ON STRIKE!

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 87, 4 July 1927, Page 9

ON STRIKE!

INDIAN FRUIT VENDORS A WHITE MAN’S LICENCE RECENTLY the Indian street fruit vendors of Auckland went on strike. It lasted for 10 days and was a deliberate attempt to prevent an Auckland citizen, Mr. H. G. Bennett, from obtaining a licence to sell fruit on the street. Mr. Bennett obtained his licence from the City Council and is now busily selling fruit from his barrow at the intersection of Karangahape Road and Belgium Street, facing the top of Queen Street. “I am undercutting their prices,” Mr. Bennett said this morning, “and from the patronage I am receiving I shall more than hold my own with them.” It seemed so this morning. An Indian barrow standing opposite to Mr. Bennett’s was not doing a great deal of business. The party difference began three weeks ago. Street fruit vendors appily to the City Council every Monday morning for their licences. On the morning of June 13 Mr. Bennett lined up with the others for his licence. When a City Council official said Mr. Bennett was receiving a licence the Indians walked out of the building and refused to take out their licences as usual. The strike lasted for 10 days, and then the Indians came back. Mr. Bennett has taken a partner, and is doing very well. “I am proving that a white man can make a living with a street stall as well as other nationalities,” he said, as he pointed to the money he had taken this morning.