LABOR PARTY IN AUSTRALIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2150, 5 August 1907, Page 4

LABOR PARTY IN AUSTRALIA.

CAREER OF MR. HUGHESThe Home people have now had the opportunity of hearing both Mr. Deakin, Prime Minister, and Mr. Hughes on the Labor Party in the Commonwealth. Mr. Hughes was chairman of the Australian Royal Commission on Navigation, tho report of which was so much in evidence before the Navigation Conference; he was a dolegate to that conference, and was also Minister for External Affairs in Mr. Watson’s Commonwealth Labor Government in 1904.

Mr Hughes has attracted much notice at Home, and is the subject if a biographical notice in the Daily Mail, which remarks: “Mr. Hughes is an Englishman, born in London, who went to New South Wales twen-ty-one years ago to seek his fortune. His career from that day to this has been a romance in real life.

“In England he was a school-tea-cher, and on arriving in Queensland he applied for employment in the Education Department. He was engaged at a remuneration which he subsequently discovered would not keep him, much less allow of saving. A determined man, he decided to strike out on his luck. Here is an incident which followed immediately: “ ‘I was going from Maryborough, Queensland,’ he told a Daily Mail representative, ‘to Gympio, and got

off tlio rond. For throe days I had no food whatsoever, and was without water for twenty-four hours. Thon I struck some shellfish, and for nino days that was my only food. This wus roughing it with a vengoance. To make matters worse, I was crpssing a creek ono day, with my shirt, socks, soino clothes, and boots wrapped up in my sleeping blanket, and fixed to my shoulders, whon I found myself in a doep hole. Down I wont, and my bundle went on by itßelf. I lost ovorything, and in that sorry plight I had to wander about until I found shelter in a timber-getter’s hut. I don’t want that experience again, for in Queensland you bake by day and freeze by night—with no clothing.” “Nothing daunted, Mr. Hugheß obtained employment on a sheop station boundary. Thon ho went ehoop droving, sad in this capacity a herd a journey of 1600 miles. Tlio construction department of the railway next claimed him, and afterwards ho worked on coast vessels for six months. Mr. Hughes holds now an ordinary seaman’s discharge. “His day came in 1890 with the groat industrial upheaval which Baw tho formation of the Labor Party. Ho took an active part in the agitation, and was one of the founders af the ‘solidarity’ labor Party.’ ” It was in 1894 that he entered tho Now South Wales Assembly, and in 1901 he entered the Federal House of Representatives for West Sydney. In 1903 he was admitted to the New South Wales Bar. He is president of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, secretary of the Sydney Wharf Laborers’ Union, and president of the New South Wales Carters’ Union.