George Foster Pearce KCVO (1870 - 1952)

Born 14 Jan 1870 in Mount Barker, South Australia

Ancestors

Died 24 Jun 1952 at age 82 in Elwood, Victoria, Australia

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Biography

George Pearce KCVO is Notable.

Sir George Foster Pearce (1870-1952), ^[1] politician, was born on 14 January 1870 at Mount Barker, South Australia, fifth of eleven children of English parents James Pearce, blacksmith, and his wife Jane, née Foster. Educated at Red Hill Public School, he left at 11. He obtained farm work which he found 'hard and unpleasant' and he so much disliked the drinking habits of his fellow workers that he remained a teetotaller throughout his life. Eventually he became a carpenter in Adelaide but, losing work in the depression of 1891, moved to Perth where he found a job in his trade. He joined the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners and by 1893 was actively working in the Trades and Labor Council and in its Progressive Political League.

Pearce joined a prospecting party in 1893 and spent about a year on the goldfields, chiefly at Coolgardie. Returning to carpentry in Perth, he again became active in union affairs and Labor politics. On 23 April 1897 he married Eliza Maud Barrett (d.1947). By 1900 Pearce had risen to pre-eminence in the State labour movement and was campaigning for Federation. The second West Australian Trades' Union and Labor Congress in 1900 (which he chaired) resolved that two Labor candidates should contest election for the Senate. Pearce, a free trader, was selected by the Perth Trades and Labor Council and de Largie, a protectionist, by representatives of goldfields workers. Both were returned.

What were the qualities that enabled a formally uneducated and poor young man to achieve outstanding success in a State where he had arrived less than ten years before? He was not an original or brilliant thinker or a striking personality. But he was a solid man who inspired confidence; serious, industrious, orderly in his work, attentive to detail, trustworthy, moderate and ready to pay more than lip service to principle. Pearce's beliefs and allegiances were to change radically during his life; he was to move to the right of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, it was because the personal qualities of his youth persisted and developed that he was able to contribute as he did to the public life of the Commonwealth for almost half a century. He remained a senator for thirty-seven years, for twenty-five of which he served as a minister. Thereafter he held important advisory positions until 1947. He was appointed privy councillor (1921), an officer of the French Légion d'honneur (1924), and KCVO (1927). . . more . . .

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Sources

1. ↑ B. Beddie, Pearce, Sir George Foster (1870–1952) , Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,
   published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 2 June 2019.

Sir George Foster Pearce KCVO - W®