THE MESSAGE TO THE TRADE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 849, 14 June 1906, Page 20

THE MESSAGE TO THE TRADE.

The pronouncement made last week by the City Licensing Committee in connection with various matters affecting hotelkeepers has caused no end of comment, not only from those intimately connected or interested in the liquor business, but from outside sources. The suggestion to abolish barmaids has perhaps caused more comment than any of the other points raised. The majority of the hotelusing public are most certainly in favour of the retention of the young ladies, and it is certain that the majority of hotelkeepers find that they are better and more faithfully served by women than by men. The question of whether or not young men are prone to over-indulgence in liquor, because of the presence of barmaids, is one which is not borne out by experience or by fact. And it appears to be a somewhat drastic experiment to ask for the removal of the girl behind the bar. The reference to barmen only being employed in America is not followed up by any evidence that the youth of that country is more soberly inclined than, say, the youth of Auckland. In the defence of the retention of barmaids, it is asserted that they have a positively restraining influence over over-indul-gence, bad manners and intemperate language. Moreover, they are the representatives of an institution which has reigned satisfactorily in many countries for a long number of years. Added to this, of course, there is the hardship of a number of women having to look for a new employment. Like every other walk in life, there are many who have been in constant employment in the one house for years, and the matter of having to turn their hands to some new business is undoubtedly a matter of the gravest concern to them. If there are some of these young women who are not all that could be desired, it is hard that the whole profession should be wiped out and be debarred from following their avocation. In the matter of the supervision of and the analysing of liquor sold, few will disagree with these points. Hotelkeepers themselves will, no doubt, welcome anything in this direction which will disprove even a suspicion that the liquor sold is impure. Few, if any, have anything to fear from any such action. In the interests of their businesses, it is imperative that they sell only what is good. An attempt to do otherwise would only result in a loss of trade, and the earning of a bad name for liquor which nothing would eradicate. On the question of doors and bars, the Committee have pronounced in the direction of almost unworkable reform. To have bars with only front entrances on to the street would cause an immensity of extra work and inconvenience which allegations of suspicious trading do not warrant. Much to the gratification of the licensed victuallers, the Committee have turned some attention to sly grog-selling and to the selling of liquor in board-ing-houses. It is a well-known fact that the blame that often has been given to hotels for late at night and Sunday drunkenness has in stern reality been wholly undeserved. It is only when cases of wholesale sly grogselling are made public that we can see that the publican is not the sinner that his enemies would have him be.