TEA AND PIE, 1S

Evening Star, Issue 18531, 14 January 1924, Page 1

TEA AND PIE, 1S

SHOOK FOE MELBOURNE LUNOHEES

“Up again,” announced the waitresses in sonic of the big city ■ eating-houses yesterday (says the -Melbourne ‘Age’) as they presented their customers with a docket. These customers, none too well supplied with small silver after, the Christmas spending, were'amazed to find that their bills 3iad gone up by per cent. Tea and scones, or tea and pie, the modest meal'of the shop girl, the typist, and the junior clerk, could be had until yesterday, in some of the popular restaurants, for 9d. They now cost la. The increase is not yet 'universal, bub doubtless it soon will become ■ so. This sort of advance is always contagious. The reason given for the startlingly large increase is that a recent Wages Board determination increases the pay ,of some of the employees, and that it must be made up. The Restaurant Keepers’ Association announced some time ago that - the method of recouping themselves for the additional expense would bo left to individual members. In some of the better-class restaurants and oafos charges can pass practically unnoticed; but when the “ pie and tea" and “sconce and tea.”• docket is altered it is an event of importance to many thousands of city workers, who are regular daily patrons of the popular eat-ing-houses. A little exorcise in mental arithmetic seemed to satisfy those who yesterday paid the additional toll that a rise in wages is apparently the beet thing that can happen to some employers, or at any rate that these employers had found an effective antidote to the: distress occasioned by having to pay higher wages to some of their servants. The increase in wages was certainly not 33(j per cent.,, or anything like it, and the employees themselves were hoard remarking that an extra charge of Id on these small meals would have paid all the additional wages and left a handsome , balance besides. But the edict has cone out—tea and pie Is! And Is it will bo, v.'Mdh means tliat those whoso lunch consists of this class of fare will each contribute at least Is 3d mora per week than had been necessary* hitherto.