THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 April 1921, Page 6

THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

MEETING AT HAWERA. A meeting of those who are supporting the Saturday half-holiday movement was held at Hawera on Friday. Mr. Burdekin believed that Saturday would be carried by a far greater majority than if a poll had been taken a fortnight ago. Mr. Tristram, of Eltham, stated he could assure them that they were going to carry the Saturday half-holiday in Eltham. At Stratford he had found that the town was quite busy and good business was being done on the Friday evening. All he wanted to do was to let them know that Eltham was very much in earnest and intended to carry Saturday. Mr. Hooker said he would refuse to have anything to do with a purely parochial movement. There was no opposition north of Stratford to Saturday. New Plymouth and Waitara would carry it. At the latter place the freezing works would carry it on their own. Who gave them the lead on the Saturday hal7-holiday? It was the Government. There was mriy one town in New Zealand which •the Government controlled. That was Rotorua, and the holiday there was Saturday and it was fixed by the Tourist Department. Any man who had a factory had to close on Saturday whether he wanted to or not. They had business people who had to close one-half of their business on one day and one-half on another. They wanted to get over that by making the holiday uniform. Mr. Hooker pointed out that the farmer visited different centres according to the dav on which the stock sales were held. Tie had compiled a complete list of the business places of Hawera and be had found that thev numbered 173. Of these 83 closed on Saturday n<fw and 94 closed on Wednesday. He was absolutely certain of 27 who favored Saturday.