Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.—THE PERIOD 1850 TO 1870. (1) Pioneer Trade Unions in Australia. It is interesting to note that, before the great rush to the goldfields, the condition of the working classes in Australia was said to be fairly satisfactory. Indeed, a leader in the "Sydney Morning Herald" of that time claims that in no other country were they so well off. In contrast to this state of affairs in Australia, there were at this period serious disturbances, practically throughout Europe. These upheavals led many Continental rulers to the conclusion that it was wiser to allow turbulent spirits to depart from the country than to keep them. The new era of industry had completely unsettled the old relationships and awakened a spirit of restlessness. Finally, the recent application of steam to sea-going vessels had rendered a rapid decrease in the length of the voyage from Europe to Australia a practical certainty, and the discovery of gold in various parts of this continent led to a swarm of pilgrims from all parts of the world making for the diggings. Many, perhaps the majority of the arrivals, were totally unfitted for the actual work of mining. Some of these turned to other pursuits in the neighbourhood of the diggings, and in no small number of cases did far better than the diggers whose gold they received. The early development of Trade Unions in Australia coincided with the peaceful growth of important unions in England. Reference has already been made to the Operative Stonemasons' Society, established in Melbourne in 1850, but which temporarily collapsed when its members joined the rush to the gold diggings. The Typo- The operative classes, generally speaking, are in full work with liberal wages, and the necessaries and comforts of life being plentiful, and on the whole comparatively ...