WHICH DAY?

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 85, 11 April 1911, Page 7

WHICH DAY?

TO THE EDIXOB. Sir, — My attention has been drawn to a letter from, a Mr. Kelly, secretary of . the warehouse assistants, Melbourne, re the success that has attended the Saturday half-holiday movement in that city. He states that small shopkeepers have increased tenfold (presumedly through the deletion of the Saturday's business'). Prior to the Saturday closing Melbourne and suburbs had approximately four thousand small shopkeepers, and Mr. Kelly would have us simpleminded New Zealanders believe that there are now forty thousand.. Shades of Napoleon ! I can imagine him saying 'not' that England is a nation of shopkeepers, but Melbourne is all shopkeepers. Mr. Kelly further states that "never before, has business been so brisk," etc. Is this on account of deleting the Saturday from the programme, the- boom, or Mr. Kelly's own opinion '! It certainly is at variance with reports from shopkeepers themselwe*. Mr. Kelly quotes from a report 1 of the Chief Inspector of Factories that th& closing of &>hops has tended to localise trade. Quite so, that is-exacHy our contention. The thousands who come in from the surrounding districts on. Saturday will not be hero in as many hundreds if Friday is the late night. Mr. Kelly did not point out that deputations representing hundreds of shopkeepers have, at different times, appealed to Parliamenb to have the law amended, aa the loss of Saturday wm having a detrimental effect on their various businesses. Mr. Kelly did not say in his letter that several towns in Victoria, after trying the Saturday closing, had reverted to the mid-week half-holi-day. Here we are not interested in the- holiday in Australia, where there are abcut seventeen exemptions undef the Act, and wheie in Bimrke-streefc, Swanston-streel, Smith-street, Collingwood, Prahran, every second shop is open en Saturday, ?o that it :s no holiday for the majority of assistants. What v,-e aie interested in, is that Dunedin, Napier, lilenheim, Nelson, and other to\Mi3 in our own Dominion have tried th? half-holiday closing on Saturday, ajid it had such a d-etrimenkd effect on business that each, without exception, reverted to the mid-week holiday. Less volume of trade menus less assistants or higher cost of goods, and until Parliament passes a Bill for a universal halfholiday en Saturday for the -whole Stats, v.'ith no exemptions, closing hotel bars, bottle stores, trains mid other luxuries, the Wellington housewife will have too much good sense to record her vote to bamph what, to most people, is the most suitable shopping day in the -week. — I am, etc., HERBERT SEATON, Ex-Chairman New Zealand Shopkeepers' Association. .Wellington, 7th April, 1911.