PLAIN SPEAKING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 11

PLAIN SPEAKING.

ONE or two letters of complaint about the non-run-ning of trams and omnibuses on Sunday have

reached this column, but as they are very short and sharp, they may be all condensed into the one sentence : ' Let all public vehicles ply for hire on Sunday as on other days.’ One writer, indeed, goes so far as to say, ‘ abolish the observance of Sunday entirely.’ On the other hand, I have received the following letter, signed ‘One Who Knows’ :—‘Kindly permit me to say a few words under your heading of " Plain Speaking ” re the now too common custom of running the ferry boats on Sunday. Ido not, at this moment, recollect whether this is done in other ports besides Auckland, but at all events in that city the ferry steamers do run on Sundays, affording no rest to the men who are employed on them—the skippers, ticket collectors, and engineers. This is a very great hardship, and in most cases is gross selfishness on the part of the travelling public, who, as a rule, have no need whatever to go over to Northcote. Birkenhead, Devonport, or Takapuna, or from any of those ports to the city of Auckland on Sundays. Of course, some of them say they leave those charming marine suburbs for the sake of attending their own pet and particular place of worship in the city, and hearing the gospel preached by their own popular parson. These very good people are in reality not one whit less sabbath-breakers than the ordinary holiday-makers, over whom they upraise holy hands of righteous indignation, sorrowful remonstrance, and Pharisaical horror. The townships lying across the water are singularly well provided with an assortment of churches and chapels—sufficient, an unprejudiced observer would imagine, to supply spiritual nourishment for a much larger and more religiously varied population than exists on those shores. And yet these professing Christians—who, Sunday by Sunday, have impressed upon them the duty of keeping the Sabbath day holy, and loving their neighbours as themselves—regularly and systematically disregard both these scriptural injunctions, and do evil that good may come—to their own souls, regardless of the moral effect on their children and the sceptical public. At present the ferry steamers plying between the North Shore and Auckland make nineteen trips each way on Sundays—that is, thirty-eight trips on God’s Holy Day, and the steamers going to Northcote and Birkenhead run fourteen times each way, that is, twenty eight voyages in all for those small places. There are three men employed on each steamer. On the Northcote-Birkenhead service the engineers work in shifts as follows :—Sunday, 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., or I p.m. to 10.30 p.m. On week days, 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m., or 1,30 p.m. to midnight. This does not include getting up steam, the engineers having to work about two hours longer than the skippers. This hard Sunday labour is entirely for the benefit of the general public, and, I also suppose, for the good of the purse of the Company to whom the steamers belong. But the remedy for this state of things rests entirely with the public, who ought, on principle, to refuse to make their fellow-creatures work on the usual day of rest. Very soon, if no protest is entered against Sunday work, we shall have trams and omnibuses and all other vehicles running on Sundays the same as on weekdays, aud then, good-bye to our prosperity as a nation. For it is a well-established fact that countries where the Sabbath is duly observed as a day of rest show a healthier, wealthier, and happier population than those where the people work seven days a week, either laboriously or luxuriously.’

A ‘New Woman’ writes:—‘lt is being freely stated that the best women in New Zealand have refrained from voting at the elections of members for Parliament, either the general one or bye-elections. If this be so, all the more shame to them. They have the privilege of voting, and they have no right to refuse to exercise it. They will probably urge that they did not wish to have this honour; they did not seek the position ; it was thrust upon them. Possibly, but this in no way lessens their present responsibility. Quite as sensibly they might remark that they had no choice as to their existence, no say in the matter of their birth. And as to the laws by which they are governed, and which they have to obey, why they might just as well rebel against them all as against female franchise. Some of the married ladies who object to women’s suffrage may say they do not wish to have children, and since they have them against their wish, they have no responsibility in regard to them to bring them up properly. This is quite a mistake. The children are there, and the mothers have to see that they are duly fed and decently educated from babyhood. Just the same, they have the Franchise thrust upon them, and they have to see that proper and good men represent themselves and their helpless children in Parliament—men who will frame the best kind of laws for them. It is now the clear dutv of every woman to see that her name is duly inscribed on the electoral roll, and that when election day comes she is prepared to exercise her vote in a common-sense manner so that the men returned to Parliament are no disgrace to the enfranchised women of New Zealand. To shirk such a plain duty is not what one would expect from the * best women ’in the colony. Rather would one be prepared to find them bravely, nobly, and heartily performing the duty which the general voice of the colony has laid upon them.’