BARMAIDS AND LEGISLATORS.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 147, 25 June 1881, Page 2

BARMAIDS AND LEGISLATORS.

The New Zealand barmaid — that beauteous Hebe who dispenses liquid refreshments to all mankind save to the teetotallers — has for years past been a pet subject for legislation. Some years ago hon. members took compassion on the barmaid, and reduced her working hours to reasonable limits. There was no mistake about the fact that these girls wero at that time much overworked, and consequently the restriction of their hours of labor was a just and necessary one. But last night Parliament, in its zeal on behalf of the barmaids, went altogether over tho score by passing a clause restricting their working hours to eight, and applying the restriction to the wives and daughters of publicans as well. This provision is both mischievous and absurd. Hotelkeepers will simply cease to employ barmaids at all if they are not permitted to work more than eight hours a day. The result will be that a large number of girls who make from 25a to £2, a week will be thrown out of employment, and will probably find it rather difficult to obtain other situations. Many of those barmaids are honest, hard-working, and perfectly correct-living girl 3, who assist their relatives out of their earnings. Why then should Sir William Fox and those who act with him seek to deprive these girls of their means of livelihood? We know perfectly well that Sir \\ llliam Fox has always held that no woman vhatever should be omployed in tho tale of alcoholic liquors. He is, therefore, seeking to obtain his object through a side-wind, by so rigidly limiting the hours of labor of the barmaid 3aj practically to put a stop to their employment. As to the question whether girls ought or ought not to bo employed m hotel bars, there i 3 a good deal to be said on both sides. Parliament should pn-use before deliberately taking from the barmaids their means of living-. Nor should it treat an hotelkeeper as a more slave, possessed of no civil rights, by declaring that his wife or daughter should not work for more than eight hours a day at the business by which they make their bread. The teetotallers are

" running a muck" over, the Licensing Bill, with their impracticable " fads" and crotchets. The end of tho whole business will be. thit the bill — a most useful one in its way — may probably be thrown out altogether.