"JIMMY" SCULLIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 243, 14 October 1929, Page 7

"JIMMY" SCULLIN.

A PERSONAL SKETCH. Australia's Next Prime Minister. GROCER AND JOURNALIST. (By F.U.) Memory goes back well over twenty rears to recall my first meeting with the man who seems likely to be Austi alias next Prime Minister. J- H. Scullin, popularly known as "Jiniuij, was then wearing his maiden in a gieat political battle, opposing lor the Ballarat seat no les< a person than the then Prime Minister, Aiir e< 1 Deakin. who, after his visit to England, returned to Australia with the title, conferred by the British Press, of "The silver-tongued orator.*"' "Such presumption!" said followers of Deakin. "An unknown little grocer's assistant to oppose our great Prime Minister!'' They laughed in scorn at his temerity: they scoffed at his ambition; the\ prophesied his utter discomfiture. Jn those days, the slim, diminutive figure of the Ballarat boy was not impressive. There was no great "personality" about his appearance. Then in his early thirties, he looked much younger than his years. '"A mere boy!" they said. And such he was —until you looked closo into the keen eyes, saw the grim determination expressed in the set ol his mouth; marked the intellect of the forehead, heard the decisive confidence in his voice. "If this be a boy," you thought, "what manner of a man will he be';" Behold him now; leader of the great Labour party, and in a few days Prime Minister of Australia. I The Long, Hard Road. Xot by fortune's chance has "Jimmy" Scullin arrived where is, not without a long tramp along the hard road of politics; not without steadfast adherence to ideals sorely tried, not without travail to which spirits less staunch would have succumbed. "Strong for the purpose of life, the struggle, the victory, the prize." This dynamic little man is where is by the merit of his own endeavours, and j the great personal worth that is recognised and appreciated even by his political opponents. I well remember the election in which Scullin contested Ballarat with Deakin. The Prime Minister, on the eve of polling day, addressed a great crowd in the Alfred Hall; but it was not as great a crowd as that which listened to Scullin as he spoke from the balcony of a Sturt Street hotel—a crowd that extended right back across the widest thoroughfare in Australia. For, already, in the course of a few weeks, it had become known that here was no "boy," but a man with a sure grip on politics and economics, and a convincing orator. Xot, perhaps, with the same persuasive eloquence as the mellow-toned Deakin, but clear, emphatic, with a masterly vocabulary, and, above all, logical— which was more than could be said at that stage for the oratory of the Prime Minister, delightful though it was in elocutionarv effect.

Scullin had before that campaign argued in many a controversy as a member of the St. Patrick's Debating Society, and was the best debater of his time in that fine school of oratory. The Liberals found they had no mean antagonist in this "little whippersnapper," as some of them had scornfully termed him. Deakin won, of course. He had the prestige always commanded by a Prime Minister, and the Liberal party was still a shining light in the politics of the country; but "Jimmy" Scullin gave him an unexpectedly close fight, and the star of Scullin was now more than a pin-point on the horizon. Next, Scullin opposed Dr. Wilson in the Western Victoria constituency of Corangamite. On that occasion also he was unsuccessful, but at the next election he was returned —probably the first Labour member elected to represent an electorate consisting so greatly of farmers and graziers. Later, he lost the seat, but as member for Yarra he now represents one of the greatest Labour strongholds of the Commonwealth. The years spent out of politics were passed by Scullin in the politically profitable profession of journalism—the school from which so many politicians have graduated, and into which a good many politicians have gone after politics have done with them Respected by All. Able speaker though he was then, the Scullin of to-day is a much more sparkling gem. There is no more thorough speaker in Parliament than "Jimmy" Scullin. He works with facts, and he marshals his facts in sequence, presenting them with the clarity of a teacher. Always he is logical, and that is why both sides of the Houtse listen to him with respect. That is why Scullin was sadly missed in the House during the greater part of the bitter debating on the arbitration issue, and it is generally held that the debate would not have descended to such a sordid level if the Leader of the Opposition had not been absent through illness until just before the curtain dropped on the final scene. There could have been no more convincing tribute to the respect in which Scullin is held than the cheers which greeted him from both sides of the chamber when he re-entered it after his late serious illness.