Early Life
Scullin was born in the small town of Trawalla in Western Victoria, the son of John Scullin, a railway worker, and Ann (née Logan), both of Irish Catholic descent from Derry. He was educated at state primary schools and then worked as a grocer in Ballarat while studying at night school and privately in public libraries and honing his public speaking skills in local debating clubs.
He joined the Labor Party in 1903 and became an organiser for the Australian Workers' Union. In 1913, he became editor of a Labor newspaper in Ballarat, the Evening Echo. He was a devout Roman Catholic, a non-drinker and a non-smoker all his life.
Read more about this topic: James Scullin
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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