Tregear's Work for Labour.

Mr. Tregear's first office under the State when he was transferred from his professional duties in the Survey Department to the world of newly-organised labour was Secretary of the Bureau of Industries. Then he was Chief Inspector of Factories, and in 1898 Mr. Seddon appointed him the first Secretary of the new Department of Labour. This position he held until his retirement from the Government service on superannuation in 1912. His inborn sympathy with the under-dog, his intense humanitarian sentiments, and his progressive views on industrial matters commended him at once to Mr. Seddon; the two men had a great deal in common in their broad-based hatred of anything like oppression of the weak and the suffering. Seddon had the driving force, the bullock-like strength, and the dogged tenacity needful for pressing through reform legislation.

Tregear had the ideals, the brains, and the insight and education necessary in the initiation and framing of the new laws, some of which were, in those days, considered quite revolutionary. He devised and framed much of the early labour legislation. Mr. F. W. Rowley, who was Secretary for Labour at a later period, and who has written a book on “The Industrial Situation in New Zealand” (1931), says of the pioneer of the Department that probably Mr. Tregear's only disappointments were that the legislation was not page 20 page 21 rapidly enough proceeded with, and that it sometimes did not reach far enough. “He held Socialistic views, and in writing to one of his numerous correspondents abroad remarked that we in New Zealand had barely touched the fringe of the Socialistic government.”

Mr. Rowley recollects, also, what was at the time a famous memorandum issued by Mr. Tregear to the Premier, Mr. Seddon. “In this memorandum attention was called to the then surprising fact that when the first new awards of the Court of Arbitration had been brought into operation the employers had in many cases added the costs of the increased wages to their prices instead of paying it out of their own pockets. Such a movement on the part of the employers had been quite unexpected, and it was thought called for drastic action. The memorandum was considered by the Premier to be of sufficient importance to be printed and laid before Parliament.”

Another note from Mr. Rowley: “Mr. Tregear was always exceedingly busy with an enormous amount of literature and correspondence on labour and other social questions arriving by every mail from various other countries as well as New Zealand, and although he had an unusually large table in his room it was so constantly piled to overflowing that he never had any clear space on which to write. At last he suggested that if we could let him have

The Hapuawhenua viaduct, Main Trunk Line, North Island, New Zealand. This viaduct is built with a ten chain curve, is 932ft. long, and 147ft. above the centre of the gully.

a smaller table it would not be possible to get so much on to it, which was done.”

All manner of social and industrial reforms, the amelioration of workers' conditions of labour, life and pay, came under Mr. Tregear's sympathetic care in his official career. He chiefly shaped much of the legislation in the Seddon and Ward regimes on such subjects as industrial conciliation and arbitration, shops and factories, workers' compensation, advances to workers, shearers' accommodation, and the abolition of the truck system on large contract works.

At the conclusion of his long and useful official career Mr. Tregear was awarded the honour of the Imperial Service Order by way of appreciation of his labours for the State. Perhaps he valued even more than that decoration the memory of certain words from the great Liberal Premier's lips. Mr. Seddon, it is recorded, once referred to Mr. Tregear as a man whose name was revered throughout the world in the cause of Labour reforms. No doubt, had he been inclined that way, there was a promising field in politics for the Secretary of Labour when he retired from his official post. But his tastes were otherwise. He had seen enough of the wrangles of the political world; he had had enough of noise and stir and strife. His books and his Maori-Polynesian studies engrossed him for the rest of his days. He lived a very quiet life in Picton, where he died in 1931, at the age of eighty-six years. A serenely peaceful fading-out of life. Edward Tregear could have soliloquised with the ancient Colla in Ossian's warrior pages, philosophically viewing the many-coloured past:

“Friends of my youth … the darkness of age comes like the mist of the desert. My shield is worn with years! My sword is fixed in its place. I said to my soul, Thy evening shall be calm, Thy departure like a fading light!”

“When a total stranger accosts me in the street and tells me he objects to my smoking (as a man did yesterday) I consider he is guilty of gross impertinence,” wrote an indignant correspondent of a London daily, adding “I might just as justifiably tell him I object to the cut of the suit he is wearing. If people had always minded their own business and refrained from meddling with other people's the pages of the historian would make pleasanter reading.” Hear, hear! Although tobacco cranks are growing scarcer every day there are still those who would gladly see smoking made a criminal offence. Yet tobacco can be as harmless as fresh air, provided it's good. If you find smoking is affecting heart or nerves your tobacco is at fault, and contains too much nicotine. The toasted New Zealand is the best. Almost free from nicotine—eliminated by the toasting—all four brands, (Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) are not only delightful smoking but absolutely innocuous.*