TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 7 February 1936, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

THE SHIFT SYSTEM.

Some sidelights on recent changes in social custom are illustrated in the bill which is now being brought before Parlament legalising the doubleshift system for women factory workers, notes the “Listener.” - The bill embodies the conclusions unanimously reached by a departmental committee which reported to the Home Sec-retai-y earlier in the year. The system usd to be criticised on the ground i that it interfered with family life and j that the night shift, which ends at 10 o’clock, involved unusually late hours, but the committee came to the conclusion that, as things are today, there is little substance in these criticisms. The Victorian family circle, which involved the same hours of work and play for everybody, has given place to a wider dispersal of interests, and young people do not commonly spend the same amount of time at home as

an earlier generation did. If, as a result of the new bill, the use of the shift system becomes much more general—and in many industries it has marked advantages, as for a manufacturer experimenting with a new line while maintaining his established lines —there will be a growth of new facilities in the mornings and early afternoons for amusement and recreation. The rush-hours crowds, the numbers of people travelling within the same periods of the day, are growing evils in our large towns, and seriously diminish the enjoyment which has to be obtained amid general con- ! gestion. The shift system, if it grows, 1 promises some alleviation and spacing out which will relieve the present accumulation after six o'clock of people

who. having crowded with each other to work, find themselves treading on each other's heels in the search for recreation.

Words of Wisdom

Be noble! And the nobleness that lies in other men , sleeping but never dead, will rise in majesty to meet thine own. — Lowell.

Tale of the Day.

Girl (speeding at terrific pace

companion, whose hat has been blown .away and who is holding on as car swings round corners): “One gets a thrill out of speeding like this. Don t you feel glad you are alive?" Man: “Glad isn’t the word I'm. amazed."