SUNDAY TEAMS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 18, 21 January 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY TEAMS

(To the JSdltor.)

KfcPi —As to the right or wrong of running trams on Sunday, I will leave to the various clergy, etc., of our city, but there is one aspect of the jquestion iwhich more directly concerns the citizens of Auckland, that is the financial one. Through the wrongful acts of our City Council, who voted for the concession to a private company, we lost our birthright, and in return we get a paltry sum of £400 per annum, and a percentage on the profits over £20,000. This small sum is the rent for our streets and roadways, being monopolised and exploited for the benefit of a few large shareholders in the company. The question now arises, Are our valuable streets, etc., to be again sold for Sunday traffic? If so, we must see that we get a very much higher rent; in fact, as much as will just absorb the profit 'computing the capital value of the streets at the low figure of £332,000; this at 5 per cent, would yield £15,600 to the City Council, and would absorb all the profit out of the trams run on Sunday, and would eliminate all the desire and anxiety for the company to run trams on Sunday.—l am, etc., PRO BONO PUBLICO. (To the Editor) Sir,—The Electric Tramway Company will be grateful to your correspondent in Monday's "Star" for setting them on the true foundation for the running of their priceless service on Sundays. I allude to a letter from the pen of Mr J. J. Macky, who goes to the root of the matter as to the Jewish Sabbath by quoting the words of the Lord of the Sabbath. "The Sabbath was made for man." Just go, that expresses the very lines on which we hope the company are about to act. And in so doing they are particularly considering the toiling masses and the poor, whose turn surely has come tp see what is "outside" of the city as well as those Whose fortunes enable them to "turn out" in every variety of way. I think the company are decidedly " in His steps."—l am, etc., JOHN C. EARL. (To the Editor.) Sir, —It must ever be borne in mind, through a constant reiteration of the fact, that mankind is under a "hard labour sentence" for six days per week, or, it is enough to say, the English-speaking race is; and for the clerics to pursue their own interests, or theories re the "Sabbath," ignoring this fact, is also to ignore Christian principles. If the new tram service is devoted to the "labour" of the workers for six days, bigotry, not religion, would oppose its use for the recreation and pleasures of the said working mass on their one spare day. Indeed, the bare idea of opposing such Sunday tram service shows how deeply bigotry has its foots among us. But tram employees must have their case equally borne in mind, and those who serve the public must themselves be served —i.e., must have one day in seven for rest, etc. Time will show how this can be managed. The. old argument of rest for "cattle" within thy gates science has happily rendered nugatory in this connection.— I am, etc., HUMANITY'S CLAIMS.