THE BARMAID QUESTION AT HOME.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 724, 21 January 1904, Page 26

THE BARMAID QUESTION AT HOME.

(“ L.V. Gazette.”) The London County Council, who are ever zealous in the interests of frail humanity, having prescribed to t-be limits ■of their power what we shall eat and what we shall drink, are quite prepared to decide for us by whom we shall be served. They have not as yet incorporated their conclusions on the subject in the rules and regulations,, but through the chairman of the Music and Dancing Committee they have expressed a pious wish that there will be a diminution of the number of young women employed in places of public entertainment. Earl Russell brought up the subject at Spring Gardens on the ground that it was not desirable that this intimation should go forth as the settled conviction of the Council, and the ever-tolerant spirit of Nonconformity blazed forth in the equally pious opinion of the Rev. Fleming Williams, that the employment of barmaids was a serious scandal. Colonel Rotton directed the attention of hig colleagues to the fact that Sir Algernon West had merely expressed a wish, without the slightest intention of carrying the matter further. He had intimated to proprietors and managers of places of public entertainment that this was a point on which they could gratify the Council. Jf they could see their way to fall in with the view of the committee it would be very nice of them, but if they couldn’t, well —let us say no more about it. The matter really did not warrant ■an acrimonious discussion, as under the circumstances any objection to the chairman's harmless little pronoun cement was entirely superflous. Bur Sir Algernon could not quite accept this interpretation of his words. Hie considered the statement he had made would be more accurately designated as *‘obiter dictum” rather than a pious opinion, and he laid stress on the importance of the word “young” which Earl Russell had overlooked in quoting his remarks. That was the key-word of the entire sentence —the point of the whole objection—the very essence of the committee’s plaint. The seriousness of the scandal does nor consist in the employployment of female labour—it is not the gender but the age of the barmaid that is exercising the mind of the County Council. There is “a fascination in a

ruin that's romantic” to these ingenious reformers, and in reply to the poet’s conundrum, “Is a maiden all the better when she’s tough ?” they reply with conviction, “Certainly! For purposes of employment in a refreshment bar, the tougher she is the better !” Sir Algernon West referred to the case of a lady who had been employed as barmaid for over seventeen years, and that record was sufficient, he thought, to take her out of the category designated by the word “young.” We know that middle-age, in the case of spinsters, has been described as “anywhere between eighty and two hundred,” but Sir Algernon would restrict this somewhat generous computation. It is permissible, surely, to premise that the chairman’s correspondent mentioned the period of her employment not so much to prove herself no longer young as to show that honest employpl oyment extending over a period of years had not been fraught with evil consequences. The late Max O’Rell, who was a sympathetic and discriminating critic of the eternal feminine, declared that a woman of forty is at the zenith of her beauty and her powers of fascination. Then, and not until then, he asserted, does she understand how to exercise her witcheries in the most effective manner. Then “her eyes sparkle with joy, her mouth expresses the ecstasy of past and present bliss, and also gratitude for the kisses that have been impressed upon it” ; and, as the wise and witty French author affirms, she is altogether “an intoxicating and incomparable joy.” If Max. O’Rell’s “pious opinion” goes for anything. it is evident that the age limit is, in the interest of men who frequent places of public entertainment, a difficult one to determine. How can a woman of forty possessing all those charms solemn--, ly declare to a County Council inspector that she is no longer young ? What do seventeen years of service count for in the career of a girl who is ttll an “intoxicating and incomparable joy,” and what protection to a County Councillor is the birth certificate of a matured maiden whose mouth “expresses the ecstasy of past and present bliss ?” So far asi we can see there is only one way to secure an innocuous uniformity in the appearance of our barmaids, and that is to provide them with masks constructed from designs approved by the London County Council.