HAIR DYE AND WAGEEARNERS:

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 387, 24 July 1889, Page 3

HAIR DYE AND WAGEEARNERS:

Mature- Working' Men Drjvex to Use 'it to Compete with the Young. There is now going on a mighty struggle which is almost essentially a question of age. Yet it is one which affects thousands and thousands of men and women, who are toilers and bread-winners 1 . On all bides preference is given by employers to youth over more advanced years. Absalom, in the vigour ot his juvenility, is content to receive-, 20 to 30 per cent less money than his more mature rival. In wholesale warehouses, in public companies, in retail establishments, in the street, on the road and rail, men aud women, who are still hale and hearty in mind and body, have been set adriib to make room for bho younger — and cheaper — generation. They are willing to woik for the same wage, but the masters will have none of them. In their distress they turn to a comforter — not to the workhouse if they can avoid so doing ; not to the charitable iustitutionsj not to the trades unions, but to Figaro himself, the perruquier, the hairdresser, the barber. The amount of hair dye used by labourers of all sorts is not only enormous, but increases day by day. It is not vanity which impels them to the practice, it is life, for which it is well worth dyeing. The testimony on the subject ,is undeniable. A knight of the razor in the north of London tcstiiies that he is doing a tremendous trade in hair dye with working men ior the reasons given above. ' They take it home,' he said, ' and get their wives to lay it on. In many cases it is an absolute necessity Avith female employees. . troprielois of big milljnery establishments won't have . women with ' grey hair on the premise^. ' ' . ' You've no idea what misery I've been awaro of in families from grey hair. I knew a man, a father of six children. All of a sudden, from illness I think, his hair whitened, and his employer took the earliest opportunity of " giving him the sack," and getting a younger man in his place. He couldn't obtain another situation anywhere^' and the more trouble he had the older he looked. At last, when ho was at his wit's end someone told him to get his hair dyed, and, what's more, sent him money to have it done. Well, he's got another place. It's less money ; but you'd hardly know him again. I've seen scores like him. Your young folk may sneer at dye and crack jokeo on the subject, but as true as I'm not a Dutchman it's been the salvation of many hard-working men and women.' A lady dealing in human hair near St. Pancras. when bounded on the subject, admitted the practice, and allowed that she dealt very largoly in dye, nearly all vended to those earning" their living in large commercial establishments. The same tale was repeated by one who did a good deal of traffic in this> way with ladies of the theatrical persuasion. ' Lor' bless you,' he exclaimed, ' without hair dye some of those women would be nowhere. What would you, say, if you was a.manairer, if a girl with grey locks ,came to you and wanted an engagement? I expect you'd show her the door pretty .quickly. I'm nob talking of those vain young "temales who turn black to gold or red to brown. I mean the chorister of 35 to 40, still goodlooking, but who is beginning to show the powder puff on her head. There isn't one, there isn't twenty, there isn't a hundred, but I'd like to bet' there's a thousand or more in the United Kingdom. Their greatgrapdtnothers had to wear wigs ; their descendants are a. deal more comfortable with a little harmless colouring matter on their own hair.' And so the story runs ad infmilum.