RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33434, 16 January 1974, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

WITHOUT BIAS

One occasionally hears from the lips of our more

senior citizens that they would like nothing more than a return to “the good old days,” with a more leisurely way of life.

Without embroidery, we reprint from the pages of a contemporary publication of 100 years ago — then a fledgling journal — but now one of national importance — an excerpt requiring little elaboration of its social significance. “Mr Bradshaw, a member of the House of Representatives, has been recognised and appreciated, in a way that has fallen to the lot of few other members in the oast sessions.

“This gentleman has succeeded in getting the bill passed through the Assembly limiting the working time for women engaged in factories and

in workshops to eight hours with a full halfholiday on Saturdays and freedom from work on all proclaimed holidays without stoppage of pay.

“The bill is now law throughout the whole of the provinces; and the young sewing machine girls of Dunedin have shown their obedience to the law by knocking off work on Saturday afternoons punctually at two o’clock, and their gratitude to Mr Bradshaw by presenting him with a piece of plate. “The presentation was made in the City Council on Saturday afternoon, Major Mercer reading the address. We are not aware whether the females engaged in millinery, dressmaking, tailoring and sewing machine establishments have available themselves of the concessions made to them by the Factory Bill. But as it became law

some time back they are at full liberty to take ‘ their Saturday half-holi-day and insist upon a limitation made to the work hours.” Sundays, in those days ' were much more sacro- ~ sanct than they are at present. And the poor , hard-working girls of that era would find little time in what was left of their Saturdays to indulge in out-door sports and less inclination, perhaps, to { apply themselves as- - siduously to doing needlework for their glory boxes — sufficiently frus- - trating to give themselves the stitch — let alone J, find time to gather their • voluminous skirts and by ‘ brougham or buggy set t out with their friends to some enticing picnic spot, ’ there to engage in one of , the more popular pas- ~ times of the day and age. / A thread the needle race.