The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2829, 13 March 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1872.

The more the objects of the Saturday Half-Holiday Association are investigated, the more thoroughly do they commend themselves to the common sense of mankind. The position of shopkeepers differs very materially in many respects from that of persons who obtain their living by hand labor. They invest a heavy amount of capital,

and keep up large establishments for the purpose of distributing necessaries to the community} who choose their own time, and suit their own convenience when to make their purchases. By a sort of tacit arrangement, which has grown outof Home circumstances, Saturday has been made an exceptional day, when it is supposed those who receive weekly wages lay out their money for supplies. Whatever reason there may be for this at Home, where people live from hand-to-mouth, and where the combined labor of every member of the family—father, mother, and children, every hour during six days of labor, is required to enable them to earn enough for their support, such pinching in the Colony is exceptional. Most men willing to work, are paid sufficiently well here to enable them to arrange their business affairs so as to buy what thqy want at any period of the week, and we know of no special charm in the Saturday nights shopping to lead them to desire to perpetuate a custom which entails unnecessary burdens upon some of their fellow creatures, and needless expense to distributors of merchandise. There is not a retail establishment in the town in which the staff of shopmen and shopwomen is not able to get through far more business, provided it could be spread over the week. But it is necessary to employ a certain number of assistants in order to meet the pressure that takes place at very nearly stated times. Thus on Saturdays there are many hours during which scarcely a person enters a shop, but the employes must be there. Other people may go on a pleasure trip, enjoy their game at foot ball or cricket, visit the Botanic Garden, go to Port Chalmers or elsewhere, but these young men and young women are kept indoors waiting their return. They have been comparatively idle during the morning and afternoon, and at night all that might have been easily done, if fairly divided during the week, has to be performed between seven and twelve o’clock. We do not suppose many of us have thought about this unnecessary tax laid upon shopkeepers and their assistants. We have brought these customs across the water with us, and have never taken the trouble to ask ourselves whether or not they apply to our altered circumstances, or whether it would not be better for all classes if we adopted a more rational system. It is not necessary to put pen to paper, and to calculate the national loss of such a plan. The expense of a night business is immeasurably more than that of one carried on by day. Even the cost of gas is a very serious item in the calculation, and whether men can realise it or not, ultimately the loss falls upon the consumers themselves. In carrying on business men have to take all expenses into consideration 3 and if with the same staff they could do during five days and a-half what they now take six and a-half to do, there is the extra cost of one day to be paid for out of takings. It is just like the cost of machinery : the expense of distribution is increased by taking a longer time than necessary to do the work in, and the loss falls upon the community 3 for men must have a certain amount of .profit or they will not keep their shops open. Then taking into consideration that assistants in drapery and grocery establishments are not drawn from the opulent classes, it is very plain, those who live by wages by not acceding to this movement are laying burdens upon their own sons and daughters. This consideration ought not to be lost sight of by them, for it must be remembered that they’alone are interested in Saturday’s shopping. They must bear in mind that the rich and fashionable choose their own time for making purchases. It matters little to them whether shops close at twelve at noon or at twelve at night on Saturday. Their work has been done during the week, their arrangements are made 3 so that it is for the less wealthy alone that two days are crammed into one on the Saturday. We commend to the consideration of every one the letter we published yesterday ; only one of many that have been written of precisely the same tenor. We believe its statements to be strictly and literally true, not only with regard to that family, but very many others similarly circumstanced. By the report of the Secretary to the Association, we see only one tradesman out of thirtynine objected to the objects proposed by it. There are some men with very odd ideas on these matters. Fortunately they are in such a minority that when society has made up its mind not to buy after a certain hour on a Saturday, even the odd one will close his shop through personal experience that he not only puts a mark upon himself but has to pay for it into the bargain.