RAILWAY REFRESHMENT ROOMS. What Becomes of the Cups and Saucers ?

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 398, 15 February 1908, Page 6

RAILWAY REFRESHMENT ROOMS. What Becomes of the Cups and Saucers ?

THAT'S where it is, you see! It a man or a woman can take a cup from a railway refreshment room without any pang of conscience, h© or she would just as lief take the saucei also. And where is the mischief to end? It is all very well to complain, about the charge of sixpence for a cup of tea, and another sixpence for a sandwich of ham or something. else. (Who doesn't know those rail-way-station sandwiches — almost mvanably made of something else?) But when the poor licensee has to make up a leeway on a year's working of something like £50 for borrowed cups (never returned), appropriated saucers, missing knives, forks, spoons, etc., why, the licensee is driven to desperation in self defence. * • • Mr. Tom Wilford, M.P., has given the public a return showing how lightfingered the public are in the matter of rajlway refreshment-room property. It is a rather remarkable return, compiled by Mr. Thomas F. Thompson, licensee of the refreshment-rooms on the Kaitoke Railway Station. The said return sets out that from May, 1905, to December 9th, 1907, Mr. Thompson had to purchase new crockery, etc., up to a cost of £160 2s 7d, toreplace stolen cups, saucers, etc. Out of 8496 cups which had been m his rooms during his lease only 400 remained m December. If this soit of thing goes on at all other refreshment-rooms throughout New Zealand, our name as a country for consuming crockery must be unpaialleled beneath the sun. Also our name for honesty must be "mud." The curious thing about human nature is that the person who would rather die than pick another's pocket of one shilling wouldn't hesitate to take an institution or company down for the value. To rob a person of a penny would be repugnant to many natures which exult m "beating" the tramway for a penny fare, or getting the best of a booking-clerk for change on a railway ticket It's in the incompatibility of human nature, somehow. But it is time this cup-pilfering business was stopped. A detective or two on the trains, and an odd prosecution here and there, should save a lot of worry and expense to licensees.