THE EARLY CLOSING AGITATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1372, 5 November 1884, Page 2

THE EARLY CLOSING AGITATION.

To the Editor. Sir, —I am not opposed to the shortening of any naan’s hours of labor, and would only be too glad to see every colonist in . a position that would enable him to make a pleasure of his toil. But, unfortunately, while we tread earth we must, unless more than usually fortunate and successful, e?rn cur bread as beat we may. Men in busineia—no matter what business—must suit their convenience to the necessities of th«ir callings, and as business is usually regulated by supply and demand, and as tie great factor “ demand " is created hr the public, the wishes of the public mist be considered and attended to. If the public will make their purchases after a certain hour, and that hour is the limit at which shop keeping ceases to be a pleasure, then it is the duty of those who feel the unpleasantness, to take legitimate means to bring about a hea thier public feeling in regard to shopping. It is quite a legitimate means to to go round from bouse to house and ask the housewives t > do their shopping ear y, and I hope the good ladies will, do what they can to make late hours unprofitable, and gas burning in the summer a loss to the shopkeepers. But this agitation has a history anditis to that I would like to refer, because the public have soma interest there in We have been told that because certain merchants kept late hours, certain others were about to find it necessary to do the same in self-protection. Just so; and hence the whole hive of shopkeeping industry began to hum about early closing. But we had bean previously told by handbills presented to us on the street, that, in consequence of the under selling system followed by one house, the other houses were bringing pressure to bear upon the wholesale houses who supplied | the under seller. Then the advertisements in the public prints showed us that a big fail had takeu place iu the p ices of everything we had hitherto been in the habit of buying at the shops, and it was only a very dense man who could not see that the reduction had been brought about by the action of the house which elected to sell its goods at a cheaper rate than wa had previously known in Ashburton; and if that house could live on the profits it made at the low figures, and if the other merchants are likely to live with their selling prices so very largely reduced, what, may 1 ask, was the percentage of profit the public had been previously contributing unnecessarily to the poekets ol the other merchants 1 Strange, too, that because this cheap bouse declined to be dictated to as to the hours it would keep open, and in face of the fact that it was well-known beforehand that the house would not be so dictated to, a list of merchants is published who were prepared to close at an hour when keeping open was unprofitable, and were thus making a virtue of necessity ; and foe the sake of comparison another list of one is published with it. This one is the house whose action has done more to give ua cheap provisions and cheap everything than all the efforts of ou" legislators. And because it has done so its firm must needs be branded in this sort of way, as merchants who mean to griad down the employee ! 1 take it the people in this district who have to depend upon employment for their living do not look upon that house as grinding them down, but rather thank it for its action in greatly expanding the buying power of their wages. If the Early Closing Association want to carry their point, let them work towards a healthy public opinion among those who do our shopping for us. But I am afraid the present agitation is too much- tinged with the color of boycotting to be so popular among the crowd of buyers of necessaries as the Association would like to be.—l am, etc., 15 PER CENT. REDUCTION.