EMIGRANT'S SUCCESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19303, 16 April 1926, Page 13

EMIGRANT'S SUCCESS.

NEW CANADIAN MINISTER.

ENGLISH YOUTH'S CAREER. HEAD OF NATIONAL RAILWAYS. [from our own correspondent.] TORONTO, March 13. Twenty-four years ago Charles Dunning, who this week entered the Canadian Government, was a moulder's.apprentice in a foundry in England. He was then a sickly youth of 17, and had been working since he was 11. His doctor told him lie was committing suicide to stay in a foundry. So lie scratched together enough i money to buy a passage to Canada, located in Saskatchewan and got a job as "hired man."

At the end of the month the hired man was fired. He hired out to another farmer. At the end of the year, the boy decided he knew enough about a farm to run one of his own. For £2 lie got possession of a homestead from the Government and was launched on an independent career. Mr. Dunning's entry into the Canadian Government may well turn out to be an event of prime importance. He is aggressive, fearless and ambitious. He is an organiser—in many respects the type of man the nation has been looking for. His politics,are said to be radical. ,He is a low-tariff man—so far, uncompromisingly. Protectionists picture his advent into Federal politics as an offence to Eastern Canada. And, by the same token, Western Canada, regardless of politics, gives him a national hero's send-off. The West regards him as a probable future Premier of Canada. Co-Operative Marketing. Mr. Dunning's private career is a romance. When lie homesteaded in 1903 his first crop was trivial. Worse than that, prices were trivial. On the long trail to market with his first load of wheat he met a neighbour returning. Dunning learned that at the elevators (which had a " gentleman's agreement") wheat was fetching only 39 cents. He left his wheat by the road and turned his oxen homeward. The incident marked the beginning, in Dunning's mind, of an agitation which has revolutionised marketing and, perhaps, political conditions in Western Canada. Seven years later the grain growers' movement was under way. A convention was called. Charles Dunning was selected as delegate from Beaverdale, on condition that lie could keep liis expenses down to £2 10s—prosperity had not yet arrived either to Dunning or to his neighbours at Beaverdale, Saskatchewan. Dunning went to the convention; ho got hotel accommodation —the janitor's bunk in the .basement—by helping to stoke the furnace and thus conserved his allowance. At the convention lie made a speech. "Platform" they called as soon as they saw how he was handling himself. And at the end they elected him a director of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association.

Next year he was made first secretary of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, and by 1913 he was general manager of the province's, co-operative marketing organisation. The Government sent liim to Europe to investigate credits and rural conditions generally. Thereafter he was recognised as one of Canada's foremost authorities on grain growing and marketing. In the pinch of the war he was made Director of Food Production in Canada. Premier of Saskatchewan. In the midst of his activities in the grain growing organisations, Mr. Dunning was elected to the Legislature and was made a member of the Provincial Government, holding in succession several portfolios. Four years ago Mr. Dunning, still only 37 years old, became Premier of Saskatchewan. He has now resigned that office to join the Federal Government. At Ottawa Mr. Dunning is to be Minister of Railways. In a sense, he will be Sir Henry Thornton's "boss." And he will be responsible to the public for the success or otherwise of Canada's National Railway system—a man-sized job for the quondam immigrant boy. A feature of his career is that, although he was in the forefront of the farmers' movement on the co-operative side, he would never have anything- to do with the farmers' political movement. He always remained a Liberal. Thus it was that, while even old Conservative provinces like Ontario in a stampede elected a farmer government, Saskatchewan, the seedbed of the movement, never had anything but a Liberal Government. To-day Mr. Dunning is supposed'to hold Saskatchewan in the hollow of his hand. If you walk into the new minister's office you may find him with his feet on the mahogany desk, and when he speaks to you lie may drop his "h's" but not his feet. Also, his hat may remain on his head. But if you talk to him you will soon forget about the hat in: admiration of the brains under it.