TOM PRICE.

Feilding Star, Volume II, Issue 535, 31 March 1908, Page 4

TOM PRICE.

NOT A PROUD PREMIER. THE MAN WHO WAS ONCE A NAVVY. Mr Tom Price, who was employed as a workman on the building of tho Parliament House in South Australia where he now sits as Premier, who has been creating quite a stir in England during the past few weeks, has ' gone Home to represent his State. Mr Price hopes "to arouse interest in England regarding South Australia in this manner, and his speeches at Bristol and London show that he is doing so, though-per-haps not in the style adopted by Mr Thomas Bent, Premier of Victoria, at the time of the Imperial Conference. These two men, though widely different in many ways, have had somewhat similar careers. Mr Bent was a greengrocer before he took to politics, and Mr Pri^° : vose to the Premiership from thrtrfank of navvy. Mr Price is a man of the people, a Welshman, and an orator. Quaint in his speech, with more candour than culture, but animated with rugged fervour, ho can sway audiences to a remarkable degree. Early in his political career, when there was a known majority of one against a Factories Bill which Mr Price desired to see carried into law, he asked permission of the Minister to speak, but the Whip, knowing the seriousness of tho position, sought to dissuade him. "I will get that vote," said Mr Price. He started late at night, and in a few minutes the House was electrified. In dramatic fashion he produced garments made in sweating dens, and told tales of miserable lives and starvation wages. When he sat down the division was taken. An old opponent crossed tho floor, and the Bill was passed. The Premier was born in Denbighshire in 1852, but grew up in Liverpool. Education ho obtained at a penny school and at a night school connected with the Presbyterian Church in Shaw street, Liverpool. "When I was about twelve years old," he says, "someone told me I should go to Sunday school. I had no coat to wear, but I saved 6d a week until I had enough to buy a secondhand one from a pawnshop. The sleeves were rather too long. I went to the school, and was placed in a class with- a number of older boys — sons of landowners and wealthy men. One of them made remarks about my coat-sleeves. When school was coming out I struck him on the jaw, and again in the eye, and down he went to the bottom of the stairs. Next Sunday the boys produced a bigger boy to 'flatten me out' ; I finished hiim. I kept on at that school until I became teacher and the?i superintendent, a position I held for three years. Then I married the prettiest girl in the school, and she is my wife to-day. I was Tori? Price when I went to school. Tom Price as superintendent, and I am Tom Price as Premier."