Abstract
The establishment of the Australian Government Clothing Factory in 1912 produced a national defence clothing enterprise driven by the need to supply the troops with combat uniforms and to keep innovation at the forefront. With ‘innovation’ as the key theme, Schumpeter’s definition is outlined and compared to several other definitions. As the century progressed, the Australian Army uniform took on new shapes, moving from the original woollen uniforms to the cotton camouflage ‘smart’ outfits of the present day. The book investigates the forces behind the innovations, and considers how they were implemented and linked with other sectors in the economy. Among the findings is evidence that the Australian Department of Defence pushed for the introduction of softer varieties of American cotton for Army uniforms in the late 1930s, a decision which, over the following decades, changed the course of the Australian cotton industry. Also among the findings is the indisputable role played by scientists in many specialist fields, from chemists to zoologists, in transforming the fabric and design of the Army’s uniform to deliver a better ‘fit for purpose’.
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- 1.
C.E.W. Bean (ed.), Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, 11th edn, 12 vols, 1941, i, p. 63.
- 2.
Monty Wedd, Australian Military Uniforms, Kenthurst, 1982.
- 3.
John Perryman, Kit Muster: Uniforms, Badges and Categories of the Australian Navy 1865–1953, Canberra, 2011.
- 4.
David M.O. Miller, Fighting Men of World War II: Allied Forces Uniforms, Equipment and Weapons, Mechanicsburg, 2008.
- 5.
Alfred N. Festberg (ed.), Australia in Uniform 1943, 2nd edn, Bandiana, 1977.
- 6.
T. Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise, New York, 1904; J. A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, Cambridge, MA, 1934.
- 7.
Anahita Baregheh, Jennifer Rowley and Sally Sambrook, ‘Towards a Multidisciplinary Definition of Innovation’, Management Decision, 47, 2009, pp. 1323–1339.
- 8.
Statement by Steve Vamos, Chairman of the Business Council of Australia’s Education, Skills and Innovation Task Force and Managing Director of Microsoft Australia, on the BCA website: http://www.bca.com.au (accessed 14 August 2013).
- 9.
Value does not need to be expressed in monetary terms, it can also deliver a social or utilitarian benefit.
- 10.
Johanna M.S. van Mosseveld, ‘Design and Production of the Australian Army Combat Uniform—A Schumpeterian Version of Defence Driven Technological Innovation’, Paper delivered at the Conference of the Association of Academic Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools (AAHANZBS), Sydney, 3–4 November 2014. Published on www.academia.edu
- 11.
Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883–1950) is one of the twentieth century’s leading economic theorists. His most important works are Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der Theoretischer Nationalökonomie (1908), The Theory of Economic Development (first published in 1911), Business Cycles (2 vols, 1939), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) and the posthumously published History of Economic Analysis (1954). The original 1911German edition of The Theory of Economic Development incorporated a seventh chapter on these topics, but this was removed in the second German edition. This chapter was later translated by Ursula Backhaus as Joseph A. Schumpeter, ‘The Economy as a Whole: Seventh Chapter of the Theory of Economic Development’, in Industry and Innovation, 9, no. 1/2, April/August, 2002, and I would refer especially to pp. 107–109. I have used the English edition of The Theory of Economic Development, based on the third German edition, without a seventh chapter. Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (translated from the German by Redvers Opie, with a new Introduction by John E. Elliott) (New Brunswick, USA, and London, UK, 2002).
- 12.
The ‘boiling pot’ analogy is my own and is loosely derived from Joseph Schumpeter’s description.
- 13.
Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, p. 66.
- 14.
Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, pp. 74–75.
- 15.
Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle, translated from the German by Redvers Opie and with a new introduction by John E. Elliott (New Brunswick and London, 2012), p. 65.
- 16.
Douglass C. North, ‘Economic Performance Through Time’, The American Economic Review, 84, no. 3 (June, 1994), p. 366.
- 17.
Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, revised edn, Melbourne, 1999, p. 64.
- 18.
Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, revised edn, Melbourne, 1999, pp. 74–77.
- 19.
Hutton’s role in the formation of Australia’s federal army and the delicate position he found himself in, caught between British imperialist motives and colonial self-defence policies, is explained in John Mordike, ‘The Origins of Australia’s Army: The Imperial and National Priorities’, Australian Defence Force Journal, 87, March/April 1991, pp. 7–19, as well as in Mordike’s book, An Army for A Nation: A History of Australian Military Developments 1880–1914, Sydney, 1992, especially chapters 2 and 5.
- 20.
For an early description of the uniform supplied to the Australian Imperial Force sailing for Egypt on 1 November 1914, see C.E.W. Bean (ed.), Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, 11th edn, 12 vols, 1941, i, pp. 60–61.
- 21.
See the website of Australian Defence Apparel Pty. Ltd., Australia’s key manufacturer of uniforms: http://www.ada.com.au (accessed 17 November 2012).
- 22.
Professor W.J. Dakin (ed.), The Art of Camouflage—By Members of the Sydney Camouflage Group, Sydney, 1941.
- 23.
http://www.camopedia.org (accessed 7 May 2015). This is the website of the International Camouflage Uniform Society (ICUS) and claims to be an encyclopaedia of camouflage pattern. Its contributors include academics, historians, collectors, military personnel as well as published authors. One of the pages depicts the patterns worn by Australian troops since the Vietnam War: http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Australia
- 24.
Complaints just like these have been documented in other places and at other times, with a well-known episode concerning the poor quality of the cloth of the Union soldiers’ uniforms during the American Civil War and of the shoe soles of the boots which were glued together from wood chips. Both the cloth and the boots fell apart in the first rain or in the first half hour of marching. The poor quality of the uniforms worn by Union soldiers during the American Civil War even gave rise to a new word in the English language: ‘shoddy’, which was defined by Harpers Weekly as ‘a villainous compound, the refuse stuff and sweepings of the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form and gloss of cloth’. Ron Soodalter, ‘The Union’s ‘Shoddy’ Aristocracy, New York Times, 9 May 2011. Published as an opinion blog online: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/the-unions-shoddy-aristocracy/?_r=0 (accessed 10 July 2015).
- 25.
See for example a poll on the use of polyester in uniforms: ‘Poll Gives Polyester Thumbs Up’, Army, 1 August 2013, p. 22.
- 26.
Albert O. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development, New Haven and London, 1958. See especially pp. 100–104.
- 27.
Paul Leitch and Thomas H. Tassinari, ‘Interactive Textiles: New Materials in the New Millennium, Part I’, Journal of Industrial Textiles, 29 (2000), pp. 173–190; Dnyanada S. Satam, ‘Design and Material Considerations for High Performance Army Combat Uniforms’, M.Sc. Thesis, North Carolina State University, 2009; Lieva Van Langenhove and Carla Hertleer, ‘Smart Clothing: A New Life’, International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, 16, 2004, pp. 63–72; Eugene Wilusz (ed.), Military Textiles, Boca Raton, 2008.
- 28.
I will refer to this factory as the ‘Australian Government Clothing Factory’ or simply as the ‘Clothing Factory’.
- 29.
The other government factories included the Small Arms Factory at Lithgow, the Small Arms Ammunition Factory at Footscray, the Cordite Factory at Maribyrnong, the Munitions Supply Research Laboratories in Maribyrnong and the Government Harness Factory at Clifton Hill.
- 30.
As a comparison, in 1905 there were 2315 clothing and fabric establishments in Australia, employing 59,095 persons; in 1947–1948 this had risen to 6069 establishments in clothing alone with employment of 111,593 persons; but in 2000–2001 only 20,931 persons remained employed in clothing manufacturing (no data for the number of establishments). Even taking into account an increase in mechanisation in the industry over the whole of the period, the reduction in employment is startling.
- 31.
At the time of writing, the government had made the decision to keep production of the Multicam (camouflage) Army combat uniforms within Australia. They are produced by Australian Defence Apparel Pty. Ltd. at their Bendigo factory. However, contracts for the polyester shirts and other garments have been let to Chinese manufacturers.
- 32.
Merritt Roe Smith, ‘Army Ordnance and the “American System” of Manufacturing, 1815–1861’, Merritt Roe Smith (ed.), Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985, chapter 1, pp. 39–86.
- 33.
The most recent issue of the Army Dress Manual came into effect in February 2013. Older issues published during the twentieth century are the Standing Orders for Dress and Clothing, Dress Regulations and Dress Manual which may be found at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne (some of these are available online), the Melbourne branch of the National Archives of Australia and the Army Museum Bandiana in Wodonga, Victoria.
- 34.
The design and changes within the design of the accoutrements can be found in the numerous volumes contained under Series A1194, List of Changes in War Materiel and of Patterns of Military Stores, held by the National Archives of Australia. These volumes contain the British stores which were also provided to the Australian Imperial Force when the latter participated in conflicts as part of an imperial cohort.
- 35.
‘The Great War 1914–1918: Distinguishing Badges of the Australian Imperial Force’ (issued as a supplement to the Weekly Times, 5 April 1919; John Perryman, Kit Muster; Cmdr John M. Wilkins, Australian & British Naval Buttons Buckles Banners & Badges, 1748–2006, limited revised 3rd edn, Doncaster East, 2006.
- 36.
The peacetime activities of the Woollen Cloth Factory and the Clothing Factory were the subject of a conference paper delivered in early 2015. Johanna M.S. van Mosseveld, ‘Civvies for the Boys! Government Factories, Social Responsibility and the Bottom Line’, Asia-Pacific Economic & Business History Conference, Canberra, 12–14 February 2015. Available via www.academia.edu
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van Mosseveld, A. (2018). Introduction. In: The Australian Army Uniform and the Government Clothing Factory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71425-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71425-7_1
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