government Printer, 1900), 21.
112.See, for example, “Woodworker Notice” (木工須知), TWT, 30 September 1899; “Woodworkers Must Take Care” (木工宜慎), TWT, 30 June 1906; “Chinese Woodworker Notice” (華人木行注意), TWT, 30 June 1906.
113.Kuo, “Confucian Heritage,” 145.
114.Denise Austin, “Citizens of Heaven: Overseas Chinese Christians during Australian Federation,” in After the Rush: Regulation, Participation, and Chinese Communities in Australia, 1860–1940, ed. Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor (Kingsbury: Otherland Literary Journal, 2004), a special edition of Otherland, no. 9 (December 2004): 75–88. On Christian support for John Hoe’s factory, see, for instance, “How Would You Vote?,” Sunday Times, 5 July 1908.
115.Lay Jong’s Testimony, 27 July 1893, Lay Jong Bankruptcy, 47–48.
116.Jan Way’s Testimony, 7 September 1915, Jan Way Bankruptcy, 213.
117.Edgar Cutler’s Testimony, 431; “Why the Chinaman is Cheap,” The Worker, 22 October 1904.
118.See, for instance, “The Chinese Citizens in Reply,” SMH, 22 August 1904.
119.Lay Jong’s Testimony, 12 December 1891, NSWRC, 393.
120.Charles Lum’s Testimony, 26 October 1914, Charles Lum Bankruptcy, 4.
121.Sun Sing Loong’s Testimony, 388.
122.See NSWRC, 475–81.
123.Yit Yung’s Testimony, 163.
124.E. J. Forbes and Sons had £20,000 start-up capital, see “Notes and Comments,” SMH, 28 April 1911.
125.Kent Deng, “A Critical Survey of Recent Research in Chinese Economic History,” Economic History Review 53, no. 1 (2000): 1–28.
126.Ying Sing’s Testimony, 28.
127.Low Wing’s Testimony, 3 November 1901, Tin Yow, Low Wing Bankruptcy, 13655–10/23338/14814, 69–70, NSWSR.
128.Wellington Chan, “Personal Styles, Cultural Values and Management: The Sincere and Wing On Companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong, 1900–41,” Business History Review 70, no. 2 (1996): 141–66.
129.Barry McGowan, “The Economics and Organisation of Chinese Mining in Colonial Australia,” Australian Economic History Review 45, no. 2 (2005): 119–38.
130.Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 17–51.
131.NSWRC, 481.
132.Kuo, Making Chinese Australia, 215–56.
133.“Chinese Strike,” SMH, 8 April 1908; “The Chinese Strike,” Evening News, 9 April 1908; “The Ranks of Labour,” Evening News, 8 July 1908; “Second Round of Strikes” (罷工二紀), TWT, 21 March 1908.
134.FSA Report 1908 (Sydney: Government Printer, 1909), 36.
135.“Woodworkers’ Strike Ends” (木匠罷工後業), Chinese Australian Herald (廣益華報) (hereafter CAH), 27 June 1908; “Second Round of Strikes” (罷工二紀), TWT, 21 March 1908. Both the CAH and TWT also criticised strikes by Chinese factory workers in Melbourne in 1903, see “Woodworkers Strike” (木行罷工), TWT, 14 November 1903; “Chinese Woodworkers Strike” (華人木匠罷工), CAH, 21 November 1903.
136.“Chinese Strike,” SMH, 8 April 1908.
137.Markus, “Divided We Fall,” 1–10; Yong, The New Gold Mountain, 43.
138.“Chinese Labour,” Straits Times, 17 October 1911.
139.Him Mark Lai and Russell Jeung, “Guilds, Unions, and Garment Factories: Notes on Chinese in the Apparel Industry,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 21 (2008): 1–10.