OUR HOLIDAYS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 310, 7 January 1908, Page 3

OUR HOLIDAYS.

ARE THEV A NUISANCE? . "Cynic" writes:—"Whatever may be said to the contrary, holidays are u nuisance. Necessary tlicy may lie, but 1 nevertheless they are a nuisance. Year by year the demand for holidays w on J the increase. Once the employees made much of tlie one-day holiday at Christmastide. Then Boxing Day was intro- ' duced. and business people were compelled hv custom to clone down for two days in succession. Boxing Day, being only an ordinary day of 24 hours, could not accommodate two days' races, which seemed to lie indispensable as the village grew to the proportions of a provincial town. And now there's a general growl j because the shopkeepers won't close on Christmas Eve and keep the premises closed until the New Year festivities are_ over. Of course, the employees' wages are to run on all the same. In return ] for this consideration, the men may 1m? williHg now and again to give an extra hour when there's a rush on. Then the law, which in connection with the relations between employer and employee , is an unmitigated 'liass'.' steps in and demands that the men shall leave oil' at the prescribed hour,,anil that if the employer wants a little additional workdone iie must first obtain an overtime certificate from a spying inspector, pay 'time-and-a-half' wages, and conform to a whole heap of red-tape regulations. The men themselves are warned not to w#rk for less than the legal overtime wage, and if the 'boss' tenders less, the inspector is to be informed. 'Lent they forget,' and open up at an hour when the law says they shall remain closed, the heart-whole inspector denies himself the pleasures of holiday-making in order to rigorously enforce the law. Tt may -be inspection, and it may be spying. It may be a billet for a man, but if We are'going to breed a race of men whose principal attribute or qualification is the capacity for espionage under our beautiful labor laws, flut to return to the nuisance of holidays after this long digression on labor legislation. Holidays upset all business arrangements nnd methods. They unfit men for their work, unsettle the families, empty the purse and Ihe cupboard, overwork rail- ■ way men nnd cooks and waiters, make folks discontented for want of something to do. encourage extravagance, ruin the digestion, . kill hundreds of people, and a whole lot of other things that don't suggest themselves just at this moment."