MAN TO MEET A CRISIS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 127, 31 May 1937, Page 7

MAN TO MEET A CRISIS

PREMIER’S CAREER DILIGENT, CAPABLE, UPRIGHT Mr Arthur Neville Chamberlain was born in 1863, the son of Joseph Chamberlain and his second wife, and is five years younger than his halfbrother Austen, who died a few weeks ago. He was educated at Rugby and Mason College, Birmingham, and when quite young was sent by his father to the Bahamas. There he managed an estate, but he returned to his native city and met with success as a manufacturer. In 1911 he entered the Birmingham City Council and became chairman of its townplanning committee, and in 1915-16 he was Lord Mayor. During his tenure of the mayoralty the Birmingham Municipal Bank, the only institution of the kind in England, was estabT lished, and he began to gain the mastery of the housing question which later impressed many people. During the early part of the World War he was an active member of the Central Board of Control of the Liquor

Traffic, under the Munitions Act, and in December, 1916, he was appointed by Mr Lloyd -George to the post of Director of National Service. His schemes for co-ordinating military and civil employment met with much opposition, however, and in 1917 he resigned. Enters Parliament In the General Election of the following year he entered Parliament as member for the Ladywood Division of j Birmingham, and from October, 1922, to March, 1923, he was Postmasteri General, while in 1923 he also became Minister of Health. In this capacity he was responsible for the Housing and Rent Restrictions Acts of 1923, and in August of that year Mr Stanley Baldwin appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had not, however, presented a Budget before the Government fell. On the formation of the second Baldwin Administration in 1924, Mr Chamberlain might have gone to the Exchequer again had he so desired, but he preferred the Ministry of Health, with its opportunities of social improvement—the work he had at heart. In this office he carried through in 1926 the complicated Rating and Valuation Act and a great extension of the Pensions Acts