William Guy Higgs (18 January 1862 – 11 June 1951) was an Australian politician who served in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He was a Senator for Queensland from 1901 to 1906, and then represented the Division of Capricornia in the House of Representatives from 1910 to 1922. He served as Treasurer of Australia from 1915 to 1916, under Billy Hughes. Early life Higgs was born on 18 January 1862 in Wingham, New South Wales. He was the oldest of at least ten children, including nine boys, born to William Guy Higgs Sr. and Elizabeth Gregg. His parents ran a general store; his father was born in St Columb Major, Cornwall, England, while his mother was born in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, Ireland. Higgs and his family moved to Parramatta in 1869 and then to Orange in 1872. He attended state schools except for a brief period at a Catholic convent school when it was the closest available; his parents were Anglican and he had to wait outside during religious instruction. He left school at the age of 13 and was apprenticed to the Western Advocate as a printer's assistant. Higgs moved to Sydney in 1882, working briefly for the commercial printer John Sands and the Daily Telegraph. He eventually found a steady job as a compositor for The Sydney Morning Herald. In 1886, Higgs was elected to the board of the New South Wales Typographical Association, the foremost trade union for workers in the printing industry. Later that year, he left the Herald to become the association's paid secretary. He resigned that position in 1889 and opened a printing firm, Higgs & Townsend, on Oxford Street, in partnership with Samuel D. Townsend. It specialised in socialist publications, and for a brief period printed the Trades and Labor Advocate and Tribune of the People, a newspaper that Higgs owned and edited. From 1890 to 1891, he was the editor of The Australian Workman, the magazine of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council. He returned to compositing for a period at the Evening News, but then in 1893 moved to Brisbane to become editor of The Worker. He remained in the position until his election to parliament in April 1899, and was credited with increasing both the publication's circulation and influence. Early political involvement Despite his limited education, Higgs read widely in politics and became an avowed socialist. He