The Good Old Times.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 253, 24 November 1903, Page 4

The Good Old Times.

Mr G. J. Holyoake writes in the Fortnightly on the growth of social liberty and comfort for the poorer classes in seventy years, He paints the tyranny which forced a man to shave. "I remember when only four men in Birmingham had courage to wear beards. They were followers of Joanna Southeott. They did it in imitation of the Apostles, and were jeered at in the streets by ignorant Christians." George Dawson was "the first Noncoani'ormist preacher who delivered a seyinpn in a fullblown moustache ami beard, wjiioli was taken in both eases as an unmistakeable sign of latitudinarianism in doctrine." T'-e hank clerk and, workman had to thave or lose th(.:ir (.-mpjoyment. There was an awful time' wit!) jypflden bedsteads : —"Once in Windsor I sg-l.u.ctpc) an jnn with a white portico, having an air of pastoral cleanlincss, The fourposter in: my room, with its white curtains, was a further assurance of repose. The Boers were not more skilful in attack and retreat than the enemies I found in the field. Lighted candles did not drive them from the kopje p/llpw where they fought. In Sheffield, in 1840, I asked the landlady for are uninhabited room. A cleaner - locking, Whitewashed chamber never greeted my eyes. But I soon found that a whole 'battalion; of red - coated canmi-bals were stationed there on active service. Wooden bedsteads in the house of the poor were the fortresses of •the enemy, which then possessed the land." Mr Holyoake calculates that the modern iron bedsteads give the workman now two hours more sleep at night than his grandfather knew. Workshops are vastly improved • schoolrooms are brighter ; the mechanic gets some personal credit for ■Jfis work ; the manners of the rich are Retter ; and "in ways still untold the labour class is gradually •attaining to social equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the privilege of those who do nothing."-