THE YEAR 1900 was a watershed in Ward’s life. For years he had struggled to be a politician, cabinet minister, ambassador for New Zealand abroad, active businessman, dutiful son, father and husband to a family he saw all too infrequently. The inevitable had happened. One link in the overstretched chain gave, threatening the whole. In the rearrangement of his priorities after 1897 superficial similarities in his lifestyle masked fundamental changes. While Ward remained a businessman, and for the rest of his life quite frequently described himself as ‘merchant’ on legal documents, others did the commercial work. The fact that he spent less time in Invercargill made this essential.
The principal change in Ward’s life came with the rearrangement of his family. Early in June 1900 the Wards took Hannah Ward Barron’s earlier advice and moved their home to Wellington.1 Now that he was number two in the Cabinet, he would be less able to get to Bluff at a time when his growing family needed him. With Hannah dead and Mina Tipping moving to Invercargill there was less to keep the family in Bluff. ‘Little Grandma’ de Smidt, Theresa’s mother, lived on until 1904, but she spent more time with the Hendersons in Invercargill.2 Cyril was already at school in Wellington, Vincent would soon join him there, and Eileen go to Teschemakers. In due course Gladstone would attend St Ignatius College in Sydney. Ward’s elevated status in Cabinet made the move to Wellington somewhat easier. It gave him access to the best ministerial house in Wellington. Vogel’s former home in Tinakori Road opposite the top of Hill Street was vacant, and could be rented for £200 per annum.3 This rambling establishment, now known as Premier House, had enormous reception rooms and even a small lift installed in Vogel’s time to enable the gouty gourmet to manoeuvre himself about. The Wards came to love ‘Awarua House’, the name they promptly gave it. Vincent had very happy memories of their twelve years there.4
The house was big enough for several servants to live in, and there was a large stable for Awarua and Ruapuke as well as two white ponies, Dick and Joe. Dogs roamed the property—a mongrel called Rip and a well-bred fox terrier called Rutland. At one stage several samoyeds joined the household, gifts from the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott. They had to be sold after fowls and sheep in the neighbourhood were savaged by them.5 Inside, the house was furnished luxuriously,6 and had some of the first gramophones in Wellington and a billiard table. Ward learned to enjoy billiards, although Vincent was rather scathing about his skill at the game. The drawing room contained some fine furniture which was crammed so tightly into the room that photographs make it look like an antique shop.
Awarua House from Hill Street, c. 1900. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Just as Bann Street in Bluff had been the centre of that town’s social circuit, so Awarua House came to dominate Wellington’s polite society. The Wards often held garden parties. Photos of them abound. Distinguished visitors to Wellington stayed. Lord Kitchener, Dame Nellie Melba, Clara Butt, Kennedy Rumford and Ben Tillet were house or dinner guests at various times. Katherine Mansfield was given a garden party in her honour in July 1908. A reporter described the scene that day. ‘The beautiful drawing room … was gay and bright with softly shaded lights and cheery fire, masses of flowers and graceful foliage plants, while the brilliant tea table, beyond the folding doors, was lit with a low-set crimson-shaded light.’ Theresa Ward was wearing ‘a most effective frock of black silk voile, the bodice opening over a fine underblouse of white lace’, while her guest wore a dark tweed suit with a hat wreathed in large purple asters. A fortune teller was much in demand, and drawings of pigs were sketched by blindfolded guests. The Ward family still possesses some of the drawings.7
Lady Ward’s drawing room, Awarua House. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Ward’s love of children meant that they were included in these occasions. Vincent’s memories of his father clearly date from the post-1900 period when the family suddenly possessed a father rather than some distant figurehead whose infrequent appearances, welcome though they had been, served only to dislocate domestic routine. While Ward was a stern disciplinarian and a prude when it came to sex, swearing or ribaldry, he was always ready to join the family in harmless jokes. When a pompous English visitor dined with them one evening they soon discovered that he was deaf in the ear nearest to his host. While Theresa, with some difficulty, shouted into the good ear, Ward mumbled from the other side, ‘don’t think I’m going to talk to you all night if you cannot bother to reply’. The children, in hysterics at this harmless humour, soon had to leave the table.
For political hospitality Awarua House came to rival 47 Molesworth Street. Visits from leading Wellington figures were a regular feature. The Governor, Lord Ranfurly, occasionally came to Sunday afternoon tea. An elaborate ‘At Home’ was held in his honour in November 1903, with most of the guests in top hats and long dresses.8 Cabinet members and MPs often came to the house on Saturday evenings to enjoy singing, billiards or Eileen’s piano-playing. Seddon, particularly when he was trying to reduce weight by regular horse-riding, would come by on his way home from the office. Vincent recounts the occasions:
I can remember hearing a loud voice calling, ‘Hatton, take my horse!’ and then the great King Dick would throw open the door and stride down the passage calling at the top of his voice, ‘Ward, where are you Ward?’ Strangely enough I never once heard my father call Mr Seddon ‘Dick’ or he call my father ‘Joe’ …. He would find my father in the billiard room and there gulp down a huge whiskey and soda, and then the house shook again as he made his way out of the house to mount his white horse and ride round [to] Oriental Bay.9
Lady Ward’s ‘At Home’ to Lady Ranfurly, Awarua House, 1903. From left, Mrs Seddon, Sir Joseph Ward, Lady Ranfurly, Lord Ranfurly, Lady Ward, Hon. R. J. Seddon.
It was a Catholic home. All the children went to Catholic schools. They worshipped as a family a few steps down Hill Street at the basilica. Theresa was warm, motherly, and a good provider. She supported Ward, but was never dominant. His needs ruled the establishment. Vincent recalls that his father never ceased working. His secretaries, Frank Hyde and Ben Wilson, would arrive at Awarua House early each morning with the mail and documents needing attention. Ward, in pyjamas and dressing gown, would deal with them over cups of tea. The aim was always to leave the rest of the day for speeches, interviews, and discussions with departmental officials. Occasionally an evening would be free for dinner with Archbishop Redwood,10 a visit to the British High Commission at Homewood to play bridge,11 or the theatre, which Ward loved. Where Seddon felt relaxed at a union gathering or a workingmen’s club, Ward increasingly sought out more refined society. Between them their connections linked the Liberal Government to a wide cross-section of Wellington life.
The new lifestyle meant some changes in Ward’s relationship with his constituency. Ward was much less visible in Southland. He relied more on friends and agents, especially Duncan King in Winton, to look after his interests. Messages could be left for him at the headquarters of J. G. Ward and Co. in The Crescent, and would be telegraphed through to Wellington. When Ward did come to town he did so with a blast of trumpets. Local officials would be tipped off weeks in advance; deputations were arranged; official functions and banquets carefully prepared. Ward’s visit to Bluff on Wednesday, 21 November 1900 was a classic example. Shops and offices were closed for the day and schoolchildren were given a holiday. Flags and bunting were erected: Hon J. G. Ward, Colonial Secretary, Postmaster General and Minister of Railways was coming to open the new Government Building next to the Club Hotel, to christen the Harbour Board’s new tug Theresa Ward, and to name an extension to the main street ‘Ward Parade’. About 800 people came down from Invercargill by special train. At noon the tug was launched by young Eileen; the ship’s namesake was pregnant again, and stayed in Wellington. The Bluff Band played the national anthem and the Mercantile Rifles fired several volleys. Ward then spoke on his favourite theme, progress. The tug was ‘another instance of the old order of things changing and yielding to the new’. The ship was the most up to date, a testament to the farsightedness of the Bluff Harbour Board—of which he was a member. He went on:
Cartoonist’s impression of Ward about 1900. Evening Post Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library.
It may not be out of place for me to state here that the event is one of peculiar interest to myself personally, as, coming to the Bluff when quite a child, I afterwards married a lady who was born here; and our daughter who has performed the christening ceremony today was born here; and although my official duties necessitate our at present living at the seat of Government in Wellington, it is a pleasure to know that a Theresa Ward will gracefully come and go about the Bluff, to which we are all so deeply attached.12
The opening of the new Government Building at Bluff, next to the Club Hotel, 21 November 1900.
By 3 pm the crowd had moved to the Government Building. In it was to be housed the Post Office. A small courtroom had been prepared upstairs. John Reed, the mayor, addressed the crowd from the window telling them it was all due to J. G. Ward, a sentiment which was heartily endorsed by the local Member. Southland, said Ward, was ‘advancing by leaps and bounds’. More volleys were fired and the national anthem played again. A procession then set off for Ward Parade, led by carriages in which were seated Ward, Eileen, the Hon. H. Feldwick MLC, the mayors of Bluff and Invercargill, the chairman of the Harbour Board, and an assortment of lesser lights. Groups representing the Bluff Band, local schoolchildren, the Invercargill City Band, the Mercantile Rifles, the Foresters, and the Awarua Boating and Cricket Clubs followed the vehicles to the next podium. For the third time Ward addressed the crowd. This time it was the turn of the chairman of the Harbour Board to tell the audience about the merits of J. G. Ward. More cheers, more rifle shots, and again the national anthem. The day closed with a banquet in the Drill Hall that lasted until after midnight. The menu consisted of roast turkey, duck, fowls, beef, lamb, ham and steak and kidney pies, with a large range of desserts. There were more speeches by Ward, a seemingly endless number of toasts, and even a song sung by the town’s guest of the day.12
The Liberal Government had always been ready to turn official occasions into semi-political rallies. By today’s standards excessive speech-making was not only second nature to politicians but it was part of the entertainment available before radio, cinema or TV. Ward excelled at it. He loved crowds; no praise ever sounded a false note to his ears. Each cheer from the crowd was one more reassurance that those who had wanted to drive him out of political life in the mid nineties had lost. As Anderson built up their combined wealth, Ward spun his children stories about his own business acumen, insisted that they would all have the best private education money could buy, and would never want for anything in their lives.13 Whatever insecurities he had grown up with as the child of an Irish Catholic solo mother were magnified many times over by the experiences of 1895–7. Money, wealth, power and the praise heaped upon him by his constituents were evidence that he had been right all along.
While relative simplicity gave way to greater ostentation in Ward’s lifestyle, his dedication to work never flagged. Within days of rejoining the Ministry he was deeply immersed in his portfolios. However, before leaving for Wellington after Christmas 1899, two important events required Ward’s attention. The first was the spectacularly patriotic fund-raising meeting in the Invercargill Theatre on 28 December. At this a series of speakers whipped the large audience into a lather of imperial fervour over the Boer War. Ward gained most cheers of the evening by labelling the Boers ‘an ignorant and superstitious people’. If they were not put down the effects would be felt in Egypt and India.14 Then there was the inevitable political banquet for Ward, staged this time by people of the ‘middle districts’ of Awarua. Seddon and the ailing McKenzie paid Ward the compliment of attending. It was Ward who got most mention in the press. The Otago Daily Times took the opportunity to make its peace. The editor referred to Ward as ‘far and away the most popular man in Southland’, and described him as a man of ‘unfailing geniality’ and ‘unvarying urbanity’. He seemed to possess ‘an inexhaustible stock of splendid optimism’.15 More flattery was in store. Early in March Ward paid a visit to Auckland where the Liberal Party presented him with a gold medal in recognition of his rejoining the Ministry. This Ward greatly prized. The north of the North Island was still something of an unknown quantity to this southerner. Its transport network was inferior to the South Island’s; it had been the subject of land squabbles and a war; the barriers to development were more complex than in the south. And yet Auckland possessed a mercantile sector that Ward found congenial, but in which he never quite felt at home.
Ward at the Wingatui races, 1900. At left, James (later Sir James) Mills.
By early February Ward was grappling with Post Office affairs. As with Railways and Public Works, the Liberals in true Vogelite fashion continued to use the Post Office as part of the policy of drawing disparate towns and settlements into one interconnected nation. New state operations such as advances to settlers payments and old age pensions joined the multitude of tasks already handled by Post Office staff. New telephone connections increased rapidly. In 1896 they were 5000; by 1904 the number was 12,000 and they were to reach 34,000 by the time Ward surrendered the Postmaster-Generalship in 1912. Telegraph services and the introduction of new technologies were also much on the Minister’s mind. His passion for gadgetry led Ward to appear often at the openings of new telegraph offices, where he would tap out the first telegram before a battery of cameras. His loyal Superintendent of Electric Lines, J. K. Logan, was often at his side.16 A major part of the expansion was in government business. So great did it become that Ward found it necessary in 1907 to dampen it with the introduction of official stamps which had to be affixed to telegrams marked OHMS.17
Ward’s greatest challenge with the Post Office was the introduction of universal penny postage. While domestic penny postage had been provided for in the Post Office Act 1891 the required Order in Council had not yet been signed.18 Ward was now more than ever convinced that a reduction in postal rates would ultimately expand revenue as people availed themselves of a popular, cheap service. So certain had he become that his financial calculations were correct that one of his first announcements on rejoining the Ministry was that universal penny postage, including letters posted in New Zealand for overseas destinations, would take effect from 1 January 1901. He instructed his department to begin negotiations with other countries to see whether they would agree to accept letters posted in New Zealand for Id without demanding any surcharge on delivery. Many countries agreed to this, although Germany, France and the United States held out against Ward’s idea, despite his impassioned plea at the Rome Universal Postal Union Conference in 1906. New Zealanders, however, were quick to take advantage of the cheaper rates that took effect following a round of official celebrations on New Year’s Eve 1900–1901.19 In the first year of universal penny postage the number of letters rose by 13 million, repeating the experience of parcels and newspapers a decade before. Ward’s anticipated immediate drop in revenue did not materialise, so great was the increase. The department produced a small surplus of £22,816.20
‘Joe Ward as the Angel of Light’ runs the caption of this 1900 cartoon. ‘Hon. J. G. Ward has promised a penny post that will cover the world.’
Ward had implicit faith in technology. The man who had the first ‘hush flush’ toilet in Bluff as well as gramophones in several rooms at Awarua House was quick to see the long-term advantages of cables and wireless. He resisted pressure for the government to recognise a pigeon service to Great Barrier Island, preferring to wait till a cable was installed—which it was in 1908.21 Stewart Island got its cable in 1904; the electorate of Awarua was always well looked after. Indeed, for many years following Ward’s elevation to the Postmaster Generalship in 1891 Bluff was the first South Island point of entry for all incoming overseas mail. It was sorted and redirected from Invercargill, thus providing extra employment in Southland. Other areas came to resent what they believed were unnecessary delays resulting from landing Australian mail at Bluff, especially when railway timetables to the north were often unreliable.22 Ward’s passion for gadgetry quickly persuaded him to approve the introduction of stamp machines outside post offices in 1905. He presided, too, over the first international wireless communication to Australia in 1908, and the following year decided that two high-powered Post and Telegraph transmitters should be installed, one at Awanui in the North Island, the other near Bluff.23
New services meant a steady increase in the number of Post Office employees; a total staff of 2225 in 1890 grew to 4454 by 1904. This expansion required new buildings. They were an important part of the Liberals’ electoral blandishments. Ward ensured that Southland did well. The handsome chateau-style Invercargill Post Office with its grand tower was opened just before the 1893 election. By 1900 a more uniform architectural style had been adopted—a standard two-storey, red brick and plaster construction— that became the hallmark of Ward’s building programme during his nearly twenty-three years as Postmaster General. By 1903 seven or eight such buildings were being constructed around the country each year.24 Again Ward’s electorate benefited. In August 1905, a few months before the election, Ward laid the foundation stone for a large post office in Winton.25 The building opened the following year and still has a huge plaque commemorating the occasion. It cost £2190. To this day it has remained the dominant edifice in that small settlement.26
As the Ministry pushed on with its policy of opening up new land for settlement, demands always followed for roads, bridges and railways. In December 1901 at the behest of locals in Waikaka and Waikaia in Southland Ward visited the area to discuss their desire for a rail link between Gore and Kelso. Ward told them it was government policy to ‘assist people who helped themselves in settling the country in the interior’, and that government ‘should give them railways to get their produce to the seaboard’. A few years later he wrote that the ‘duty of the State is to foster the industries of the country, cheapen the cost of transport, and by so doing assist in finding profitable employment for the people and remunerative markets for the fruits of their labour’. He asserted that there was ‘no more efficient means to these ends than State ownership of railways’. Lest anyone might think this a policy of selective subsidisation of sections in society Ward added that new rail construction should always be run in such a way that it returned a profit of 3 per cent on the capital cost of construction.27
The Ministry openly used its railway construction programme for political purposes. Announcements of intentions to build usually preceded a visit to the area by Seddon or Ward. Official openings provided platforms for speeches about progress. In Ward’s six and a half years as Minister of Railways construction of new track by the Public Works Department added an extra 354 miles to the national network. The total number of passengers carried during the period nearly doubled (from 5.4 million to 9.6 million) and the tonnage of goods and livestock increased by 50 per cent. Under the Liberals railways became the nation’s arteries, replacing coastal shipping. Their profits rose from £571,000 in 1900 to £812,000 in 1907.
For the most part, Ward carried on the railway policy he had inherited from Cadman. The state constructed new track as fast as finance allowed. Tracks in private ownership were bought and integrated into the national network, the last private one purchased being the Wellington-Manawatu Railway Co. in 1908. Railways ‘should all be controlled by the State’, Ward declared.28 Patronage of passenger services increased rapidly under Ward as a result of fare reductions. Within weeks of assuming office, Ward told the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce of his intentions,29 and a few weeks later a senior departmental official was summoned to Awarua House on a Sunday afternoon to be told by the Minister that he had decided to reduce all passenger fares, including season tickets, from 1 August 1900. The anticipated surplus in the accounts was enough to carry any reduction in revenue for that financial year, and he was certain that increased patronage would subsequently more than compensate for any initial loss. As with postal rates, Ward’s gamble paid off as profits soared.30
When Ward took over as Minister of Railways in 1900 the major uncompleted national project was the North Island Main Trunk line. In all it took fifty years to build. The hardest decisions related to the route to be followed between Te Awamutu in the north and Marton in the south. In 1884 a parliamentary select committee recommended what came to be known as the ‘central route’ because it was more direct than any alternative. However, it was also more difficult to construct. New track slowly snaked its way into the King Country following lengthy negotiations with Maori chiefs. Te Kuiti was reached in 1887, Taumarunui in 1903, with the line from the south reaching Taihape in 1904. But there had been a period of seemingly interminable official indecision in the 1890s over the best way to ascend the 2500 feet to the Central Plateau, thus completing the ninety-one-mile gap that would remain.31 The projected completion date kept being set back, some doubting whether Seddon’s assurance that the track would be completed by the end of 1908 would be fulfilled.32 As new settlement took place, public irritation with delays kept pressure on the Ministry. The huge Makatote viaduct was erected in the summer of 1906–7 and by the beginning of 1908 all that remained to be finished was a thirty-mile stretch over fairly flat land from Erua to Waiouru. This took another eight months to complete. The whole project opened up a large section of the central North Island. Ward eventually hammered in the last spike at Erua late in 1908, on the eve of the election.
Ward in full cry at the laying of the foundation stone of the Dunedin Railway Station, June 1904.
While construction was strictly the responsibility of William Hall-Jones, who was Minister of Public Works, Ward was required to meet the endless deputations from those urging faster progress. Each completed mile of track generated demand for equipment, rolling stock and personnel, as well. This had an immediate impact on the annual parliamentary vote for Railways, while the small towns that sprang up during the construction process, and which remained in a reduced state after completion, necessitated post and telegraph services provided by Ward’s other ministry. Railways, no less than the Post Office, required expenditure on buildings. During Ward’s tenure of office much upgrading of existing buildings was done, and several imposing structures were planned or built, none more impressive than Dunedin’s huge new railway station with its mosaic floors and cleverly contrasted building materials, regarded by some as the ‘culmination of four decades of solid Victorian building activity in Dunedin’.33 It was Ward who laid the foundation stone for it on 3 June 1904, a day of seemingly endless ceremony punctuated by lengthy speeches.34 A few days earlier on 28 May he had also laid the foundation stone for the Wellington Railway Station.
Ward knew that better services would always be appreciated by consumers. But he seldom overlooked the need for the state to look after the providers of those services, and to be a ‘good employer’. In the earlier part of 1902 he was working on a superannuation scheme for railway workers. The Government Railways Superannuation Fund Bill, which passed through Parliament during the session, was based on a similar measure working on the London and Northwestern Railway. The Bill established a fund into which was paid 3 per cent of railwaymen’s wages and matched by a sum of equal size paid in by the government as employer. On retirement a regular annuity would be paid to the worker. Ward was in his element when handling the Bill. He reeled off details about the actuarial considerations that had led him to fix the level of contribution at 3 per cent, and ended with a ringing declaration about the duty of the state to ‘make reasonable provision’ for its employees. ‘We ought in our day and generation … create a system which will hold out some inducement to those joining the service, and which will give relief to a large body of men who are trying to do their duty faithfully and well in a great department of State’, he told the House.35 The Bill received general applause from both sides of Parliament; election year was no time to seem parsimonious to the nation’s 8000 railway employees. Different in its method of funding from Ward’s earlier Civil Service Insurance Act, the Bill was another brick in the Liberal Government’s developing comprehensive system of government superannuation. New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to develop a state-funded and regulated system of superannuation for state employees.
Not surprisingly, other civil servants quickly wanted the same scheme enjoyed by railwaymen. Ward had built up a strong working relationship with the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Association during the 1890s and his announcement on 27 October 1900 that the government would formally recognise the union in negotiations over conditions of service quickly led to demands for superannuation. Ward invited the union’s executive to dine at Awarua House with other Cabinet Ministers, let them use Parliament Buildings for their conferences and raised salaries for Post Office employees across the board in 1907. He made significant changes to postal workers’ methods of classification and improved their overtime payments as well. The following year he reminded representatives about the rights of women workers to equal treatment. But it was not until the comprehensive Public Service Superannuation Act of 1907 that Post Office employees received the coverage earlier afforded railwaymen and teachers. Ward moved cautiously, but deliberately, on superannuation; after introducing the railwaymen’s scheme of 1902 he insisted that it be given time to prove itself actuarially before being extended to all civil servants. In the meantime the Postmaster General’s solicitude for other areas of union concern and his willingness to socialise with members and delegates of the Post and Telegraph Association, which represented nearly half the entire civil service at this time, meant that he continued to be held in high regard throughout the postal service. Railway-men felt the same. When Ward finally surrendered the reins of office in 1930 an editorial in the union magazine noted that ‘many of our members are today reaping in their old age the harvest of the humane seeds sown by Sir Joseph in the years gone by’.36
Between 1896 and 1912, 72 per cent of the total increase in the civil service work force took place in the Post Office and Railways.37 Attempts had been made with the Post Office in 1890 and Railways in 1896 to reform appointment procedures, placing them in the hands of designated departmental officials. Individual applicants and MHRs on their behalf still frequently applied directly to ministers’ offices for appointments. Ward’s office received thousands of applications a year. It was impossible for the Minister to deal with them personally, and he simply handed them down to the appropriate official. Sometimes, but not always, the recommendation of a friendly MHR was heeded.38 The Opposition believed this system of appointments enabled ministerial friends and supporters to be placed on the public payroll. Alexander Herdman, a Wellington MHR, began introducing a series of Private Members’ Bills from 1904, aimed at removing appointments from any suggestion of political control. The adoption of the name ‘Reform’ by the conservative Opposition had as much to do with public perception of a need for civil service reform as any other shortcoming of the Liberal Government.
In July 1904 these arguments took a new twist. The maverick Christ-church MHR, T. E. Taylor, accused Ward of facilitating the re-instatement to Railways of a Catholic blacksmith with the interesting name of Pope. Accusations of religious preferment against Ward had long been political scuttlebut. Even Seddon seems to have been saying the same thing privately to colleagues.39 In a lengthy statement issued to several major dailies, Ward hotly denied Taylor’s charge, explaining at length the circumstances involved in Pope’s case. The Southland Times quickly accepted Ward’s assurances.40 However, the suspicion of religious preferment, once voiced publicly, was to follow Ward for the rest of his life.
It would be wrong to leave the impression that Ward was simply an efficient administrator with a penchant for ceremony. Observers noted that he displayed ‘a great deal of tact, perfect courtesy’ and that he possessed ‘business like ways’ that enabled him ‘to cope with a vast amount of work’41 Behind the energy lay commitment. Ward had a vision of a coherent New Zealand state built up and encouraged by a Liberal Government. He was a centralist who enjoyed the extent to which the new nation state placed the reins of power in the hands of central government. Alone, it had the resources to plan adequately. Central ownership of important services was social legislation of the best kind, he told an audience in 1904. By such legislation the people were made the owners of the Public Trust Office, the Government Life Office, the telegraph services, the telephones and the railways. He reminded his audience that in the United States such services were in private hands; in New Zealand, elected ministers ran them. ‘If the ownership of these institutions was socialism’, he added, ‘then socialism was a great thing for this country.’42 More than any of his contemporaries, however, Ward had the skills to administer his portfolios so that they contributed to a wider commercial context. Ward saw the Post Office and Railways as service industries with the potential for expanding the country’s wealth. He had seen enough of the world to appreciate the tourist potential in New Zealand’s extraordinary scenery. He was sufficiently attuned to the current health fads to know of the growing European craze for thermal pools and spas. In a speech in 1901 he announced that a section of the Railways Department would be given the task of working up ‘a better and more widely organised tourist department’. The official in charge would be sent to the various tourist and health resorts to see what improvements—especially in accommodation—were needed; ‘I share with my colleagues the opinion that every pound judiciously spent in making for the comfort of visitors to the colony, and also for the comfort and pleasure of the people who reside amongst us, will be recouped over and over again’, he told an audience 43 The government soon purchased a steamer for Lake Wakatipu that carried 1000 passengers. In 1902 it was announced that a launch would be put into service on Lake Waikaremoana, and that a steamer would be purchased for the Wanganui River in order to provide pleasant holidays for Wellingtonians.
Observers will see in these actions not only the origin of what came to be known as the Tourist and Publicity Department but something akin to a ‘package tour’ emerging in Ward’s quick commercial mind. When his old adversary, Duthie, criticised him for bringing the state into tourism, Ward replied that the state must act if private interests were not pushing development fast enough. ‘What is the use of having up-to-date railways with cheap fares, if we do not by this means help to make them more used by the public, and consequently, return more grist to the mill of the State?’ he asked.44 In a new country where the capacity of private enterprise to snap up commercial opportunities was not always strong, most felt it appropriate for an energetic, pragmatic state to fill the gaps, especially when such policies revealed quick benefits. The 1904 report of the tourist and health resorts showed there had been a big increase in tourism, both by New Zealanders travelling domestically and visitors from abroad. There had been 5233 from abroad the previous year, more than half of them Australians. Rotorua, which the department intended to make into a ‘first class spa’ by improving the baths with a safer water supply as well as better accommodation, was providing more than 100,000 baths for visitors each year. The Wards themselves developed a liking for the town, staying there on many occasions. Plans were soon in hand to provide a similar facility at Hanmer in the South Island.45
Ward’s third substantial portfolio, that of Colonial Secretary, led on to the creation of yet another, that of Minister of Public Health, which he assumed on 8 November 1900. As Colonial Secretary Ward chaired the Central Board of Health, an organisation that met infrequently. As can happen in the evolution of the civil service, a new department grew out of a crisis. The outbreak of bubonic plague in China in 1894 had spread to Sydney by January 1900. Concern that it might soon reach New Zealand mounted rapidly. The government announced in March 1900 that all ships arriving in Auckland from Sydney would be quarantined. It was soon clear that the Central Board of Health lacked the powers or the record of dynamic action to handle the crisis: the body had not met since 1896.46 Ward moved quickly to allay public fears about plague. On 16 April he appointed two sanitary commissioners, Dr James Mason and Mr John Gilruth, to report on conditions at ports around the country, and about the state of dairies and slaughterhouses. They were to make recommendations on how to prevent the appearance or spread of plague.47 Reports were beginning to reach Ward about the lack of hygiene in parts of Auckland. The two commissioners quickly detected the presence of plague-infested rats in the city. They told their Minister that there were a ‘large number of ruinous dwellings—hovels—which would not be permitted in the East London slums’; the Western Springs water supply was ‘dubious’; and ‘a well-regulated night soil depot, where the pans can be steamed and the filth disposed of in a cleanly way’ was overdue.48
Public concern about health rose rapidly. A Parnell correspondent to the Herald wrote:
On going to take my matutinal plunge the other morning I beheld that the water assumed the appearance and consistency of peasoup rather than fresh water so, not wishing to besmirch myself, I had to curb my desire. Coming into town the same day … [I was] nearly blinded and choked by men sweeping dust off a busy thoroughfare during business hours. I have no doubt that I swallowed quite a battalion of microbes and baccilli, to say nothing of ground rats, cats and other filth. As if this was not enough I actually saw wagon loads of meat, fresh from the abattoirs, almost wholly uncovered, passing through the clouds of dust … 49
To a personally fastidious individual like Ward all this was alarming. He could see that there was a growing constituency for health reform and as soon as the first authenticated case of plague reached him in June responded to it. The Bubonic Plague Prevention Bill was rushed through Parliament, Ward receiving some praise for his swift response to the problem.50 The Bill gave the government wide powers—the Herald called them ‘autocratic’51— to isolate places and persons, and to demolish unsanitary buildings. ‘The Government regard this not as a provincial matter, but as a colonial matter’, the Minister told Parliament.52 Some of the powers taken were previously held by local authorities. The Bubonic Plague Prevention Act was a temporary measure designed to lapse when the crisis was over. Ward, however, decided to take no chances. Some of the powers were perpetuated in the Public Health Bill passed a few weeks later. Ward told the House that he was not prepared to return health administration to the old Board of Health and to local authorities. He divided the country into several health districts, each with a centrally appointed health officer answerable to the Chief Health Officer, and through him to the Minister of Health. Lectures on sanitation and hygiene were soon being given around the country. A system for reporting every case of infectious disease was put in place.53 The modern Ministry of Health was emerging.
Some Auckland MHRs regarded the government moves as a threat to local autonomy, which indeed they were. W. J. Napier, an Auckland lawyer and MHR, asserted that some of the clauses in the new Public Health Act were like ‘ukases of the Tsar’.54 Ward, the centralist, was in no mood to back away. For two weeks in August 1901 he was confined to bed with measles which, it was said, he had picked up when welcoming home a troop ship from South Africa.55 This was an object lesson on the need for greater vigilance at the ports. Greater public awareness of the need for improved standards of hygiene, pure water and better sewerage became Ward’s constant refrains. The building of the St Helens maternity hospitals in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin was largely due to this preoccupation with the need for better hygiene. There can be little doubt that decreasing infant mortality rates during the first decades of the twentieth century owed much to these centrally directed health campaigns. However, Ward’s enthusiastic fight against tuberculosis, which led to the construction of the first sanatoriums in 1903–4, was less successful. The largely uninterrupted progress of the disease until the discovery of streptomycin in 1944 had more to do with the lack of medical knowledge at the time than to any lack of willingness on the government’s part to eradicate a disease that once caused pain and death to so many New Zealanders.56
Historians have been inclined to judge the Liberal Government according to its land, labour and pensions legislation of the 1890s. To do so, however, is to overlook the many steps taken in the years after 1900 that affected the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. New telegraph developments, cheaper postal and railway services, superannuation for state employees, new employment opportunities through tourism, and a government active in health promotion and prepared to use its powers to improve standards of hygiene in order to increase life expectancy, were important steps towards the modern nation state. It was Ward, more than any other Liberal minister, who nosed the government into a more central position in people’s lives. He was the one who used his offices and his commercial instincts to promote improvements to overall standards of living. Incrementally his moves were probably as important as any of the earlier, much heralded moves by his colleagues.
The Colonial Secretaryship was an expanded version of today’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was responsible, among other things, for organising royal tours. They were few and far between in the nineteenth century, but since Seddon had been to the Diamond Jubilee in 1897 New Zealand’s request for a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson and his wife, had been under constant consideration at Buckingham Palace.57 In September 1900 the invitation was renewed, and this time Seddon’s plea was answered. The Palace announced that the royal pair would visit Australia and New Zealand in 1901. Planning the itinerary for the New Zealand sector fell to Ward. While Seddon was in Australia in January 1901 celebrating Australian federation, Ward acted as Prime Minister. Every day he seemed to receive deputations from people wishing to add details to the New Zealand tour, which had been set for 10–27 June. The death of Queen Victoria on 22 January added to the drama. Resplendent in court dress, but reduced to walking with the aid of crutches because of a sprained ankle, Ward made the official proclamation of the accession to the throne of Edward VII. With the Duke of York now heir to the throne there were sudden doubts about whether the projected tour would take place. These were soon cleared away, and late in April Ward left for Australia to witness the Australian leg of the tour that began on 1 May.
Back in New Zealand by the beginning of June, Ward tightened his grip on the tour’s organisation. Reception committees hard at work planning festivities were scrutinised carefully, and special instructions were issued to all Railway staff about procedures to be used on the royal train.58 The Ministry determined to ring maximum political mileage from the tour. A stand for 250 invited guests of the government was erected at the bottom of Queen Street, Auckland. The city was packed with visitors several days before the royals arrived on 11 June.59 In pride of place among the official guests were the Governor, Lord Ranfurly, the Prime Minister, R. J. Seddon, and the Colonial Secretary, J. G. Ward, each in official court dress. Photos show Ward in a cocked hat, a black jacket with nine brass buttons and a red collar, satin striped trousers, and a sword at his waist.60 For the next seventeen days he was seldom out of his finery. Banquets were held daily. On 12 June a large party of dignitaries walked from Queen Street up to Government House, Auckland, to pay their respects to the royal couple. The Herald reported that ‘the Premier and the Hon. Mr Ward, both strikingly rotund and resplendent in their Windsor uniforms, were … the recipients of a good deal of applause from those who recognised them in their unwonted garb’.61
From Auckland the ministers took the royal party to Rotorua. Ward had made elaborate plans for sightseeing tours for the bevy of British reporters with the entourage, hoping that publicity about New Zealand’s scenery would reach London. The visit to Rotorua, some of which was captured on New Zealand’s first movie62, was not without its hitches. Pohutu geyser failed to play for the visitors, despite being primed by prodigious quantities of soap. Worse was to come when the Duchess of Cornwall prepared to open the Duchess Bath House. Ward gave a brief speech and then turned to young Eileen who had custody of the key. She had mislaid it. Thirteen-year-old Vincent, who was standing next to Stewart Seddon, recounted years later that their few moments of consternation ‘seemed like years of misery’. Eventually the door was opened from the inside.63
The rest of the tour was confined to the main centres. In each, Seddon and Ward, still in their finery, would meet the royal ship, the Ophir, and there would be long speeches of welcome to the Duke and Duchess. For Ward the climax came in Wellington. There he was invested with a knighthood, the traditional Knight Commander of St Michael and St George given mostly to prime ministers, and occasionally to other colonial politicians. All the other honours conferred, except the one to the Governor, were to friends of the Ministry. The other knighthood went to Seddon’s and Ward’s closest friend, Jock McKenzie, who was wasting away from cancer and had only six weeks to live.64 The editor of the Herald claimed to be shocked at the partisanship of the honours, but the same paper’s gossip columnist praised Ward heartily, adding that now there were ‘oats in the bin’.65
Ward’s acceptance of a title was controversial among Liberal Party members. Ballance had always eschewed honours. ‘As a Democratic party … we should not touch titles’, he had told Westby Perceval in 1892. As the longest-serving premier, Seddon could often have availed himself of a title, but chose not to, despite McKenzie’s urging in 1900 that he should take a baronetcy.66 The three Dunedin MPs, all supporters of the Ministry, cabled Ward: ‘We deeply regret that you, as leader of the Democratic Party, should have accepted a title’.67 Others congratulated Ward without reservation. The New Zealand Mail said that he richly deserved the award, that he was the ‘only possible heir’ to Seddon, and that he had been ‘tried by adversity and passed through the ordeal with manful spirit and a brave heart’.68 The Southland Times was uncertain how to handle Ward’s new status. The editor felt Ward had earned the recognition, but regretted the fact that a comparatively young man with a ‘long period of political life before him’ should accept a title so early in his career.69 From the letter columns in the Times it is clear that some of Ward’s constituents thought him to be running too far, too fast.
Ward, however, saw titles in a different light. Till the end of his days he coveted them. They were hallmarks of respectability, appropriate to the doyen of Wellington society. They proved that someone of minority religion with a questionable financial past had won acceptance in the highest quarters. Above all, they helped push unpleasant doubts well down beneath the smooth surface of Sir Joseph’s busy life.
The idea of bestowing an honour on Ward seems first to have emerged in private discussions between Ward himself and McKenzie. McKenzie had been able to carry on in office for little more than six months after the election of 1899. He resigned from Parliament as well as Cabinet on 27 June 1900 because of constant pain, and retired to his home at Heathfield, near Palmerston. There, according to a friend, he ‘led a most pitiable life … merely sitting about and reading the papers and moping about his misfortune’.70 His one regular visitor was Ward, who would often stop overnight. McKenzie became even more strongly attached to his friend and confidant, and would write to Seddon with bits of advice that clearly emanated from discussions with Ward. On 4 May 1900 McKenzie first broached the question of a KCMG for ‘our friend Ward’ who had been a ‘good and true friend to our party’. Such an honour ‘would be very popular’.71 No doubt the matter was taken up again when McKenzie saw Seddon on several occasions after his resignation. There is no record of Seddon’s response. He had already taken Ward back into Cabinet as his deputy, and had further arranged for an additional salary of £600 per annum to be paid to Ward in his capacity as Minister of Railways. Of all the prime ministers in New Zealand history, however, Seddon was probably the most loyal to his close colleagues. He hated having to part with McKenzie’s services, and almost certainly decided to do whatever possible to make the old man’s final days happy. When the Governor informed him in March that he had received a secret cable from the Colonial Office to the effect that the Duke of Cornwall and York had been authorised to confer some honours while in New Zealand, the opportunity had arrived. Moreover, in his letter Ranfurly specifically suggested ‘a CMG at least’ for McKenzie, and added that he had received a letter from an unnamed English MP recommending an award for Ward in recognition of his introduction of penny postage.72 The decision to recommend two KCMGs, one each for Ward and McKenzie, was Seddon’s final act of gratitude to his old friend. It required the further intervention of Reeves before the awards were approved in London. On 6 May 1901 Seddon sent a telegram to McKenzie telling him Reeves had cabled that everything was ‘fixed up satisfactorily in London’, and advising McKenzie to take care of his health during the cold weather.73
Jock McKenzie. Oamaru Early Settlers Association.
Sadly, when McKenzie died on 6 August 1901 Ward was laid up with the measles. He was unable to travel to the funeral of his colleague. In March 1902, however, he and Theresa did have the pleasure of attending the unveiling of the McKenzie Memorial at Cheviot. It was to be an emotional occasion for the two of them as they recalled the kindness of a friend who had played such a large part in Ward’s rehabilitation.74
