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Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 12 August 1905, Page 4

Evening Post SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1905.

"A RAKE HOTCH-POTCH." ♦ With the exception of section 3 of the Shops and Offices Act of last session, the Fisher-iSeddon charges have attracted more attention and excited more indignation than any other political event of the last twelve months; and now that the second of these burning questions has been temporarily laid to rest, Parliament and people -should both havetime to realise that there is still such a troublesome vitality about the first that it may soon burst into a flame again. "Section 3 of the principal Act is hereby repealed" — such was the maia feature of the brief amending Bill which was introduced by the Government at the very beginning of the session, and which received a hearty general welcome in consequence. It was section 3 which had caused all the trouble by decreeing that in the four chief cities and their adjoining boroughs all shops employing two or more persons should be closed at six o'clock on four of the worlringdays of the week, and at nine o'clock on one other. The Labour Bills Committee, which, after devoting much time to the .Bill, and taking a deal of evidence upon it, presented its report to the House of Representatives on Tuesday last, does not propose to disturb this repeal, and for this we may be thankful. But the Committee has unfortunately proceeded to deal in very drastic fashion with the other important part of the Bill, and to encumber the very clear basis of principle upon which it was framed with a series of elaborate distinctions and classifications, the bewildering effect of which upon the average mind can be gauged from the opinions of shopkeepers and others published by us on Thursday last. Clause 3 of the amending Bill, which the Labour Bills Committee proposes to delete altogether, struck a. very reasonable compromise between the right of an employer to do what he chooses with his own time and strength and the right of the State to prevent him from so using his own liberty as to interfere with that of others less able to protect themselves ; and it waa a compromise which, unlike many others, proceeded along a definite line of principle. The scheme of clause 3 was to impose limits upon the working hours of the j^h-ap-assistanfcs, instead of upon the hours during which the shop might remain open. Fifty-two hours lemainsd, as in the principal Act, the maximum for their hours of work in any one week, and in no easa might a shop assistant bo employed "after one o'clock in the afternoen' on the statutory closing day, or after nine o'clock in the evening on Saturdays in districts where Saturday is not the closing day, or after six o'clock in tho evening on any other working day." The effect of this would have been to transfer from the shops in the four centres to the shop assistants of the wholes colony the time limits imposed by section 3 of last year's Act. It was, however, provided by section 15 of last year's Act that a number of trades Ghould 'bo exempted from the observance of the statutory half-holiday; fishmongers, fruiterers, " confectioners, etc., are not required to take any halfholiday as long as every assistant is given a special one, while any butcher, hairdresser, tobacconist, or photographer may select any other half'holiday than the statutory one. Without touching this seotion, except for a trifling amendment, the Labour Bills Committee proposes to engraft similar distinctions and exceptions into tho clause which deals with the hoars to be observed on other days than the half-holiday. Tile following are the Committee's proposals as embodied in its new clause 3 for the time-table of the various trades, in respect, not of the closing of the shop, but of the employment of assistants : — (1) 11 p.m. on one working day and 8 p.m. on others : — Bakers? booksellers, chemists, dairy-produce sellers, florists, hairdressers, and tobacconists. (2) 11 p.m. on one working day and 10.30 p.m. on others : — Confectioners, fishmongers, fruiterers, pork butchers, Tefreshment-room keepers. (3) 11 p.m. on one working day and 6 p.m. on others : — All other iihopkcepers. With regard to offices, which may be defined generally as places of business where no manufacture or retail trade is carried on, section 23 of the principal Act provided that they should close at 1 p.m. on iSaturdays and S p.m. on other workingdays, and the Labour Bills Committee proposes that the following offices should bo added to the already extensive list of exceptions, viz., banks/ building societies, insurance, merchants (including warehousemen), and wool buyers and wool brokers. It is not likely that any objection will be taken to this enlargement, but the clauses dealing with shops will prolong the angry controversy which began to rage on the first Saturday after the close of last session. Tho comment passed upon the Bill by a member of tho Executive Committee of the Shop Assistants' Association which we quoted on Thursday last must be the verdict of every man, layman or lawyer, who attempts to grapple with the measure as amended by the Labour Bills Committee. It is indeed "a rare hotch-potch, nothing less." Without all the evidence before us we do not like to say that the Commitleo, has acted witk blind caprice, but tho result in as, bewildering in its confusion as if'it were the result of absolute unreason or of a deliberate attempt to confuso. Even tho marginal noto of the crucial clause has been changed as though with the express object of misleading. "Closing hours for assistants" is the note in the margin of tho original clause 3, but ."closing hours for shops" is tho new note — which of course implies that the old principle of closing the shop instead of merely fteaing the assistant has been revetted to, whereas the body of the new clause contains no such reversion. Some order would bo introduced into the confusion if the various definitions and exceptions from definitions, lists of businesses subject to a particular clause and exceptions thercirom, which aio scattered in cwiti'adictory perplexity through the two measures', were co-ordinated and focussed. Tho mechanical convenience of having such matters scheduled and set side by sido is enormous, .but as it is some of the definitions must be sought in tho original interpretation clause, some in one clause or another of tho original Act, and 6omo in a clause of the amending Bill, where again they may be either set out at large ot incorporated by reference to one of the original sections. Tho classifications and exceptions are treated in the same, chaotic fashion. When these difficulties of fown have- been oyercomo, there .is still an abundance of perplexity in llio matter. The chemist must observe the 6tatutoTy half-holi-day, and mu6t close <at 8 on an ordinary working day; Hi© baker may disregard the half-holidny, but on other days has tho same lime-limit as itho chemist. The butcher must close at 6 on an ordinary day, but the pork-butcher may.

keep going till 10.30 ; on the other hand, the l)utoher may take what half-holiday he pleases, but itho pork - butcher must to© the line like the ordinary flesh of shopkeeping humanity. It is, of course, possible that a. porkbutcher may .be a .butcher under the on© section, though not under the other. A blackbird is certainly a bird, but, on tho other hand, a greengrocer is hardly a grocer, and ••what a pork-butcher^ may foe it is not f or us to say.^ For us, as for tho New Zealand Legislature, it is sufficient to propound such conundrums, while leaving them for the Privy Council to decide. " A Tore hotch-potch," indeed!

The colonial policy-holders in the Equitable Life Insurance Company may be congratulated on the very satisfactory statement, published yesterday, of the newly-appointed President of the Society, Mr. Paul Morton. This gentleman has cabled to tho Sydney directors in effect that no one in America questions the stability of the Equitable. Policy-holders have no cause for uneasiness, he says, adding that the Australian managers can safely give their personal assurance to that effect. The reputation of Mr. Morton as a distinguished public man — he recently held office ns Secretary of the Navj —and the confidence reposed in him by his fellowcitizens from President Roosevelt downwards, give to his official statement a weight and substance that cannot/ but have a reassuring effect. We may add that perusal of Mr. Hendrick's report (referred to in our issue of Ist inst.) of last month, now to hand, and published in full in the New York papers, shows that it does not contain anything at variance with the cabled despatch of Mr. Morton above quoted. The remarkable articles by Mr. Lawson on "Frenzied Finance" now being published in the United States have fired the imagination of Americans as to methods of the great financiers in their use of other people's money, and this atmosphere of unrest greatly stimulated, no doubt, the disquiet in the public mind so soon as the irregularities in the past management of the Equitable were brought to light. The whole weight of the evidence now disclosed goes to show that the capital of the Equitable remains intact.