THE SHOP AND SHOP ASSISTANTS' ACT.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 215, 12 March 1895, Page 2

THE SHOP AND SHOP ASSISTANTS' ACT.

TO THE KD I TOR. OF THE STAR. Sir,— The gross absurdity, arbitrary nature, and injustice of this Act could not be more clearly pointed out than by the following supposititious case, which is not unlikely frequently to occur : — A man with his wife and family reaches home after a long journey at 1.30 p.m. on a statutory half-Jbolday. All of them are very hungry, and there are no provisions in the house. He sends three of his little girls, one to the butcher, another to the baker, and the third to the grocer, for a supply of meat, bread, and tea, while his wife goes to the butter and egg dealer for a supply of butter and eggs, but they all returned empty handed, with the information that they were refused to be supplied on the ground that the butcher, baker, grocer, and butter and egg dealer, all feared a prosecution and a penalty of £5. Now the excepted trades under the Act (that is, those whose owners are not compelled to observe the half-holiday) are •• those wherein is carried on exclusively one or more of the businesses of a fishmonger, a fruiterer, a confectioner, a coffeehousekeeper, an eating-housekeeper, or the keeper of a book stall at a railway platform." (I suppose this quotation from the Act is strict grammar, but who ever heard of more than one business of a fishmonger, fruiterer, confectioner, coffee-housekeeper, or eating-house-keeper, being carried on within the same premises.) Thus, though a man may improve his mind at a railway platform, or gorge himself with unwholesome pastry at a confectioner's, he will be unable on a compulsory half-holiday to purchase a loaf of bread, or a chop or steak, to say nothing of butter and eggs, however hungry he may be. I have no doubt there are persons who will carp at this letter as having overdrawn tbe probable effects of this abominable Statute but I am quite prepared to uphold that my remarks respecting it are perfectly justifiable. I am, etc., Saml. Goodbeheeb. Feilding, March 9th, 1895.