CANDID COMMENTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 12, 16 September 1908, Page 43

CANDID COMMENTS.

By

HILDA.

‘ (That Sunday tea question which ts being thrashed out in the House of Representatives 5s a vexed one, which floes not appear to be too brilliantly illuminated by the remarks made upon the subject during the course of debate. One member who wished to know whether they were going to ‘’object to shop assistants and others Who wanted to go ©ut into God’s sunshine on the one possible day in the week having some (simple refreshment,’’ was advised by another to let the said shop assistants and others “wander round some of the bays.’’ SNow, what did that cryptic answer mean? Are we to understand that “the bays" were by their natural beauties to provide spiritual refreshment that would render the lack of physical unfelt? Were the Sunday trippers to drink, of the waters of the bays and be satisfied, or what? And what is to happen when there are no “bays ” to be wandered round? It really is dreadfully perplexing, when members make these mystic utterances. Someone else, in the recent debate on the tea topic made an observation to the effect that “perhaps it is the ideal of the member for Wairarapa to put on his best clothes on Sunday nnd wander round, and see if he is not better dressed than other people.’’ A personality which does not appear to have any sort of bearing upon the discussion, whether people ought to mortify the flesh on Sundays, and go about hungry, or else stay in their homes, and have tea in a purely domesticated manner. If it lie made a religious question that because it is .Sunday no work ought to be done, of course, there is nothing more to bo said on the subject: but if it is merely considered a desideratum that workers in tea rooms should be ensured only six days’ work a week, the remedy is so simple and so obvious that one wonders what all the talk is about. It should be made obligatory

upon the proprietor of a tea room which is liable to have a Sunday trade, that he give each one of’ his staff a whole holiday a week, and thus no girl would be working more than six days a week. In favour of the sale of brewed tea on .Sundays, it may be pointed out that the two week-end afternoons are the onlyones of the seven on which the hard worker is able to enjoy that typicallyBritish institution, the “fiv’clock" (as our French friends have dubbed it) ; while, also, they are the only days available to him for pleasure jaunts, so it does seem a little hard that total tea abstinence enforced by Act of Parliament should militate against the entire enjoyment of many estimable persons. Of course, if a high moral standpoint on the question is being taken, that is another story, and I do not intend to unfold it here. It is to be hoped that the French profeslsor’s suggestion that Australia ■was responsible for the changes and chances of the four seasons, and likewise for the sideways sidling of the earth through the circumambient ether, may not make our near neighbours anymore self-opinionated, self-satisfied, ami dogmatic than they are already. The ingenious theory that Australia was just a big. irresponsible meteor which fell, quite a while ago, with a nasty- jar upon this globe of ours, is exceedingly interesting, but if the Australian is, as a consequence, going to be able to layclaim to the credit of having presented New- Zealand with its delightful climate, and also to demand praise for the fact that his lump of meteoric substance elected to dump itself down near to these islands instead of upon them, there will not be any holding him. Australia is more than a little jealous now of the useful moistness of our climate, and mayvery willingly seize hold upon the theory that what we are —as far as climate is concerned —he, or his meteoric country has made us. As to other parts of the globe, which in their turn suffer, or the reverse, for that impetuous landing of Australia upon this terrestrial sphere, they must fight their own battles if, in the future, the "cornstalkers’’ show a disposition to claim credit for them. (England, even now, occasionally remembers to resent the imputation that what she is, her Colonies have made her.) For my- part, I think it quite fortunate

that a professor has not discovered that New Zealand was a meteor, for there are already many who shake their heads dubiously- and assert that the success of such a young thing as this Dominion is rather meteoric in its character, and liable, like the fire at the heart of the meteor, to cool down or fizzle out. Were the very land itself said to be of meteoric origin, the analogy would seem to them complete. Warm weather, with its attendant discomforts of dust clouds and fly swarms, is at hand, so it is surely time that the Public Health Department here set about framing some suitable plan of campaign against these two great evils. It is not easy- to over-estimate the harmful effects of dust and of flies. Dust, full of everysort of disease germ that may have rested quiescent in mud and cold, distributes itself in summer with the utmost impartiality- over the throats and lungs of the unhappy- human beings who encounter it, and over the numerous foodstuffs which are displayed on open counters and outside the doors of shops. To have the health interests of the citizens really at heart, and to cope with this danger, the healWi authorities should make an order that no food of any description is to be offered for sale, unless it be guaranteed free from dust and flyinfection, and this would be by no means a harsh injunction, since nothing is easier than to preserve food stuffs behind enclosed windows, in glass-covered counters, or special air-tight preservative chambers; while the scheme to exclude dust would be of equal value to preserve the foods from fly-infection, a danger even more to be feared than that from dust—which is saying a very great deal. The Public Health Conference in Britain recently, upon investigation, came to the conclusion that there is no more dangerous living thing than the ordinary house fly, and the scientist’s distrust of the creature cannot be wondered at—for he has seen under the microscope those 100,000 bacilli which an ordinary fly can •and does carry- quite comfortably upon the tips of his toes! More dangerous even than the dust, a fly will feed upon maggot-swarming horrors at some distance from a house, and, later, make his way into that house, to further satisfy his voracious appetite upon the dainties there left- uncovered. A pleasant thought this, and one which should send every right-minded person searching for cover-

ed sugar bowls and butter dishes, flyproof meat’covers and closed jam jars. I leave already had occasion in this column to call attention to the abhorrent ■sight of the local butcher shops in sum mer, with meat openly exposed to every breath of dust-laden air that blows, and swarming blackly with flies; but with faint hope that constant dripping may eventually wear away stony disregard of the most obvious health precautions, | must refer to the spectacle again. Consider, good folk, who sit down to enjoy your summer meals, that elreadv some thousand flies have 'been feeding upon it before it reaches your table. They may not each have had 100,000 disease germs on their legs, but we can quite confidently calculate that at least ten thousand were deposited upon the flesh before the swarmers were scared off, and the meat was weighed for your use. Possibly the meat was not washed before it was cooked, for “good housewives’’ (t) think washing impoverishes the fibre; and possibly « fair proportion of those disease germs may have been killed in the cooking, but still you can be sure that you had to swallow a good number of them, all alive and kicking. And it is just a question of your own inherent power to destroy the bacilli which have been taken into the system, whether you keep your health, or are shortly yourself "kicking” that useful contrivance known as a bucket. Unfortunately, people are so hard to convince of the evils of dust and flies. They think because these have always been known, and yet the human race has not been exterminated, that the agitation about both is nothing but a “doctor's scare” —something stupid and fussy •which is to be written about in the papers in sportive vein, and with a sort of •sneaking pity for the poor, innocent, dear little winged creature. But actually, dust in general and flies in particular are such dangerous propagators of disease germs that there is urgent necessity that each nuisance should be abated, even if it bo not altogether easy to remove them entirely. Roads might be diligently watered at short intervals with disinfectants; .shops might be required to keep all their foodstuffs covered; and the general public, might be advised of the dangers which they incur while keeping viands exposed to the open air. . One would like to see these precautions taken this coming summer—but shall we? “I has ma doots."