IN THE PILLORY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22515, 24 September 1938, Page 16

IN THE PILLORY

No Housewives Need Apply [By COMMENTATOR] The 40-hour week and a lot of other things notwithstanding, a number of men around this town still ’occasionally do a hard day’s work, so I’m told.- And it is a pity that when it is over many of them are’made, unnecessarily, even more tired by having to stand in the trams on the way home. Because, for no particular reason I can see, except pure feminine contrariness, housewives who have done a pleasant day’s shopping seem "to consider that the only tram on which, they can reasonably travel - home is that which carries the city’s workers, tired after a hard day (we’ll say it’s hard for the sake of this argument, anyway). The net result of this shoppers’ choice for workers’ trams is that in many cases men have to stand for a full journey, because quite a big part of even the smokers’ outside seats are taken up—even when inside seats are empty—by the returning regiment of women, surfeited with shopping and afternoon tea. Courtesy demands that a man shall stand; but courtesy is sometimes stretched to breaking point when an elderly man stands for some miles so that a much younger woman, who could have caught a much earlier tram home, may remain in town until the last minute. This complaint does nottake into account the working girls—women who work all day in town, too, and have to take a tram home. They are entitled to a seat in the tram home, and no man minds giving up a seat for them. But they are an entirely different class of travellers from the late afternoon shoppers who help to crowd our trams at rush times, and send many a good man home in a bad temper. The rates which help to keep the trams going are mostly paid from the wages of those workers who ride on them in the rush hours after work, and a Tramway Board with an eye to keeping its financial helpers in good humour might be well advised to do its best to keep seats available for those who need them. The parcel-laden shoppers could just •as well be five minutes earlier on their homeward way, and, if they were the trams would be a great deal more popular with those who use them to bring them home from work.