Industrial papers, 1939-1941

Component identifier:

Subseries 43-2

Content Summary:

This subseries relates to Hughes concern for industrial disputes, amendments to the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, applications for work as Peace Officers and Industrial Inspectors, and reports like Justice Ferguson's on pensions for coalminers (1940) and Senator A. N. Macdonald's on employment on the waterfront (1939). The disputes referred to include the metal workers strike at the Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd, the builders strike in Darwin, several waterfront stoppages, a gas workers dispute and the question of a picking-up place for the Members of Painters and Dockers Union.

Letters to Hughes as Attorney-General on industrial matters are from J. Healey, John Curtin, J. S. Collings, H. Holt, G. R. Richards, J. Indehope, G. D. Williams, C. Macdonald, Justice George Beeby and from Hughes' secretary. Further papers on unions, such as intelligence reports, are filed in the following subseries.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The W. M. Hughes Papers were presented to the National Library of Australia by Dame Mary Hughes in 1953. The collection was received in two consignments. One consisted of papers taken from the Perpetual Trustee Company comprising material from Hughes' Lindfield home and from his office rooms at the Commonwealth Offices, Sydney; the other came directly from Lindfield. Lists of the contents of both consignments are held in the Library's Manuscript Branch. With the agreement of the executors and the Library, much of the collection, was for a time, held at the Australian National University by Fitzhardinge. He was permitted sole access to the collection while writing the biography Hughes commissioned in 1951. Fitzhardinge's own papers documenting the writing of the biography are also held by the Library (MS 5400). The papers transferred to the Library in 1953 are by no means the total collection of Hughes' personal papers, although it is impossible to say what proportion has survived. (see Fitzhardinge, p.936).

Names:

Hughes, W. M. (1862-1952)

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