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At the request of many old comrades and friends, and to gratify a desire that has long intrigued me, I have written the following short review of the Federation of Labour.

In deciding to give my own impressions of the days under notice rather than to follow the usual course of chronicling events in the order of occurrence, I have done so believing that the personal touch will add to the reader’s interest in the following pages.

Whilst I have trusted to my memory to a very great extent in describing many early incidents recorded, I have also had access to the Minute Books and Reports of the Federation from 1908 to 1913.

In dealing with the birth of the United Federation of Labour and the Social Democratic Party I was on easy ground, for as Secretary of the two great Conferences of January and July, 1913, I was fully conversant with all the incidents connected with them.

I feel, however, that I have but imperfectly performed my task, but in any case I have placed on record with some degree of sequence the history of the most epochal days of New Zealand’s unionism.