BRITAIN'S PREMIER.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 186, 24 July 1923, Page 5

BRITAIN'S PREMIER.

SOME INTERESTING STORIES. MAN OF SIMPLE TASTES. Extracts given below from a variety of newspapers illustrate aspects of the new British Pnme Minister’s character and career:— During the war Mr. Baldwin was oppressed by the consciousness that ho could not make the sacrifices for the country which the youth of the nation was so cheerfully rendering. He accordingly had his whole private fortune valued and contributed onefourth part of the valuation to the Exchequer as a free-will offering. The world hears of this incident in his career probably for the first time now. P ’ i.* ■” G * las spent the best years of Ins life among his fellow working men and women, and has carried out the highest traditions of the best private firms in his regard for their interests. As one working man was Heard to remark when he heard the news that Mr. Baldwin was made Prime Minister: “There is one thing to be said: we have got a working man’s Prime Minister.”—The Morning Post. SYMPATHY WITH THE WORKERS. in “ e , “ at * reached the mature age of 40 when he came down into the rough and tumble of politics, and had had time to gain a great deal of industrial experience. This lesson was learnt not from the directors’ table but from a sympathetic understanding of the problems of working men and women. In a notable speech delivered when he was President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Baldwin asked manufacturers to devote more attention to the human factor in industry. Speaking as a business man, he recalled the fact that at the time when he entered his father’s business he knew the Christian names of hundreds of the workers, and he deplored the way in which the employing class had during the last half-century drifted away from those whom they employed. )He put the responsibility for rehumanising industry upon the large j employers. These are not the sentiments commonly ascribed to the “diehard” reactionary in the Socialists’ i nightmare. Life offers Mr. Baldwin no keener enjoyment than to tear himself away from London for a few leisure hours in his Worcestershire homo in the company of his dogs and his pigs.— The Times.

As a business man he had a strong sense of social responsibility. The idea of Disraeli, that the landed gentry of England owe it to themselves to improve the lot of their labourers, he tried to adapt to trade. When there was a lockout, he continued to pay the wages of his employees. His aim of introducing by means of kindness and consideration, a new spirit of fellowship between employers and employed may be impracticable, but there is no doubt of his sincerity in pursuing it.—Daily Herald.

FOUR FAMOUS SISTERS. “The four remarkable sisters”— that phrase occurs again and again in memoirs of the family of Mr. Baldwin. It concerns his mother and three other daughters of the late Rev. George B. Macdonald. Their story is quite romantic. Alice married Mr. Lockwood Kipling, father of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Agnes became Lady Poynter, wife of the painter.

Georgina became Lady BurneJones, and her beauty inspired her husband in the painting of that saintly type of woman that is the BurneJones woman. Indeed she was regarded in her own home as a saint as well as a beauty. Louisa married Mr. Alfred Baldwin, the ironfounder, who established the great firm of Baldwins. Thus she is the mother of a Prime Minister. Mr. Baldwin’s mother married an engineer who was to become a millionaire, but she worked hard, none the less, and she has written a novel, “Richard Dare,” a volume, “Where Town and Country Meet,” a book of fairy tales. “The Pedler’s Pack,” and one of the most noteworthy series of ghost stories, “The Shadows on the Blind.’’

Mr. Baldwin’s father and his brothers were conspicuously good looking—one of the brothers posed lor a painting of St. John the Baptist.—London Evening News. SIMPLE TASTES.

He is a man of middle height, of light brown complexion, of an expression at once shrewd, humorous, and tranquil. You cannot imagine him in a passion either of temper or of words. He has not a particle of the love of the limelight or ot the command of picturesque language which makes for dramatic scenes and presents one as the centre of enthusiastic plaudits fro man intoxicated crowd.

Everything about him is studiously—it might almost be said coquettishly—simple; his clothes are simple almost to shabbiness—so commonplace and so usual as to shock the scathing critic of th© Tailor and Cutter. He is an inveterate smoker; but again you never sec him with a cigar—a cigarette he probably despises—but with the briarroot pipe that you associate with the trade union leader of democratic habits in smoking as in other things.— Mr. T. P. O’Connor in the Daily Telegraph. A GENEROUS ACT. Mr. Baldwin is popular in Bewdley (the division of Worchestershire for which he is M.P.) One story will serve to show how he has earned the affection of the division. When are war broke out he offered to pay the friendly society contributions of all men from tho division while they were away on service. In the division there are about 100 lodges and courts of various societies, with 10,000 or more members. The number of members which were called out was considerable—many thousands. Mr. Baldwin has ‘never disclosed the actual amount he paid.—Birmingham Post*.