THE WEDNESDAY HALFHOLIDAY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1011, 13 December 1881, Page 3

THE WEDNESDAY HALFHOLIDAY.

to the editor. Sib, —Now that the elections are over, I should like to address a few words to vour correspondents “ Countryman ” and “ Anti-Siesta ” on the subject of the Wednesday half-holiday. “ Countryman ” appears to blame the holiday-makers because he himself .is unable to understand plain English. I think the majority of your readers were aware from the first that a. permanent weekly half-holiday was intended, not a special, or casual one. I do not see that “ Countryman ” has anything to grumble about. He appears to have discovered at last, what everybody else understood at the outset—that the Gisborne employees want

a half-holiday once a week—that the majority of the employers do not object. “ Countryman ” has eleven other half-days to choose for his future trips to town, other than the latter half of Wednesday. What more can he ask for.? “ Anti-Biesta ” writes a fair and square letter from his point of view, but there are two sides to every question. His most reasonable argument is, that the half-holiday entails a certain loss on employers, but I do not see why this is inevitable. Money spenders may be divided into three classes; those who lay out their weekly wages, or a part of them ; those who live on the interest of their capital, and those who live on the capital itself. Now, if the spender of money has a certain sum to lay out, I do not see how the storekeepers will make more out of him by having their shops open six days instead of five and a-half. If the business people do only half a-day’s business on Wednesday; surely, the half-day’s business, which “AntiSiesta” appears to think is lost, is spread over and merged into the remaining three days of the week. It cannot be lost altogether. Every spender of money has a certain number of imaginary wants during each week. Depend upon it, lie will supply them, whether he has five and a-half or six days in which to perform the task. It is hardly fair to begin to run the half-holiday down before it has been given a fair trial.—Yours, &c., Yackslet.