Australia
The new clothes of the Aborigines

“Fodder and harness”, that’s how during a 1943 meeting of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, Mary Bennett, an Australian campaigner for Aboriginal Rights, defined the system of payment of Aboriginal workers.
Indeed, Aboriginal workers were provided with food and clothing, but denied wages. Does it mean that clothes were recognized as a form of payment? The reality is more subtle. In fact, the clothes were provided rather to satisfy the employers’ cultural notions of dress code for employees and to facilitate work by ensuring that the workers had practical clothing.
The wage scale was based on the 1928 report of Bleakley, Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines. Bleakley discouraged payment in cash and favoured accommodation, food, and clothing. The official justification of the employers was “humanitarian”: the lack of cash wages was for the good of the employees. Yes! Mind you, wages would have had a demoralizing effect on Aborigines who would have spent the money in opium and liquor.
As stated Reverend Jarvis: “the moral and social welfare of the natives is of greater importance than the question of paying them money. (…) The native, practically speaking, is a child” (1930)
Or as would say absentee landlord H.E. Thonemann, during a Welfare Conference of Aboriginal Labour in 1929: “The average black does not know the value of coin”.
Aborigines received the poorest of food, small amount of stick tobacco of the worst kind, and clothes hardly sufficient to cover nakedness – at best, oversized, cast-off clothes.
The clothes of domestic servants, for instance, served several purposes: of course, the protection of European sense of modesty and decency; cleanliness too; and the transformation of the worker into the employer’s ideal notion of domestic servant. Is there something better than the white apron of your employee to display your social status?
Clothes were not given, but on loan. For example, the kit issued by the army to Aboriginal workers was to remain the property of the Army. A £2 credit was requested from the Aborigines to cover any loss of clothing. £2 - it meant 8 weeks of wages.
In the 30s, some workers spoke out against the system. In 1938, Jack McEwen, Minister of the Interior, introduced in response the assimilation policy (that was based on the assumption that the barrier to equal rights and citizenship for Aboriginal people was the inadequacy of the Aborigines themselves). Clothing and cash wages were part of this policy. As a consequence: whereas before wages were withheld and clothing supplied, now wages were supplied and clothing withheld.

Based on:
Julia Martinez, "When wages were clothes: dressing down Aboriginal workers in Australia's Northern Territory", in International Review of Social History, Vol. 52, August 2007