FROM NAVVY TO PREMIER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9111, 2 April 1908, Page 6

FROM NAVVY TO PREMIER.

Referring to Mr Tom Price, who was employed aa a workman on the building of the Parliament House where he now sits as Premier Jin South Australia, the London Daily j Mail says : Mr Price hopes to arouse interest in Britian regarding South Ans- | traliat in the manner, though perhaps not in the style, adopted by Mr v Thomas Bent, Premier of "Victoria, at the time of the Imperial Conference The two men, though widely ■ different in many ways, have had somewhat similar careers. .Mr 3 Bent was a greengrocer before he took to politics, and Mr Price rose ", to the Premiership from the rank of •' navvy. Mr Price is a man of the people, :

a Welshmen, and an orator. .Quaint ; in his speech, with more candour , than culture, but animated with rugged fervour, he can sway audl- ; ences to a remarkable degree. Early in his political career, when s there was a known majority of one against a Factories Bill winch Mr Price desired to be carried into law he asked permission of the Minister to speak, but the Whip, knowing the seriousness of the position, sought to dissuade him. “I will get that vote,” said Mr Price. He started late at night, and in a few minutes the House was electrified. In dramatic fashion he® produced garments made in sweating dens, and told tales of miserable lives and starva- ; tion wages. When he sat down the division was taken and the Bill was passed. _ ~ . f The Premier was born in Denbigh- n shire in 185 a, but grew up in Liver- , pool. Education he obtained at a penny school and at a night school. ‘ 1 When I was about twelve years old,” he says, ‘‘someone told me I ; should go to Sunday school. I had no coat to wear, hut I saved 6d a week until I had enough to buy a second-hand one from a pawnshop. The sleeves were rather too long. I went to the school, and was placed in a class with a number of older boys—sons of landowners and wealthy men. One of them made remarks about my coat-sleeves. When school was coming out I struck him on the jaw, and again in the eye, and down he went to the bottom of the stairs. “Next Sunday the boys produced a bigger boy to ‘flatten me out,’ I finished him. I kept on at that school ■ until I became teacher and then superintendent, a position I held for , three years. Then I married the prettiest girl in the school, and she t is my wife to-day. I was Tom Price when I went to school, Tom Price superintendent, and I am Tom Price as Premier. ”