SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13750, 12 September 1908, Page 3

SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY.

AGITATION IN VICTORIA.

SHOPKEEPERS CONVERTED.

In • New Zealand the shop assistants who are agitating for a universal halfholiday are receiving very scant encouragement from their employers, but in Australia the . workers are getting very generous assistance from the shopkeepers in their efforts to have their rest and recreation time fixed for the last day of the week. An enthusiastic meeting in support of the movement was held in the , Melbourne Town Hall a few weeks ago. No sooner were the | doors of the place opened than hundreds of men and women coj»rn6»oed to pour in. When every seat in the hall and the gallery had been occupied, tho overflow found its way to the platform aud into the organ gallery, and still numbers of people were unable to gain admission. The PostmasterGeneral ocoupied the chair, and several members of Parliament were among the speakers. The Chairman, in opening the proceedings, said public opinion had been in fayour of the Saturday half-holiday for a' long time, but there had been fdars on the part of the struggling shopkeepers, who had found it hard to make ends meet. "But now," he continued, "shopkeepers have come to recognise that this movement is to the interests of trade and commerce. Opposition comes only from those who oppose all change and from those who are as selfish and silly as the factory girl who wrote to" the papers the other j day asking when she could do*her Shopping if there was a Saturday half-holi-day." The secretary of the. Saturday Half-holiday Association announced that, after only a month's work, 3647 shopkeepers had joined the organisation, and that hundreds of others were coming in. The Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Manufactures, the Protestant Alliance, and many other public institutions had given their support to the movement, and the Chief Inspector of Factories in Brisbane had reported most satisfactorily upon the working of the Saturday half-holiday in Queensland. One of the members of Parliament, in. speaking to a motion, affirming the desirability of legislative action, said that the Saturday half-holiday would not only stop the irritating break in the middle of the week and the unhealthy drift of money to certain classes of s,port, but would also give the shop-workers and their employers a chance of enjoying a day of rest, either in the country or in their own homes. A shopkeeper who spoke as a "convert" to the movement said that he had not had a Saturday afternoon to himself for twenty-one years, but that b.© was determined to have one now, and to turn it to the benefit of himself and his family. No doubt a similar display of enthusiasm in New Zealand towns would bring the week-end halfholiday much nearer than it appears to be at present.