MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 207, 30 August 1905, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

PRIVATE FINES. PENALTIES THAT MAGISTRATES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITHA good deal of public interest 'was aroused recently by the announcement that the Liverpool Cotton Association had fined two of its members £ 1000 each, and bad also demanded fines of £250 each from four of its associates. There are, however, many of His Majesty's subjects liable to fines of which the law of the land knows nothing, and of which little is heard outside the i circles immediately concerned. j The committee of the London Stock Exchange does not fine its members for breaches of its rules, but in what it considers serious cases it may expel the offending member, or it may sus- | pend him for six months, a year, or | even a longer period. The loss involvied by suspension in the case of a man i who is making a big income in the "House" may thus be far heavier than even a fine of £ 1000. In instances where, through inadvertence, slight breaches of the etiquette of the Stock ! Exchange have been committed, members have been known voluntarily to fine themselves by contributing £5, £ 10, or more to the benevolent fund. In contracts, penalty clauses are frej quently inserted. The steamship com- ' panics, for example, which carry mails Ia re liable to heavy fines for delay. When this question was before Parliament it was shown that on the Dover-Calais I route a penalty of £ 5 became due if the specified time was exceeded by 20 minutes, and a further £ 5 for every adI ditional 15 minutes' delay. On the Brindisi-Bombay service the penalty is £ 100 for every 12 hours beyond the contract time, and on the Cape service £2 Is 8d per hour for the first 12 l hours, £ 4 3s 4d per hour for the next 12 hours, and £6 5s per hour thereafter. On the Turf, the stewards of a racecourse have the power to inflict a fine up to £50 on a jockey, while the stewards of the Jockey Club can go still further, and impose a penalty up to £100, and also withdraw the jockey's license, which, in the case'of a rider earning big fees, is a very serious matter. What it means is that the offender cannot, until his license is restored, ride at any recognised meeting in any country except Mexico. Coming to quite a different sphere, that of trade unionism, fines ranging up to substantial sums are levied for breaches of the rules. A -member of the London Society of Compositors who leaves the society to work in a nonsociety house must pay £5 before he can ! rejoin the union, and, within the so- | dety, fines up to £ 1 may he inflicted for ! violations of the regulations. j Omnibus and tramcar drivers are finied for not keeping time, unless they can j show good cause for the delay; but perhaps no class has so many penalties to look out for as drapers' assistants. In some houses there are as many as seventy rules, and the breach of practically every one of these involves a fine of from a penny to five shillings. Half-a-erown is the price of coming in a minute after eleven at night—the specified time for locking-up; sixpence fox I talking to another assistant during business hours; a shilling for being five minutes late in the morning, and sixpence for taking more than the regulation half-hour for a meal. j In some shops an assistant is fined | for letting a customer go out without I having made a purchase, unless the as- | distant has first called in the aid of the J shop-walker. And in most establishI ments there are fines for inaccuracies in j adding up the day's sales. j The stage is as full of fines as any j falling, though they are perhaps not as vigorously enforced as elsewhere. They cover such small sins as being late or absent without giving notice, talking (out of place) on the stage, and speaking that which is not in the book. What penalties some of our leading comedians would have to face if the latter rule were strictly adhered to!