THEY BUILT NEW ZEALAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 5 (Supplement)

THEY BUILT NEW ZEALAND

VIII. Richard John Seddon

WITH his mother and father both schoolteachers, it is a wonder that Dick Seddon escaped with as little learning as he did. He hated every form of learning, and the only first prize which stands to his credit is one for xnccbanical drawing. The little two-storey stone cottage where he was born, with its latticed windows and its long history, was built over an Elizabethan graveyard. But the thought of those Tudor folk who lay beneath the cobbled paths never entered the head of the littlo boy with tho boundless energy, the thirst for adventure and excitement. We must pass swiftly over his childhood, pausing for a moment at the pond where he was nearly drowned, only to bo rescued by a passing trombone player and the quarryman. His affection for men with brass instruments or leather aprons lasted till the day of his death.

Dick SccHon's life poems to move at a pace which is typical of his entire character. His dynamic strength, the personality which burst into achievements far above the ordinary power of men . . . all these things are obvious even when he was a fair, sturdy lad apprenticed to the firm of engineers and iron founders to which he returned *10 years later as a colonial Premier. lie asked the foreman for a job . . . the latter, speaking to one of the amused bystanders, said: "He were a good 'un, he were, and if lie likes to come back I'd give him a job to-morrow."

lii those days the working conditions of the lower classes were unbelievably hard. When he was working ten hours a day for tiny wages, .Seddon's mind, which all his life saw problems only as things to be overcome, began to consider the possibility of helping the lower classes to rise above the sodden level of ignorance and iron-bound customs which kept them down like a horse in a bog. He thought, too, of the tales he heard of Australia, where nuggets were to bo had for the picking up. It was not long before he was off, armed with an engineer's certificate, a pair of broad shoulders and all the resilience and invincibility which was his as it perhaps has been no other's.

Ho found that Melbourne wgs a place where gold nuggets were no more plentiful than they had been in Kccleston, Lancashire. £0 he took a job in the railway workshops. There he became interested iu politics and athletics; each a trial of strength. As far as the former wero concerned, lie was reported for causing a disturbance among his workmates ("lie was always head and ears in any verbal battle"), for the latter, "he was a regular daredevil, absolutely devoid of fear." There is a legend that one had only to say "You can't do that, Scddon," and the thing was probably done.

In 18CG the goldficlds called him, distant fields this time. He landed in llokitika, on the wild West Coast, and became one of tlio reckless, dauntless band who made those dreadful journeys through unbroken country and suffered unbelievable hardships in quest of £olci. Jn those days of the great ruslTfcs there were many thousands of miners and prospectors. There were shack and canvas towns all along the beaches to Grcymouth, up the Grey River and thence to Teremakau. Look at Dick Scddon in the "full dress" of the miner—"the high

slouch liat turned sharp up in front and down at the back, the crimson shirt, the moleskin trousers into which tho clay washed to remain, tho magnificent whiskers." Scddon was too young for tho latter, but that did not prevent him from going to his natural place as a leader. lie went to Kumara, and he and tho town grew up together. lie was undisputed head man of the district. All decisions were referred to him. lie could not help knowing his ability to lead, and was no whit abashed when his admirers declared that some day he would be Governor of New Zealand. In 1809.he entered upon his career as a public man, representing the miners 011 the Arajiura Road Board and the Westland County Council. There he tried out some oi those famous speeches of his—bluff, forcible, untiring. When Westland was proclaimed a province with a Parliament and a Superintendent of its own, Scddon took his scat in the Provincial Council as "representative of Arahura. When the province bccamc a county again he was elected to the county council, was appointed chairman, and continued to sit until he entered the Ballance Ministry in ISDI. There, he always got his own way. When persuasion and tact failed, he resorted to verbosity. "Fluent, loud, unceasing, and sometimes amusing, he carried the point he had in view by dogged, persistent talk. Wornout members in sheer despair gave the Kumara orator his way."

When Seddon first took an active part in politics, the provincial government was but latclv abolished. Sir George Grey had just offered the people of New Zealand their first Liberal policy. Seddon, an admirer of "the great pro-Consul," became a "greyhound" and was elected as a member of Grey's part}' in 1579. Let us now take a look at the state of New Zealand politics at that time. The North Island had been bled white by the Maori Wars; the provincial system had brought, all kinds of financial difficulties to those under it; ten years before Seddon's advent into Parliament Julius Vogcl, bold speculator and financier, had launched New Zealand into a gigantic borrowing scheme. The whole colony under this enormous influx of money became full of excitement. In less than ten years twenty million pounds was borrowed. At thaitime wool and other products were bringing high prices; the whole country seemed on the crest of a tidal wave of prosperity. Suddenly the wave collapsed; prices fell; the lack of any means of preserving meat cargoes on the way to Kngland became critical; the gold rushes which had seemed to promise to boom the country petered out one by one. For the next ten years New Zealand had to pay for her borrowing boom; the depression which she had to weather is still remembered as one of the worst periods in her history. This depression was felt all «>yer the world in agricultural countries, which now had to compete with the immensely rich plains of North America, which had just been opened by railway. One cannot help but feel shocked at the depths to which New Zealand sank during those terrible years. (To be continued next tccck.)