THE SHOPS AND OFFICES ACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12859, 6 May 1905, Page 4

THE SHOPS AND OFFICES ACT.

Parliament does not meet for six or seven weeks, and in the meantime the objectionable clauses of the Shops and Offices Act are to be enforced. The Wellington shopkeepers are already organising to renew the agitation against regulations which nobody wants, nobody defends, and only became law through Mr. Soddon's habit of driving legislation while members cannot keep awake. Our Auckland shopkeepers should not be backward in making the agitation a colonial one, for, although the delays of appeal to the Supreme Court, in the test case have so far exempted them from grave interference, now that the time has come for the inspectors to compel conformity, it is necessary that those immediately interested should not only decide upon a- definite policy but should take steps to secure relief the moment Parliament reassembles. The Act we all knowthe utter unreasonableness of the parts objected to, the inexcusable manner in which they were inserted by the Government in the Council and hustled through the House of Representatives. But this will not help the shopkeeper who is haled before the magistrate, though we a're taught that the law is not a terror to honest men, but only to evil-doers. Our own opinion is that the Act is a well deserved lesson on the danger of allowing Mr. Seddon 10 ride roughshod over all Parliamentary procedure, and that its prompt amendment ought not to sponge righteous indignation from the minds of the public.