Cook, Sir Joseph (1860-1947), was prime minister of Australia from June 1913 to September 1914. Cook was the first Liberal prime minister of Australia. During his career, however, he belonged to a number of different political parties. He was a founding member of the Labour Electoral League, a branch of what became the Parliamentary Labor Party (later the Australian Labor Party). He then led the Free Trade Party, renamed the Anti-Socialist Party. Later, Cook helped found the Fusion Liberal Party, a forerunner of the modern Liberal Party of Australia. Finally, he became deputy leader of the Nationalist Party.
Early years
Boyhood.
Joseph Cooke—whose last name was originally spelled with an e—was born on Dec. 7, 1860, in Silverdale, near Stoke-on-Kent, England. His parents were William Cooke, a coal miner, and Margaret Fletcher Cooke. The boy, commonly called Joe, grew up in poverty. He began to work in a coal mine at the age of 9. Joe’s father died in a mine accident in 1873. As a result, Joe had to support his family starting at the age of 12. He received no formal education, but he studied during his lunch breaks and at night. 
As a teenager, Joe joined the Primitive Methodist Church, which emphasized personal religious experience and the importance of living a moral life. The church called itself Primitive because it believed in a return to the early form of Methodism practiced by the church’s founder John Wesley in the 1700’s. Cooke became a lay (unordained) preacher of the church, and he gave up drinking, smoking, and gambling. To symbolize the change in his life, he dropped the e from his last name and began to spell it Cook.
Cook also became a passionate supporter of the labor movement. In his late teens and early 20’s, he held a number of leadership positions in miners’ unions, first in England and later in Australia.
Marriage and family.
On Aug. 8, 1885, Cook married Mary Turner, an English schoolteacher. Mary’s brother, also a coal miner, had left England to settle in the coal town of Lithgow in New South Wales, Australia. New South Wales was a British colony at that time. In December 1885, Cook joined his brother-in-law in Lithgow. In January 1887, Mary and the couple’s baby son, called G. S., came to Lithgow. Cook worked in the Lithgow coal mines and became a union leader. He and his wife had five more sons and three daughters: Albert, Joseph William, John Hartley, Annette, Winifred, Cecil, Raymond, and Constance.
Political career
Entry into politics.
Cook was a founding member of the Labour Electoral League, the New South Wales branch of what became the Parliamentary Labor Party (later the Australian Labor Party). In 1891, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales. His election was the first time Labor had won a seat in any legislature in Australia. He represented the coal-mining region of Hartley. In 1893, he was elected leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party in New South Wales. He held his seat in the Legislative Assembly until 1901.
In 1894, Cook led a group of Labor Party legislators who refused to sign a ”solidarity pledge” promising to support all decisions of the Parliamentary Labor Party. He left the party and became a follower of the Free Trade Party, led by George Reid. The Free Trade Party emphasized the importance of free trade in developing Australian industry. After Reid became premier of New South Wales, Cook served as postmaster general in Reid’s government from 1894 to 1898. Cook later held the post of minister for mines and agriculture from 1898 to 1899.
Member of the federal Parliament.
In 1901, the six British colonies on the continent of Australia united to form an independent country called the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia elected its first Parliament on March 29, 1901. Cook won a seat as a Free Trader in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Parliament. He represented the electoral district of Parramatta, which included Lithgow and Hartley.
Cook became deputy leader of the Free Trade Party in 1905. The next year, the party changed its name to the Anti-Socialist Party. After Reid retired from the party leadership in 1908, Cook succeeded him as head of the party. In 1909, Cook’s Anti-Socialist Party merged with Alfred Deakin’s Protectionist Party to form a new party. The new group was known as the Fusion Party, or Fusion Liberal Party, because it fused (combined) the Protectionist and Anti-Socialist parties. The Fusion Liberal Party became a forerunner of the Liberal Party in Australia, which regards Cook and Deakin as two of its founders. Deakin, as the head of the Fusion Liberal Party, became prime minister of Australia on June 2, 1909. Cook became the new party’s deputy leader.
Cook also served as minister of defense under Deakin from June 1909 to April 1910. He made important contributions in that post, helping to found many of Australia’s military institutions. He established the Royal Military College at Duntroon, where officers are trained. He reached an agreement with the United Kingdom to create the Royal Australian Navy, which would function as part of the United Kingdom’s Pacific Fleet. He also promoted the building of battleships and arms factories.
In the 1910 elections, the Labor Party swept into office with majorities in both houses of Parliament. Deakin and Cook became the leader and deputy leader of the opposition.
Prime minister.
In January 1913, after Deakin resigned because of poor health, the Fusion Liberal Party elected Cook to be its leader. In elections that May, the party won a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. The Labor Party, however, kept a majority in the Senate. Because of his party’s majority in the House, Cook became prime minister of Australia on June 24, 1913. He also served as minister for home affairs. On July 16, 1914, King George V of the United Kingdom honored Cook by appointing him to the Privy Council, the king’s private council.
Cook had difficulty governing without control of the Senate and with only a one-seat majority in the House. Hoping to win the Senate and a larger majority in the House, he brought about Australia’s first double dissolution. In a double dissolution, the governor general—the representative of the British monarch in Australia—dissolves both houses of Parliament and calls an election for every seat. To bring about the double dissolution, Cook introduced a bill that he knew would cause disagreement between the House and Senate. On June 4, 1914, after the two houses were unable to reach an agreement, the governor general approved Cook’s request for a double dissolution. However, the resulting election did not go in Cook’s favor. On September 5, Labor won majorities in both houses. Andrew Fisher, the Labor Party leader, replaced Cook as prime minister on Sept. 17, 1914.
The United Kingdom had declared war on Germany in August, at the start of World War I (1914-1918). One of Cook’s last acts as prime minister was to pledge Australia’s support for the United Kingdom’s war effort. He put the Royal Australian Navy under the command of the British Admiralty and offered to send 20,000 Australian troops overseas. Cook said, ”When the Empire is at war, so is Australia.”
Deputy prime minister.
In 1915, William M. Hughes succeeded Fisher as Labor Party leader and as prime minister. The following year, Hughes tried to introduce a military draft to get troops to serve in World War I. Arguments about the draft split the Labor Party, and Hughes formed a new party called the Nationalist Party. Cook became deputy leader of the new party.
The Nationalist Party won a huge victory in the 1917 election. Cook then served as deputy prime minister under Hughes from 1917 to 1921. Cook also held the posts of minister for the Navy from 1917 to 1920 and treasurer of Australia from 1920 to 1921.
In 1918, King George honored Cook by making him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. He became known as Sir Joseph Cook. After the end of World War I, Cook represented Australia at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. At the conference, representatives of the Allied nations met to draw up terms of peace with Germany and its allies.
Later years
Cook resigned from Parliament in 1921 to become Australia’s high commissioner (ambassador) to the United Kingdom in London. In 1925, King George made Mary Cook a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire. The honor recognized her service to the Red Cross Society, an organization that works to relieve human suffering.
In 1927, Sir Joseph Cook stepped down as high commissioner and retired from public life. He and his wife returned to Australia, where Cook built a group of apartment buildings in a Sydney suburb. He died in Sydney on July 30, 1947.
