SIR J. G. FINDLAY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 76, 20 September 1911, Page 3

SIR J. G. FINDLAY

yn-IE CAREER OF AX INVOICE CLERK SVHAT CHARACTER, TALENT AXE INDUSTRY MAY ACCOMPLISH. C - X," in Waimate Witness). Sir J. G. Findlay is spoken of as $ probable candidate, for the Egmont elec torate. As to what his ultimate decision may be in that respect I do not profess to know, hut of the man, hi; career, his intellectual gifts, his force of will and his unaided rise to the summit of his profession and to a very distinguished place in public life, I know sufficient to feel that no ordinary difficulty will keep him out of Parliament. A man's past record is usually a safe guide to the possibilities of his future. Little more than -25 years ago Sir John Findlay was making out invoices and doing other clerky work of an unimposing and modest kind in the office of his uncles, Findlay and Co., timber

merchants, Dunedin. After office hours he "swatted" throughout the night for his "matric" with persistent and untiring industry. He had then cut out his career for himself «t a time when most young fellows are immersed in the lighter and more trivial things of life. Ho had a small room—a sort' of bed-sitting-room affair—in the vicinity of the Water of Leith. From a, very cleair recollection of the street, I shouldn't say he paid more than eighteen shillings a week, and I am pretty positive he hadn't much more to give. His landlady used to tell in an awed whisper how young Findlay sat up through the night with his books under a kerosene lamp. His books, his ways and his talk, so different from the ordinary young fellow of twenty-one or twenty-two were no doubt a mystery to her. He found his only pleasure or recreation in these times of preparation for the life he had marked, out for himself in long rough-and-tumble walks over the hills that environ Dunedin, turning up at all hours, but always and unceasingly "swatting." j Then he passed his exams, left the I city and hung out his shingle as a lawyer ! at Palmerston South, a poor, joyless, . frozen-out town, without life enough to j quarrel itself into occasional litigation. I remember seeing him there once. He I was on horseback, having returned from I a court held at a neighboring township, I and the bright, alert, assured look on ' his face was indicative of that commendable self-sufficiency, which, when acconipanied by brains, is a big element »f success. I It was in Palmerston that he met his I future wife, but neither the joys of , courtship nor the demands of his profes-. sion kept him from his studies. He worked and toiled along consistent and j rigorously defined lines. Dogged deter- I mination does it, and character does it, : and young Findlay had -both. liaek j again to Dunedin lie came, took his j L.L.D. degree with distinction and at I the. first go, and he began speedily to make a reputation for himself. He soon established a name as one of the com-: ing men in his profession, and proved ' that as a reasoner, a cross-examiner anu j a pleader at the liar he had few superiors in New Zealand. Fortune smiled ' on him; business poured in and in all weighty cases he was briefed as a leader. His march up the ranks was rapid, and I in a few years he took an unchallenged , place in the forefront of the profession. A judgeship had been more than once I within his reach, hut it surprised no' one to hear that it would not pay him to take it. iHis present ambition is the leader-, ship of the Liberal Party, and who will I say (hat such a man wiil be denied the fulfilment of bis aspiration? lie lias already, in a few years, played a large i and distinguished part in public affairs and has ascended to the level of genuine statesmanship. I Little more than a quarter of a cen- ' lury ago an invoice clerk in a timber yard; to-day Attornev-Oeneral. Colonial Secretary, Leader in the Legislative Council, in the front rank of his profes- i sion. Sir J. (J. Findlay. and still on the sunnv hide of 50!