OUR LEGISLATORS’ OCCUPATIONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1080, 27 March 1913, Page 4

OUR LEGISLATORS’ OCCUPATIONS.

The table in the Year Book showing the occupations ot the members or the House of Representatives suggests that however the personnel of the House apd the strength of Parties may change, the representation of occupations remains much the same. For the purposes of the Government Statistician the occupations of the human race are divided into five main divisions—professional, domestic, commercial, transport and communication, and indpstrial, —and if a man belongs to none of these, he is put down as a gentleman, which may mean a person of independent means or one engaged in no useful employment. The following table shows how these main divisions have beep represented in the last four is, since the number of European members was raised to seventy-six

present House contains eleven lawyers, in addition to a law student, and four journalists, while none of the really useful professions supplies more than one representative. The domestic division and the transport division are both vacant, as they have been since the Parliament of 1902, when a hotel-keeper and a coach proprietor struggled against overwhelming odds to keep their occupations on the list. The commercial division seems to be growing less representative, six merchants and three shopkeepeis keeping company with three commission agents and a land-broker, where in former da vs as many as eight occupations were represented. Farmers, sheep-farmers, runholders, graziers, and stock-owners are the backbone of the industrial division, accounting for twentyseven ot the thirty-six members placed under that heading. The manual workers do not seem to be represented in the new House by a single member of their own class,.unless two painters and the secretary of a workers’ union can be brought under this description. Obviously, the farmers —next, of course, to the lawyers and the journalists—are the section of the community over-represented in Parliament, and the workers the grossly under-represented.—Lyt-telton Times.

Occupation. 1902. 190S-1908-1911. Professional 17 19 20 21 Domestic 1 0 0 0 Commercial 20 *7 14 13 Transport 1 0 0 0 Industrial 32 32 35 3 6 Gentleman 5 8 7 6 Totals 7 6 76 76 76 The professional division in the