THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1905. COMPULSORY GLOBING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12328, 21 July 1903, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1905. COMPULSORY GLOBING.

A PUBLIC meeting of Auckland and suburban tradesmen, called for to;night, will consider resolutions pro- ■ testing against the compulsory closing of shops upon Saturdays. But apart altogether from the''respective interests < and opinions of shopkeepers: and shop assistants, We ■ must insist that in this matter the general public has the first claim to consideration. It may be freely and unhesitatingly admitted and assumed that When strong and sound humanitarian pleas/-ijafi be set up it is the duty, and should be the pleasure, of the public to forego convenience or cheapness, and that in such cases the arm of the law may properly bo exerted to interfere. "Unseaworthy ships may make cheap freights, but nobody Worthy of notice would , grudge to the sailor the price of safety.' Nor is it to be supposed that any widespread objection exists to the enforcement of humane and reasonable conditions in any form of industrial occupation. But in this matter of the proposed compulsory Saturday half-holiday there is no humanity plea in the \ issue. Shops are already drastically! regulated* Reasonable hours are in j force. A weekly half-holiday is insisted upon. The Arbitration Court oari even regulate wages. Now, the Government proposes to thrust aside the popular shopping custom of the great mass of the Urban and suburban populace and :to make penal the doing of what people are in the confirmed habit of doing. We find the flimsiest of reasons advanced for this abolition of the present optional system and -the public convenience most; contemptuously ignored. The general preference of the public for the mid-week halfholiday arrangement appears to offend our paternal Administration as much as the general preference of the settler for the freehold. Options are to go* taxation on Unimproved values, leaseholds, Saturday half-holidays, everything tends to the compulsory after the ground has been broken by the innocent-looking option. • In none of these issues is there; less cause for change than in the half-holiday matter, which is saying a very great deal.

Of - course, eveiwbody prefers a Saturday to any other half-holiday, This preference is as common to railway employees and tramway men, to ferry hands and to cab-drivers as it is to shop assistants. We are not 'Speaking for the shopkeepers, but we may remark, in passing, that wherever their trade allows it they themselves give us proof of the • natural preference for Saturday halfholiday keeping. But it is hot possible for those who eater for the public wants to act with a calm disregard for the public habits. The policeman must patrol the midnight streets that the public may sleep in comparative'. safety.|% Those who work our transit isyst®ffiL must labour to give holiday-pleasure to their Mlo# citizens. Cable and telegraph and newspaper office -must be staffed fit strange hours so that the morning's .news may come crisp ; and fresh to the breakfast table. Gasworks and waterworks, lighthouses and hospitals, are not Conducted, and cannot be conducted, solely to suit the conveniences and preferences of those who keep them at the public sendee. In short, if we survey industrial society, we find that the infinite facilities which we enjoy and the general convenience and comfort and safety with which all classes commonly live, depend upon due recognition of the fact that the public must be served in all Ordinary and reasonable requirements. To assume that either shop assistants or shopkeepers have a collective right to say that the public shall or shall not do all its shopping in a given time or in a given manner is presuming altogether too much upon that entirely British spirit of compromise by. which the present optional system of half-holiday closing hecahie established. There Was a general willingness to arrange for some halfholiday in the week, a general confidence that while it was optional the public would not be utterly disregarded. But it is another thing altogether to be arbitrarily forbidden from Wellington to continue a shopping custom which is as old as the counter and which is based upon the inherent domestic heeds of the great majority of the urban community. We may be told by Ml*. Seddon that the shop assistant has as good a right to. the general Saturday halfholiday as anybody else, but this statement merely evades the whole question. , Nor are we aware of any intense feeling on the shop assistants' part nor Of any burning discontent with present arrangements. And we may well bear in mind that it has always been contended by the pioneer advocates of shop restrictions that reasonable shop hours, and the relaxations which are sO necessary to health and happiness, could be arranged without interfering unduly with the public convenience. Then, whence this new departure 1 Who is clamouring for it 1 Who has inspired the proposal 1 We can only suppose that it is another instance of the mania for prohibitive legislation which is the bee in the Government bonnet and which is excited by every sciolistic theory propounded in any obscure debating room. The short-sightedness which

evidently regards the proposal »h a boon to the wage-earning class in pathetic ■ihfits density, but ? w iiotJa the less objectionable. The fiicto'ty employees, the artisans, the unskilled labourers, those who cten their livelihood in the thousand and one occupatiotss of a thriving diy,* are to shop— ? Salurthiy iitbe usual pay-day, and on S&fciifday night the workman'*! wife goes chopping, often with her husband and her children, mingling bltsitiesia with pleasure, meeting friends arid enjoying the* throng. Sunday is the historic British feast-day, AS well as the British day of rest, to which Saturday's shopping is a prelude in every town throughout the British world. This is to cease, if Mr. Sedddh has his will. A curfew is to ring over a great national custom, in spite of the fact that holiday compensation is already awarded to those Who minister in it to the public convenience. Nobody is agitating for this curfew. Steadily increasing numbers, realising its meaning, ' are strongly against it.. And if it should ring and quench the Saturday night glare of busy Streets, throughout the colony, it will help, to teach us the old Greek lesson that democracies easily fall into tyrannies when! they tacitly allow,too much power in any one man's hands.