The Evening Star THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1928. SUBURBAN SHOPS PERSECUTED.

Evening Star, Issue 19798, 23 February 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1928. SUBURBAN SHOPS PERSECUTED.

Among recent prosecutions in the local Police Court some of tho most intriguing have been concerned with tho sale of ice cream. The vendors concerned are small shopkeepers in tho. suburbs, principally at seaside resorts. Tho law is not quite so hard-hearted as to prohibit absolutely the consumption of ice cream on a hot Sunday, but it is an offence unless the cooling dainty is swallowed in secret. Perhaps that is an inaccurate way ot stating tho position. To be more precise, the shopkeeper commits an offence if his customer walks out of the door with his tongue going like an antcatcr’s instead of remaining indoors until the last liok leaves tho container empty. This seems very rough on the shopkeeper, who, to keep on the right side of the law, would need to act the part of a bully towards children, while in his dealings with adults ho would require to add pugilism or jiu-jitsu to his accomplishments as a salesman. That woidd bo destructive of business, or at least of popularity, for customers do appreciate civility from retailers. Worse still, in tho endeavor to comply with the law in tho matter of the vending of ice cream he would perforce lay himself open, in tho case of a contumacious customer, to being charged with a much graver breach of tho law—to wit, assault on tho person. These are not the whole troubles of the suburban shopkeeper. Incessant tinkering with the law regulating the hours of sale for various commodities has resulted in an Illogical and incßinprclicnsiblc maze. Those suburban dwellers who have occasion to make after-tea purchases of fruit, vegetables, cordials, or sweets sometimes discover ■suddenly that the cigarette ease is empty or that tho pouch contains perhaps only one more iill for a final smoke before bed, and the craving next morning is foreseen in gloomy perspective. To give most of these .shopkeejKU's their due, they arc human beings; oftentimes they are smokers themselves, and arc callable of so genuine a sympathy as to risk a prosecution by making a furtive sale. Strangers to the dominion who have patronised a suburban fruit shop in the evening must have noticed with surprise and amusement that, however small tho shop, it is after a certain hour partitioned oft into two parts, and that when a mild narcotic is inquired for the shopkeeper makes a clandestine entry into ami subsequent exit from the mysterious interior. Or the shop may remain whole and indivisible, but part of its shelves is rendered aloof and invisible by means of a forbidding and funereal draping, behind which well-informed fingers grope for the temporarily contraband goods. When we say tho stranger to the dominion must marvel at tho process we must exclude strangers from Britain, 'there also the shopkeepers and their customers are harassed by a maze of pettifogging regulations of an even more barbarous and illogical nature than our own. Wo say 11 barbarous ” because, while here the forbidden fruit is screened off or shut off from the public gaze, in Britain the same article is exposed to view alongside other articles whose sale at that particular hour is legal—a most ingenious species ot legalised torture. It is nor at all surprising that the public, as well as the shopkeeper, is beginning to protest, and it is surely time that sonic protest was raised in New Zealand, for attempted enforcement of this law merely adds to the already high cost, of government; and it must surely bo a degradation oi bis manhood that an inspector ol the Labor Department, or whoever it is who administers our shops and offices or early closing laws, should spend bis time splitting small hairs and annoying people who would really like to be perfectly law-abiding if only they were allowed to be As a matter of fact, some of those humanitarians who only stock tobacco in its several iorms because patrons ol the true tobacconists have occasional lapses of memory aro discontinuing to replenish stock preparatory to dropping that particular lino altogether. Me may be wrong, but we fancy that tho Bible itself expresses approbation ot the man who sometimes docs good by stealth. Yet our law would suppress the practice and thereby cause irritation all round or almost all round.

Anything; further we have to say on the subject has been much better set forth by the ‘ New Statesman,’ a Loudon weekly, in an article on the report of the Departmental Committee on the present laws and regulations relating to the early closing of shops in England, which it describes as “ a notably pusillanimous document.” One daily newspaper has unkindly, but certainly not unfairly, described it as 11 halfcooked tripe”—the rolcrenco being to tho committee’s recommendation that “ partly cooked tripe to be consumed off the premises ” should be allowed to be sold after 8 p.m., but that the sale of raw tripe after that hour should be piado illegal. “That one recommendation alone,” continues the ‘ New Statesman, “is enough to make any ordinary man dismiss the whole report as a miserable pettifogging absurdity. The truth is that nearly all the early closing regulations are sheer tiresome nonsense. Subject to the proper protection of shop assistants, they ought simplv to bo swept away. One or two of the more indefensible restrictions the committee docs indeed propose to abolish, but it proposes to leave in force a dozen others that arc only a very little less obviously ludicrous. There is the regulation by which at certain hours one may buy a strawberry or a. peach in a fruit shop, but not an orange or a banana, or in a fish shop a fresh whiting, but not a kipper. Many other such disgraceful absurdities might be mentioned. The shop is there, the counter is there with the shopman or shopgirl behind it, and the cigarettes or oranges arc there. Yet one may not buy thorn because by Greenwich time it is twenty minutes past How can such tilings be defended at all P If we cannot arrange our affairs decently without tho need of regulations so manifestly grotesque, wo must bo a nation either of fools or of lunatics. . . In wartime almost

liny restriction may bo permissible, but in normal limes it is hardly less than a disaster that the law should be allowed to appear absurd in the eyes of the ordinary law-abiding citizen. Ten years ago wo laughed at some of the foibles of, ‘Dora,’ yet accepted her willingly enough with all her tiresomeness because we believed we

needed her; but nowadays we laugh or sneer at her in a very different spirit —a spirit of resentful derision—wishing she was altogether dead, and believing that she owes her continued existence solely to tho activities of foolish cranks, powerful trade interests, and supino Governments. Une excuse perhaps may be made for tho ladies and gentlemen who signed this innocuous and worthless—not to say cowardly—report. It is true that almost all tho evidence they heard came, for obvious reasons, from organised interests. The general public is not organised for purposes of this kind, and therefore its point of view was never properly presented to the committee. But after all the majority of tho committee were members of Parliament and should have been able themselves to supply this deficiency. They seem, however, to have been a weak lot of people who were overwhelmed by tho technical evidence of interested minorities.”

Precisely the same may be said of our own complicated and restrictive regulations and of their illegitimate, though legalised, origin. In closing this protest wo quote an extract from a postscript which Mrs Philipsou, a member of the English Departmental Committee, added to its report as a

“ reservation,” which shows that she alone exercised independence and common sense. She sees no reason why the small shopkeeper should not bo allowed to stay open all night if he pleases, provided only that he does not keep his wage-earning assistants (if any) at work beyond a fixed hour. “ Tho small shopkeeper,” she writes, “is an important ('actor in keeping down the cost of commodities. In many districts tho small shopkeeper’s only chance of a profitable return is his takings towards tho end of the day, after the big shops have closed. Why should he not bo allowed to work if ho wishes to? He injures no one and benefits at least a section of the public.”