LATE MR PEMBER REEVES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 142, 18 May 1932, Page 8

LATE MR PEMBER REEVES.

NEW ZEALAND POLITICS. The record of the work of the late Mr Pember Reeves in New Zealand politics was one of which any statesman would have reason to be proud. The first public evidence of his preparation for the days of that record was give in a “Pharos, written by him during his first Parliamentary service, and published not long before the great Btrike of 1890, says the Dominion. The brochure was recognised at once as a masterly compilation, written in a workmanlike style, the work evidently of a man who had studied the chief features of schemes drawn up at various’ times by noted philanthropic writers of the world for the improvement of the condition of the masses. During Mr Reeves’s tonure of the Labour portfolio the most advanced Factory Act in the world was passed, the status of the workers on land and sea was considerably improved, a weekly half-holiday was secured in every department of industry, and the most practical and hopeful of all possible plans for the reasonable settlement of industrial disputes was adopted. The early history of the Labour Department was to some extent also the history of its first Minister. In other respects the departure of Mr Reeves from New Zealand for England was a loss to the Ministry of the day. Every teacher and inspector regarded him as almost the.: ideal Minister of Education. Well educated himself, possessing literary talents of the highest order, he ruled the Department of Education with intelligence, sympathy, vigilance, and judgment. WORK IN ENGLAND.

It was 1 inevitable that a man of Mr Reeves’s culture and capacity should make an impression in England, and it was not long after he retired from office that he became absorbed into the world of big bsuiness, where,, he retained his hold ever since. In 1902 he had become a member of the Senate of the University of London, and in 1908 he was appointed Director of the London School of Economics. Ho remained Director, and on the Senate, until 1919. Two years before that (in. 1917) he had become chairman of the National Bank of New Zealand, and it is chiefly as such that he has latterly been known. In addition to the work already mentioned, he was a member of the Pacific Cable Board and of the Commercial Intelligence Committee of the Board of Trade. He was also a member of the British Royal Commission which inquired into the shipping rings. Mrs Reeves, who was Miss Magdalen Stuart Robison, of Christchurch, is the author of several books, including “Round About a Pound a Week,” and their daughter has written several novels under the pen name of Amber Reeves.

Law, journalism, literature, politics, education, and high finance all played a part in Mr Reeves’s remarkable career. He had resided in England for the past 33 years, though he paid visits to his homeland on several occasions.