BARMAIDS AND LEGISLATORS.

Kumara Times, Issue 1493, 11 July 1881, Page 1

BARMAIDS AND LEGISLATORS.

[WELLINGTON EVENING POST.] The New Zealand barmaid—that beauteous Hebe who liquid refre.-hraents to all ..mankind save to the teetotallers—has for years past been a pet subject for legislation. Some years ago honorable members took com* passion on the barmaid, and reduced her working hours to reasonablelimits. There was no mistake about the fact that these girls were at the time much overworked, and consequently the restriction of their hours of labor was a just and necessary one. But last night, Parliament, in its zeal on behalf of the barmaids, went altogether over the score by passing a clause restricting their working hours to eight, and applying the restriction to the wives and daughters of publicans as well. This provision is most mischievous and absurd. Hotelkeepers will simply cease to employ barmaids at all if they are not permitted to work more than eight hours a day. The result will ba, that a large number of girls who make 25s to £2 a week will be thrown out of employment, and will probably find it rather difficult to obtain , other situations. Many of those barmaids are honest, hard-working, and perfectly correct-living girls, who assist their relatives out* of their earnings. Whv then should Sir William Fox and those who act with him seek to depiive those girls of their means of livelihood 1 We know perfectly well that Sir William Fox has always held that no woman whatever should be employed-, in the sale of alcoholic liquors. He is, therefore, seeking to obtain his object through -a side-wind by so rapidly limiting the hours of labor of the barmaids as practically to put a atop to their employment.. As to the. question whether girls ought or ought not. to be employed in hotel bars, there is a good deal to be said on both sides. Parliament should pause., before deliberately taking from the barmaids their means' of living. Nor should, it treat an hotel-keeper as a mere slave, possessed of no civil rights, by declaring that his wife or daughter should not work for more than eight hours a day at the business by which they make their bread. The teetotallers are “ running a muck” over the Licensing Bill, with their impracticable “fade” and crotchets. The end of the whole business will be, that the bill—a most useful one in its way—may probably be thrown out altogether.