HOME SECRETARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 October 1929, Page 4

HOME SECRETARY

STORY OF EARLY STRUGGLES.

The Rt. Hon. J. R. Clynes, one of the “Big Five” of the Labour Party, tells to “Pearson’s Weekly” the story of his early life and work. It acquires additional interest from his realisation of what must, at that time, have seemed almost impossible dreams of future eminence. My family was just one of the pool working class, and my father was a labourer who. never earned more than twenty-four shillings a week in his life, though he was a devoted workman and would never miss going to his employment for anything. I was the first son, though the .fifth of the family, and I was born in a small four-roomed house which was situated, not in the Working-class district, but in the country on the outskirts of Oldham. Of my early years I have no recollections of anything of a striking character. Such education as I got I acquired at the elementary school. There is no particular satisfaction in claiming that I was very regular in my attendance or that I was of that disposition which did not incline me to spend much time in playing games. I was reserved and kept a great deal to myself. Among my most vivid recollections of this time was the money that I used to have to take to the school; we termed it school money—that is, payment for my tuition. Sometimes I went without it, because my parents did not have it, and I can recollect having to go back for it. If the money was not paid we were, however, not sent back, but were allowed to remain at school, though the few pennies in question were looked upon as arrears and eventually had to be paid up.

A “LITTLE PIECER.” When I was just turned ten I went to work as a half-timer in a cotton factory and began as a “little piecer”; that is, the junior help to the cotton spinner. My work was to assist in cleaning the machinery and to make myself useful in any way I was told. In this way I gradually acquired a knowledge of the work, and was in time able to be “big pieqer” on my own account. My hours as a halftimer were from six o’clock in the morning until half-past twelve in the afternoon, and the wages varied from nothing a week at which I started, to about four and sixpence. While I was a half-timer I used to go to school in the afternoon. That lasted, however, only until I was thirteen, when I became a full-timer. Then the conditions of work werp so exacting that I had no disposition to concern myself with schooling. I used to get home dead tired in the evening, for besides working practically eleven hours in the mill, I had to walk from my home and back. For some years my home was two and a half miles away, which meant five miles’ walk a day. The conditions under which I worked were far less favourable than those which prevail at the present time. I frequently had to work with no more on than a pair of bathing drawers. The men in the mill used also to work simply in shirts and overalls even in the winter. Happily, there have been many improvements since my time, and the more modern mills are better constructed, better lighted and better ventilated than they were when I was a little piecer. When I became a big piecer I could earn from twenty shillings to twenty-one shillings a week, though the average was rather less than that. When I was about seventeen and a big piecer, I began to feel a strong desire to resume something like education and self-culture. I set about achieving this object by spending nearly all my spare time in the local library and news rooms and taking little books to the mill to read in any spare time I had. I have still one of the most-thumbed and used-up copies of a- book of grammar I have ever seen. I aLso went to night school aud spent what little sums of money I had in going to lectures and buying books of my own. I read much of Dickens, as well as, Ruskin, and developed a taste for Shakespeare and MJlton. I also read many of the better known Irish story writers, and found myself especially developing a taste for dramatic literature, but I did not, however, go a great deal to the theatre. I made a point, though, of always seeing Shakespeare’s plays when I could, aud otherwise went to the theatre only when I could see the best plays. I cannot confess to having gone in for any particular line of study at this time. I was not reading with a view to any special start in another or better position in life. This was not. because I was little attached to my work, but probably because I found a certain satisfaction in the studies for their own isake, without the idea of using the knowledge I acquired merely for material betterment. Later on, however, in other duties I found the advantage of the time spent in these studies, w’hich lasted from the time I was seventeen until I was twenty-two. My first attachment to any kind of organisation was to a branch of the Irish National League, as it was called at that time. My reason for belonging to it was that I was interested in Irish politics and literature, and I was a very strong supporter of the Home Rule claim. At that time I began to go to public meetings, to write essays and letters to the newspapers. Also about this time I began to feel a larger interest in public subjects and social problems generally. I was attached to a local literary society and used frequently to go to the debating forums both at Manchester and at Oldham.

While I was in the mill I was a member of the Piecers’ Union, but the part I took in public work and my attendances at meetings caused me to be invited to help a newly-formed organisation, “The Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union.” For about a year I served, quite freely and without any pecuniary recompense, the branch of the Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union which had been established in the district in which T lived. After some time the post of organiser in that society was offered to me. I accepted it and left the mill. The terms which were paid to me could hardly be dignified -by the name of salary, for they began at thirty • shillings a week, though that was a little more than I was earning-at the mill. I have no vivid experiences to tell, or, indeed, any experiences out of the common. Not very long after this, for I had been doing trade union work for only about two years, I married, and it would be impossible for me to exaggerate the ainount of sympathy and help which were thus brought into my 'life, the conditions of which, in my J

opinion, are absolutely needed to enable a man to work with his whole heart.