A NEW BYE-LAW. Will It Be Observed?

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 224, 15 October 1904, Page 6

A NEW BYE-LAW. Will It Be Observed?

EVERY Wellington citizen has at times seen a drifting surf of "dodgers," handbills, placards, notices, etc , etc., careering gaily down any street m Wellington. Most of them bring up against the Post Office wall, where they lie until the wind changes, and carries them out to sea. Everyone has been pestered by the small "dodger"-distributing boy, whose "job" is to give one bill to each person, but who always gives good measure, m order to earn his money quickly. Every house-wife has opened her front-door in the morning to admit a sheaf of dog-eared missives stating that Professor So-and-so, the celebrated beauty specialist, will remove that wart, and they wish he would come and remove the rubbish. The Council has the premier paper distributor working for itself, and it scatters, per Destructor, with utter impartiality, the seared rubbish it is st anxious about. The Council ha- made a bye-law, which the local Socialist Party don't think much of, that the dodger nuisance must cease. The party think it is a waste of time. * * • If it were in the least probable that the Wellington City Council would enforce that law, it would be an inestimable boon to pedestrians and horse-drivers, for the wmd-driv-eu dodger has been responsible for many a broken leg, many a disreputr able footpath, many a blocked waterway, many a choked drain, and, tl'erefore, many a street flood. It t?kes very little time to pass a byelaw, and it amuses the Council. But, it isn't m the least likely that the Ccuncil will enforce the bye-law. Ihe insanitary and dangerous practLce of spitting on the footpath is universally condemned, and we have a bye-law about it. It is never enforced The habit goes on absolutely unchecked. The Council says one must have a patent rubbish receptacle, or get fined There are hundreds of people who> haven't one, and who don't get fined As the protesting Socialists point out, the scavenging carts that ought to walk li' darkness, do so in the light. The private person who carted filth through the city m broad daylight cculd be brought up with a round turn under the bye4aws. Why not a city scavenger ? * * * The protesters want the inspector of nuisances to be more attentive Please mark that "inspector" is singular number, masculine gender. The inspector that, nosed into everybody's back-yard every morning, duected the traffic in every street in thr- municipality all day, arrested un collared dogs in the meantime, and visited pestilential suburbs within the city area as well, would be reasonably busy. The fact is, it is easier for the Council to> frame a

b^e-law than for the Council to see it is" observed. The Council never did see to' it m the past, do not see to it a I present, and may be trusted to go on making new bye-laws, and not obsci viag them, in the future. Any fieble attempts the Council does make merely means the over-working of one man, and a painfully inadeqxi ate dividend for their brain-waste.