Obituaries Australia

When, after years of faithful service in many arduous offices, Mr. White succeeded the late Mr. Donald Macdonell in the office of General Secretary of the A.W.U., it was hoped that residence in the city would help him to regain his old virility. A few months in the Sydney office, however, convinced Mr. White that that hope would not be realised while he bore the heavy burden which the General Secretaryship entails. So with characteristic conscientiousness, he resigned his office rather than that the Union should suffer by reason of his failing health. That act was typical of many in the life of our departed comrade. The Union may have produced some abler men, but none more loyal, more self sacrificing, more scrupulously honest in all his dealings than Tom White ever had place in our ranks. He died in harness— returning from a successful conference in West Australia — a fitting end to a life unselfishly devoted to Trades Unionism and the Cause of Labor.

Thomas White was born in North Melbourne in 1858. He came of good stock. His father was a pioneer of Trades Unionism, and his portrait graces the Melbourne Trades Hall. The boy bore a striking likeness to his father, and as he grew up he imbibed the principles of the movement in whose future history he was to have so full a share. When the Shearers' Union was launched in 1886, Tommy was in Queensland. A year, later, we find him at Bourke, a member of the first branch established there. With that branch, through all its changing fortunes, he was intimately connected till the day of his death. His sterling qualities naturally won the esteem of his mates, and at one time or another he filled almost every office in the organization. How much the Labor Movement of to-day owes to the high character of such leaders it is impossible to say. Certainly the A.W.U. could never have exerted the elevating influence it did upon the movement had it not, in its formative days, possessed a strong leaven of such men as he.

Whatever Mr. White undertook to do, had to be done thoroughly. No labor was too great that seemed to him, essential to his Union work. A strong advocate of the eight-hour day; for others, he never spared himself, and frequently crowded the work of two days into one, for with him Union work was ever a labor of love.

The strenuous work of the Bourke secretaryship told upon his health, and he never recovered from the effects of long hours worked in that trying climate. When he left for West Australia last month it was hoped the sea-trip would prove beneficial, but that hope was doomed to disappointment. He broke the journey at Adelaide to visit some friends at Gawler, and died in the train on the return trip to Adelaide.

We shall not have lived in vain, if, when our time comes, it can be said of us as truly as of Tommy White — 'He gave his life for the Cause.'

The body of our late comrade will reach Sydney on Monday next, and will be interred at Waverley Cemetery on Tuesday. The time of the funeral will be advertised in the daily papers. It is hoped that all A.W.U. men who can attend will do so.

So, one by one, they pass and go.
The Men Who Mattered Much;
The ones whose hands, by friend or foe,
It did men good to clutch;
The heroes of the Great Wide West
Where Unionism grew;
The men who gave the world their best —
The scattered, forceful Few!

They knew no hatreds; and no man,
However small he be,
Could doubt the greatness of their Plan,
Worked out from sea to sea.
Embattlements of wealth rose high
Across their chosen path;
But yet somehow, they brushed them by—

And chanced the aftermath!
They need no monuments — not one! '
No piles of chiselled stone;
Their pillar is the work they've done,
The fights they fought alone.
They need no wreaths of fragrant flow'rs;
For not a bloom that blows
Is sacred as this love of ours
Now, at the chapter's close.
R. J. CASSIDY.