A QUESTIONABLE BOON.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 169, 16 January 1895, Page 2

A QUESTIONABLE BOON.

It is doubtful whether it is worth the cost, this national half-holiday of ours, which a paternal Government has thrust upon one section of the people. It is certainly not going to be the benefit intended to the shop assistants, owing to different days being chosen within a limited radius, while, on the other hand, it will be a positive source of annoyance, inconvenience and even of loss to a section of the community. The choice of so many different days turns the whole thing into a perfect farce. There is one class in view of so many different days being chosen throughout the county, who will surely so regard it — that is the commercial travellers and their employers. To these it will mean considerable inconvenience and loss, as it will frequently happen they will " strike " two or three different towns during a week on the half-holiday, and it is unnecessary to say that that will mean great delay and increased expense. The country people and the public generally will' find it inconvenient enough also, in fact it will be necessary int this province to have a half -holiday directory. This kind. of legislation is far more likely to result in injury to the rising generation of New Zealanders than benefit. Our people, as a whole, would be more advantaged with fewer holidays and more work. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers in every region of the earth have not carved out new homes for themselves, or established new comoioowealths by

a superabundance of holidays, but by unremitting diligeuce and Spartan selfdenial, and as Sir Robert Stout very truthfully remarked in the course of a recent address — "If we are to be as successful as our forefathers, we will have to follow their example— live more economically and work harder."