impressed with the fact that the mechanics he met when he first came to this part of the world were more robust than those he had known in England, and were, apparently, quite a different class of men. He saw that the working classes were rapidly developing an independent spirit, and were asserting themselves with an insistence that was likely to be a very important factor in the colony’s future. Up to 1890, neither the artizans nor the lower working classes were represented in New Zealand’s Parliament as a section of the population that should be treated with special consideration. There were in the House of Representatives men like Mr. Seddon, who had worked hard with their hands. Sir Harry Atkinson once stated that he had considered himself passing rich when his wages were 4s. 6d. a day, and other members boasted of their exploits in driving teams of bullocks, building their own houses, and erecting fences on their own properties; but these members had other interests than those of labour to attend to. Many of them, indeed, were antagonistic to the demands of labour, and turned a deaf ear to supplications for assistance from those who had come to the colony at the invitation of the State and found that there was no work for them to do.
From the beginning, Mr. Seddon looked forward hopefully to the time when the working classes would have their own representatives, and not rely on men who gave them only a small share of attention. He was convinced that they did not possess as much representation as they were entitled to, and to that defect in the Legislature he attributed the absence of measures that would alleviate distress and make life in lower grades more worth living. He took every occasion to champion the interests of the railway servants, who were the principal sufferers of Atkinson’s retrenchment policy.
To school teachers he was a good friend and protector. He spoke in indignant tones of the treatment given to them. Even then he had in his mind the teachers’ superannuation scheme he was able to put into operation in 1905. A remark made in the House turned his attention to the teachers’ position, and he was surprised to learn in 1883 that the colony possessed no fewer than 1,227 competent teachers who received less than £100
