Chapter XIV.
Labour Legislation.
It has been possible in this account of Mr. Seddon’s career to follow the history of the Liberal Party in the order in which important events have occurred, touching upon each in turn and in its proper place. With Mr. Seddon’s appointment to the Premiership, however, there began an extraordinary period of legislative activity. Measure followed measure with astonishing rapidity, and a far-reaching policy in one department of public affairs ran parallel with an equally comprehensive and sensational policy in another department. These policy measures were largely experimental in their operation, and they had to be amended in almost every session of Parliament. It is, therefore, not easy to keep strictly to the general course of events during Mr. Seddon’s Premiership. A better plan is to take each subject separately and briefly sketch its scope and the results it has brought about.
As the Ministry was generally known at first as a Labour Government, it seems fitting that its labour legislation should be placed at the head of the list of its achievements.
Nobody claims that no labour legislation was passed in New Zealand before the Liberal Party came into power in 1891. From its earliest days the colony has been of an experimental turn of mind, and among its very early enactments there are measures dealing with the conditions under which daily work is carried on. Those who left the Old Country to build up a new nation in the furthermost ends of the earth brought with them new ideas and new conditions, and they frankly expressed a hope that the bad features of life in the country they were leaving would not be perpetuated. This may account largely for the readiness with which the experimental legislation of 1891-1906 has been accepted by the people of the colony.
223
