A QUESTION OF HATS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 4

A QUESTION OF HATS

WHAT IS A MILLINER?

COURT INTERESTED

What precisely is milliners' work? The point cropped up in the Arbitration Court today when J. F. Phythian objected to an application by the union to add him as a party to the Dressmakers1 and Milliners' Award. There was no definition in the award to which the Court had -recourse and Mr. G. B. Newton, the secretary of the union, was unable to give a composite answer to the question. So the Court consulted a dictionary, and after doing that Mr. Justice Page announced that decision would be reserved on "this rather interesting problem."

Mr. Phythian said he made • children's hats, Japanese paper Panamas for the summer time, and felts for the winter. He did the blocking and he employed three girls who were engaged exclusively in sewing bands to the hats. Their work was simple and took little time to learn. He contended that what the girls did was not millinery and that therefore he should not be made a party to the award.

Mr. Justice Page, with whom were sitting Mr. W. Cecil Prime and Mr. A. L. Monteith, asked Mr. Newton if the making of men's felt hats was a milliner's job.

"I think not, sir," replied Mr. Newton.

Mr. Newton said he considered that the making of children's hats as well as women's hats was millinery. Many women's hats had no more trimming on them than men's hats, and yet women's hats of this kind were millinery. He contended that the work done by Mr. Phythian was just as much millinery as the making of children's clothing was dressmaking. His. Honour at this stage consulted the dictionary. "The only dictionary we have, here," he said, "describes a milliner as one who makes headdresses, bonnets, etc., for women, and millinery as the articles made or sold by milliners; the industry of making these head-dresses, bonnets, etc., for women.". .

After this, Mr. Phythian put in the suggestion that. the award should not have been called the Milliners' Award but the Hat Trimmers' Award. ' Why should a girl who worked for him putting a simple trimming on children's hats be classified as a milliner when girls who put bands on men's hats at the National Hat Mills were not?

In reply to a question, Mr. Newton said that the union had considered moving in the direction of having the felt hat makers covered.

Mr. Monteith said that the making of felt hats for ladies was covered by the Milliners' Award.

The matter was left at that, the members of the Court? deciding to go away and think out the problem- Mr. Phythian had set them.