A FINE BIOGRAPHY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21314, 15 October 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

A FINE BIOGRAPHY

"RUTHERFORD WADDELL"

TtY K OTA UK

Not many men in New Zealand's history have been accorded the honour of a full-dress biography. And even of that few some have been thus dignified through the enthusiasm of a small group of friends or the vanity of a coterie. The handsome volume " Rutherford Waddell, Memo : r and Addresses," is a worthy tribute to one of the most remarkable men that ever served the New Zealand public. No man in our brief annals has better deserved such recognition. And it would be difficult to suggest any improvement in the work as it has been done by Professor Collie. The professor is a stylist, a literary artist of a quality very rare in the. Dominion. With such a theme and such an editor " Rutherford Waddell " fulfils in every detail the publisher's claim that it is "an important contribution to New Zealand literature." Here you may follow the making of a man who was to leave a deep mark on the life of the country to which ho came almost by accident. The story is told with affection and skill. It is always interesting to speculate how far a man of mark who makes a distinctive contribution to the thought and character of the Dominion has been formed by local conditions, and how far ho owes his inspiration to the factors that operated on him before he plunged into the life of the colony. Samuel Butler began " Erewhon " while he was sheep farming in Canterbury; he sets the scene of his Utopia among the foothills of the Alps. But all the thought he brought with him from the Homeland. We contributed practically nothing to it. It would have been \yritten in practically the same form if he had never walked our fields and lifted his eyes to our mountains. Perhaps the fact that around him a new world was rounding into form may have suggested to Butler that he could make a very much better world if he could begin again ab initio. But otherwise Butler was simply an Englishman who happened to spend a few years in Canterbury. Ambitions Rutherford Waddell was an Irishman. He was made in all essentials when he landed in New Zealand. But New Zealand did more than provide him with a field for an unusually successful career. He responded at once to the conditions of a new country. He was determined that so far as lay in his power he would pour into the life of New Zealand the best of the things the old land had wrought in himself, and that, if he could manage it, the conditions that hampered life in his homeland would not get a firm footing here. I knew him intimately over many years, and I never knew him fail either in proclaiming that double message or in conforming his own life, to it. He was an enthusiast for education. In his youth he seems to have suffered from the attentions of a schoolmaster who believed that the chief instrument of education was the cane. His schooldays were one long misery of fear and hate. He came to associate learning with wretchedness. As soon as his voice was regarded by any section of the New Zealand public he set himself to introduce into our education system the principles of Froebel. With that finespirited publicist, Mr. Mark Cohen of the Dunedin Evening Star, he founded the free kindergartens that before long were a conspicuous part of the life of the southern city. He was not going to let the children of New Zealand suffer as ho had suffered in his boyhood days. Reformer There was always in him that combination of idealism with practical common sense that has marked all great reformers. He could dream dreams and then he could make them come true. He had seen something of industrial conditions in Ireland. To his horror he found that in this fresh young land the sweating of labour was already an established fact in some of our infantile industries. When he probed deeper he discovered that Hood might have written his tragic " Song of the Shirt " with his eye on what had become a commonplace in New Zealand factories. With all his gentleness he ever was a fighter. He threw down the gauntlet. His challenge was greeted at first with denial and derision. But his powerful denunciations in the press and on the platform could not be shrugged aside. He had made his name in the journalistic world, and he immediately had the press behind him. Sir George Fenwick of the Otago Daily Times and Mr. Cohen of the Star threw their potent influence into his campaign. He won a great victory of which every worker in New Zealand since then has shared some of the fruits. The revelations ho made during those hectic days thrilled the country with horror and shame. There were women who worked all day and on to three o'clock in the morning. This desolating torture of toil produced for them 12s 6d a week. Shirts were paid for at the rate of 8d a dozen. With twelve hours work a day a worker might manage perhaps fifteen or sixteen shirts. And there were other conditions even worse. " Shall we sit down here and allow a system to suck the souls out of the lives of our women and men ?" he demanded of a vast audience in Dunedin. " I much mistake this large meeting if that is so. I think we shall take this system with all its aiders and abbettors, place them high up on the pillory of public opinion for all men's scorn—yea, till the very geese take courage and hitfs derision at them." Man of Letters He was the first president of the Tailoresses' Union which was formed as the direct, result of his masterful campaign. And a cancer that might have corrupted the whole of New Zealand industry was cut out of the social body before it had a chance to spread. There was magnificent courage behind it all, there was a splendid idealism always characteristic of the man, and there was a strong dominant mind that brought all the decent public opinion in the land into the firing-line with him. Dr. Waddell was for many years the most distinguished preacher in the Dominion. His moral fervour, his sound I scale of values, his literary knowledge and grace, his gifts of dramatic presentation and tho impact of a personality that gripped and held by its quiet intensity and conviction made him tho chief formative power in thousands of lives that have left their impress on tho life of the Dominion. Ho published a dozen or so volumes that were always marked by a sense of stylo unique among the literary men of the Dominion. Ho was a born journalist. All over New Zealand are myriads that owe their first perceptions of literary taste to his essays and addresses. Ho has poured into the lifo of U»e Dominion impulses and ideals and asp6witions that will go on touching it to higher issues long after tlioso. that knew him in tho flesh have made way for a newer generation. The man behind this rich legacy to our national life you will see in his habit as he lived, in Professor Collie's memoir. " Rutherford Waddell " is a book that every lover of New Zealand literature should read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. And all that iove the best things, the abiding tilings in our national lifo, will draw rich inspiration and comfort from a great story boautifully told.