In Australia the decade of the 1890s was one of those historical periods which shape the history of a country for many decades afterwards. This is true, in a sense, of any historical period. But the 1890s witnessed an unprecedented level of industrial strife after the rapid spread of trade unionism in the 1880s, a level of economic depression which has only been matched on one other occasion (in the 1930s), and a level of and political experimentation which earned Aus tralia a reputation as the social laboratory of the world. In 1901 the six Aus tralian colonies federated. But the social, political, and economic program of the new Commonwealth of Australia?new protection, state arbitration in indus trial relations, the beginnings of a welfare state, and White Australia?was de veloped in the preceding decade. One of the major actors in Australian politics since 1900, the Labor party, was also established during the 1890s, and its role was central for the development of the new Commonwealth's political program. Despite Australia's reputation as a laboratory at this time, its ad vances in the area of industrial legislation apart from state arbitration of indus trial disputes were quite modest in the late nineteenth century. Before federation in 1901, each of the six independent Australian colonies was responsible for its own industrial legislation, and after federation, as states, they retained jurisdic tion in this area. Industrial legislation was of most concern in the two most pop ulous and industrialized colonies/states, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. Of the two, Victoria was considerably more advanced than NSW. In 1885 it passed a Factory Act that it improved and extended in 1896, the year in which NSW passed its first act. Both acts were fairly limited, merely reproducing Brit ish legislation with all its shortcomings, except that the Victorian Act provided for wage boards composed of employer and employee representatives.1 Miners and seamen also enjoyed some protection under special legislation modeled upon the British, and slightly improved in the 1890s. Apart from the Victorian wage boards, only in the 1899 Early Closing Act in NSW, which helped reduce shop assistants' long hours, and in the 1901 NSW Shearers' Hut Accommoda tion Act, which helped improve some of rural workers' more appalling condi tions, did the Australian colonies enact industrial legislation clearly in advance of anywhere else.2