SATURDAY AFTERNOON EVERYBODY'S HOLIDAY. Sir Joseph Ward to the Rescue.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 112, 23 August 1902, Page 8

SATURDAY AFTERNOON EVERYBODY'S HOLIDAY. Sir Joseph Ward to the Rescue.

IF you want to play football on a Saturday, the odds are that your special branch of industry puts up its shutters on Wednesday. You may undergo severe exertion in the pur-

suit of pleasure on the Wednesday afternoon, but stem duty compels you to prepare for the daily grind on Thursrday. The man who is free at 12 o'clock on Saturday has a glorious period of a day and a-half in which to recuperate his energies, and he is, or should be, fit to tackle his step of the treadmill refreshed and exhilarated on Monday. * * * All this in connection with Sir Joseph Ward's idea that the Saturday half-holiday should be universal in the colony. There is no doubt that the large majority of workers would hail the institution of a universal Saturday haJfholiday with acclamation, and that once the community fell into the groove the inconvenience that might temporarily arise would cease to be felt. It seems to the average man unnatural that business should be cut into in the middle of the week, most of the shops closed, and the holiday forced on assistants who would much rather wait two and a-half days longer. » * • As this holiday business is at present arranged, it fosters class distinctions, and curtails the possibility of universal enjoyment. The strong point in favour of the Saturday holiday seems to be that it gives a longer time for recuperation. The banks are open on Wednesday, when nobody particularly wants them. They are closed on Saturday afternoon, when they are very much needed. By the universal end of the week closing this anomaly would be set right, although, of course, it would knock the great British institution — -Saturday night shopping — on the head. • ♦ * Therei would be absolutely no hardship to anybody once the new system was in vogue. It would, in fact, prevent one tradesman from getting an undue advantage over another by having his premises 1 open when those of a rival were closed. When the housewife found that a shopkeeper was committing an offence by selling to her on Saturday afternoon, she would hustle, and get her stores on a Friday. There are many reasons that may be advanced why everyone may please himself as to the half-day on which he shall put up his shutters, but they are not strong reasons. # * * At present, the Wednesday man cannot make any engagements 1 with a Saturday friend, and a Saturday man who wants to bank on that afternoon has to wait until Monday. Should the new order of things be instituted it would certainly be more convenient from a business standpoint, and certainly far more convenient from the point of the holiday-making public, the whole of which might make arrangements, precluded by the present system of half Wednesday and half Saturday vacations.