SATURDAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 163, 19 October 1910, Page 4

SATURDAY.

All the world and his wife goes shopping on Saturday, mainly because Saturday is pay-day and to-morrow is Sunday. Perhaps half the ordinary, workaday folk do not work on Saturday afternoon. It has come to be recognised that most workers should have one half-holiday a week, and, at least in British countries, it is a fairly general rule. No one can be found who would be antagonistic to a general compulsory Saturday half-holi-day if business and interests could be summarily arranged to make the change general. The people who keep shops naturally value Saturday trade highly. A sudden ultimatum that everybody was to compulsorily have a half-holiday on Saturday would cause a dislocation of interests very upsetting, but as people must purchase goods and do business, it seems likely that matters would soon arrange themselves if the respite were universal. The Saturday half-holiday is useful because it is tacked on to the recognised day of rest—Sunday. It gives the tired worker a little continuity of rest and refreshes him for the Monday morning struggle. A mid-week hiatus is like a sandwich with no meat and plenty of mustard. It is a caricature of rest. Somebody mentioned somewhere that New Zealanders had too many holidays and that they should all be linke'd together in a heap and businesses closed down for a few days at a time. The time is not yet ripe for heaven upon earth—and, anyhow, somebody would write to the papers complaining that as all the butchers, bakers, grocers and other tradesmen had been closed for a week the family was in a state' of starvation. Still there does not seem to be any serious hurdle in the way of a universal Saturday half-holiday, except for sailors and railwaymen, lighthouse-keepers, tramwaymen, telegraph officials, doctors, dairymen, cabmen, bookmakers, coachdrivers, policemen, reporters, and several dozen other sorts of people, whose services are the most necessary when the public is "off the chain."

THE LICENSING QUESTION. The more we look at the position the more satisfied we are that the licensing question will never bo satisfactorily settled until it is put fairly and squarely before the electors (writes the Lyttelton Times). A, system of prefential voting, by the single transferable vote, would enable the country to say at one poll exactly what it wanted —continuance, local no-license, local reduction, dominion prohibition, State control, or any other solution of the problem. A dozen issues might be put upon the ballot-paper'with-out imperilling the certainty of the result. In practice, of course, there would be need for no more than four, perhaps for no more than three. State control (continues our contemporary) offers the surest permanent remedy for the evils of the liquor traffic, but it involves so many side issues and so many preliminary preparations that it may not be ready for submission to the electors for another decade. There would be no difficulty at all, however, in submitting the three issues that have been preserved in Sir Joseph Ward's Bill—continuance, local no-license and dominion prohibition. The elector would have simply to put the figure one against the proposal he liked best and the .figure two against the proposal he liked second best. If he wanted continuance and preferred dominion prohibition to local no-license, for example, he would mark "1" against continuance on the ballot-paper and "2" against dominion prohibition . When the votes came to be counted each issue would be pitted against each of the other two issues. The elector who wanted continuance and preferred dominion prohibition to local no-license would have his vote counted for continuance when that issue was pitted against no-license or dominion prohibition. If he could not «et what he liked best, that is, his vote would be transferred to what he liked second best. The transferable vote would remove all excuse for "compacts" and "compromises," and by giving evenelector an opportunity to vote for exactly what he wanted would ensure a definite and unmistakable expression of public opinion.