THE GARCONS BE CAFE.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 183, 18 December 1886, Page 13

THE GARCONS BE CAFE.

That numerous and laborious corporation, the garcona de cafe, is clamouring for its rights — or, I should say, is developing its wrongs — by moans of out-of«door meetings, and threatens a strike if the bureaux do placement and the proprietors of tbo cafoe do not correct certain flagrant abusos which weigh heavily on tho overworked waiter. There are about 45,089 of these waiters in the Paris cafes as distinguished from the restaurants. In all the fashionable establishments they are not paid waged, but pay for the privilege of serving, as they reap handsome harvests from tho pourboiroß given by the customers. They have a long aeries of complaints, chief of which ia that they are obliged to deposit a certain sum on entering the cafes, and that that sum is sphited away co that they never ace it moro. Also, that they are fined and imposed on at every turn, as well as forced to give a certain percentage of their pourboires to the proprietors ot the cafes. Every little while the Frenchman endeavours to emancipate himself from the pourboiro, but when he has got his revolution well under way lie ie frightened at himself and relapses into his old Bervility to the serving men Be is etill the prey of the ourreuae at the theatre, who takes his cane , and coat ouly to pilo them in his lap between the fourth and fitth acte, when he wishes to reflect upon tho ploy which he has seen, and to make him iar more uncomfortable than ho would have been without them. Wherever ho goes and whatever he does he has to bestow three, four or five sous on some understrapper ; and the amount of money which changes hands in this way is incredible. If the 45,000 garcons break windows and manifest dissatisfaction in the streets their cause will be lost. But they appoar too wise to do this, and are now banding together against their employers, who will probably have to yield