The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 1915. THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144665, 27 April 1915, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 1915. THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

Of the polls that arc to be taken to-morrow the chief interest spents to centre in that on the question of the half-holiday, upon which the* community is divided, (he business people with, very few exceptions being strongly opposed to closing on Saturday afternoons, while the professional class generally is siding with the, employees, a large majority of whom support Saturday closing. In our opinion the weight of argument is greatly on the side of the business people: indeed the arguments addnrod in favour*of Saturday closing seem to us singularly weak. The first clause in the published Saturday manifesto states that the town will greatly benefit by opening on Thursday afternoons because if is on that day (hat the country people hold their picnics here, and many country towns close. The answer to that is that the country (owns are expected to fall into line and observe Saturday—Waitara, the manifesto says, will do so—in which case is it not in he expected (hat they will change their picnic day to Saturday? As a matter of fact, the statement that "all country picnics take place on Thursdays” is incorrect and misleading. The second clause is equally so, for most oi the country people do not reach town till about eleven o'clock on Saturdays, nor leave until late in the afternoon, so that it is impossible that “practically all the country business is completed by midday/’ The tramways argument is singularly weak: it implies a concentration of traffic on Saturday afternoons; if this occurred the trams would he unable to cope with it except at the cost, of a lot of rolling-stock, which would be idle every other day. Tramways pay best where the traffic is most widely distributed throughout (he week. .Whether the health of employees would he benefited by the change is very much open to question. The change is apparently desired chiefly in order (hat Sunday, instead of being a day of rest, may be a day of amusement, for it is argued that employees, after a long day on Saturday, arc only fit for rest next day and cannot enjoy themselves. It the .Saturdays arc so exhausting now, what will Vie the condition of the employees at the end of a week unbroken by the Thursday halfholiday and terminating with a long day on Friday and a Saturday morning made particularly strenuous by the effort to get through in half a day the business which, it is argued, the farmers will still continue to do on that day? -Am those employees who are now too tired to get up on Sunday morning likely to feel fit for recreation on Saturday afternoons, after five and a-lialf days’ unbroken toil If it is a fact that the present conditions are so exhausting it seems more likely that they will be fit for nothing on Saturday afternoons, and will take their recreation on Sundays, and so be too stiff and weary (as a correspondent suggests) to return ‘to work on .Monday. mornings. JYhateyer. may :

be said, the fact remains that the almost universal practice thro-uglKuit New Zealand is for retailers to remain open all day on Saturdays. The only notable exceptions are in s Auckland and Christchurch, and in both those places there is considerable agitation in favour of a reversion to a mid-week holiday. The convenience of the purchasing public should be the first consideration, and here, as in nearly all towns, Saturday is the most convenient, at any rate the most popular, day for shopping, and we hope there will be no present change in New Plymouth.