SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

Motueka Star, Volume IV, Issue 160, 3 March 1903, Page 4

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

In the course of an interview with a D*aily News correspondent, Mr John Burns, M.P., the wellknown Labour leader said":—"l am against Sunday trailing. I believe people can get shaved and buy their tobacco on Saturday morning, noon, or night, and if they do not a little public opinion or legal compulsion is needed to get them into a better habit. Sunday rest is physically good, mentally invigorating, and morally healthful, and it has been commercially advantageous to the people of this country. It has done more than anything else to buttress and maintain the excellent institution called the home. Without Sunday the home would lose most of its advantages. No one can say that one day's rest in seven is as good as a universallyaccepted Sunday. The day of rest is, from every point of view,' a national treasure and and industrial advantage. lam sorry to notice that there is a disposition to increase Sunday labour in several departments of industry. Rumours are going about that Sunday letters are to he delivered in London. I sincerely hope that neither telegraph nor postal facilities will be brought into London on the seventh day. I do not think the needs of business warrant it, and after all everything must not be sacrificed to business. * If there should be a masked tendency to industralise our Sundays by opening shops, I would prevent it by law. The extent to which Sunday trading has gone in *Aldgate and Houndsditch is causing East Enders to consider whother it should not be curtailed. lam afraid it may develop to a point at which it may be much more diffcult to stop. The law against seven-day baking has done a great deal of good, and I am pleased that the Government have declined to give facilities for extending Sunday labour in that trade."