| | Ray Markey | Explaining Union Mobilisation in the 1880s and Early 1900s | Labour History, 83 | The History Cooperative |
 | | The period was one of considerable social and political ferment, evident in the language of class and the appeal to a working class movement evident with the mushrooming of socialist and radical political organisations, together with a burgeoning of related newspapers. |
 | | Australian workers indicated prior to the existence of the arbitration system in the 1880s that they were capable of organising at a level which far exceeded that anywhere else in the world, notwithstanding a state posture of indifference at best, and sometimes open hostility. |
 | | Even in the early 1900s the timing of the union growth surge and the impact of the legislation failed to fully coincide, and employer resistance to the legislation through litigation and other means, considerably reduced its effectiveness in assisting union growth in the short to medium term, and, in some cases, in the long term. |
| www.historycooperative.org /journals/lab/83/markey.html (11615 words) |