Adversity & Resilience: Industry & Manufacturing

Made in Ipswich: Local Loyalty is Tested
Complaints had sometimes been voiced in Ipswich about employment of outside tradesmen, and this tendency to look outside the city was now worsening. To counter it, the Ipswich Branch of the Queensland Preference League held a Local Manufacturers’ Exhibition in the Town Hall in 1926. Its aim was to promote local firms, and hence local employment and prosperity.

An Ipswich Chamber of Manufacturers was formed in October 1929 with the stated aim of fostering a preference for local products. It sought publicity for local industry and arranged school visits to local factories such as the woollen mills. These were so successful that the Queensland Tourist Bureau began to organise visits by Brisbane schools. The Chamber’s major activity was a regular exhibition of locally manufactured goods in Ipswich Town Hall, a continuation of the work begun by the Queensland Preference League.

In 1901 when the daughter of the wealthy Coal King Lewis Thomas was married, almost everything for the wedding was made locally and was proudly declared to be as good as anything that was available anywhere. However at the Manufacturers’ first industry exhibition in the Town Hall in 1930, Mayor Stephenson complained that “There has been a feeling amongst some people that because an article was made in Ipswich, it was not equal to that produced elsewhere” and the manager of the Ipswich Woollen Company said that they did good business in Adelaide, but had trouble selling Ipswich cloth in Ipswich.

It is difficult to pin down exactly when and why this insecurity developed, but it was possibly related to the greater mobility of people and the greater choice they saw open to them. Where once local people were content to shop locally and make their own entertainment, they now looked further afield. The situation was not entirely bad. Although many jobs were lost during the Depression which began in 1929, Ipswich and district still had 187 factories employing 2000 people in 1933, not including mines and the Railway Workshops. The woollen mills alone employed around 600 people, and a local axe handle factory (presumably Krugers) employed a surprising 85 people. There were also foundries, a soap factory, pottery works, furniture factories and a large number of small enterprises. Farming and dairying in the region employed large numbers of people, and the West Moreton district was said to be producing 17% of the state’s milk.

A third woollen mill opens
As the son of a Welsh mill owner, John Morris already had a thorough knowledge of the industry when he formed the Ipswich Woollen Company Ltd about 1911, together with partners Dr. E. Brown and solicitor J. E. Walker. Morris apparently believed that this type of industry lent itself to gradual development on limited capital. He went to England to purchase machinery and the company then commenced operating from a very small mill at Tivoli Hill.

Within a short time, the company was able to purchase and convert the disused cotton mill at Joyce Street, East Ipswich. About 1919-20, the building was extended and new equipment was installed progressively. The cleaning and dying processes used a considerable amount of water and a filtration plant was installed to treat water from the Bremer River and to filter it again before its return to the river. [1]

The King's Silver Jubilee publication of 1935 provides an insight into Industry and Manufacturing at that time.

The principal locomotive workshops are situated at Ipswich (25 miles from Brisbane), where all construction and foundry work is concentrated. The shops employ 1760 hands at the present time, and are well laid out and admirably arranged for the construction and repair of locomotives, carriages, rail motors and their trailers, and wagons. The also act as a supply for out-depots.