CORRESPONDENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 249, 1 October 1884, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

(We do not hold ourselves responsible for the opinions expressed hy our correspondents.) THE BY-LAWS AS TO HAWKING. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I would like, with your permission, to say a few words with regard to hawking, and the Borough Council. The way that some of the members define the word hawker, very much resembles this kind of logic:—A man is an animal ; an ass is an animal ; therefore a man is an ass. It is very hard to cramp people’s efforts at industry in th. se hard times when employment is scarce. It appears very annoying to some storekeepers to see country settlers taking round eggs and butter to their customers, thereby putting into their own pockets 3d. in the dozen on eggs, and 3d. in the lb. on butter that otherwise would find its way into the storekeeper’s pocket. If this constitutes hawking, it is hard to say where hawking begins and where it ends. What about the milkmen, bakers, and butchers ? Is not the storekeeper who sends round his man and cart soliciting custom and delivering goods a hawker? In order to relieve people from this grinding by-law, administered by narrow minds, the Council should establish a market place, and erect a shed, where people, whose trade is not sufficient to warrant them in taking out a hawker’s license, could go and exhibit and sell their goods by paying a few pence for the use of such market place. It is wonderful what broad and accommodating views candidates for public honors express whilst soliciting the support of the ratepayers, but when their object is gained, and the strain is taken off, how quickly they shrink, like elastic, back into their little selves again.—Yours &-c., Fair Play.