Cabinet post for Dunedin MP

A LENGTHY Cabinet meeting was held yesterday, after which the Prime Minister announced that Mr W. Downie Stewart, MP for Dunedin West, is to be the new minister in place of Sir William Herries. Mr Stewart is to take over the portfolio of Internal Affairs from the Hon. G.J. Anderson, and will hold one other, while Mr Anderson retains Labour and the Government Printing Department portfolios, and will hold one other. The readjustments are to be completed before the House meets on March 10. The Hon William Downie

Stewart is the younger son of the late Hon William Downie Stewart, and was bom in in 1878. He was educated at the Otago Boys’ High School and the Otago University, where he graduated LlB in 1900. In the same year he entered into partnership in the firm of Downie Stewart and Payne. He was elected to the city council in 1907, 1909, and

1911. In 1913 he was elected Mayor of Dunedin after one of the most strenuous contests on record. At the Hi 1905 general election he unsuccessfully contested the Dunedin South seat against J.F. Arnold; but he was elected to represent Dunedin West in Parliament at the general election of 1914, and was reelected by a substantial majority at the general election of 1919. He was for a period a member of the University Council (representing the city council), and has been a director of the National Insurance Company and of the

Westport Coal Company. Mr Stewart enlisted early in the great war, and while on active service he contracted

rheumatoid arthritis, from which he is suffering.

School is overcrowded in certain of its departments to such an extent as to imperil its efficiency.