CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 May 1921, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

the half-holiday. (To the Editor.) Sir, —As regards the most suitable day of the week for the half-holiday, the vote seems not to satisfy some contrary Individuals. Is there anyone able to deny the fact that the small towns in Taranaki obtain their growth from the farming community, in this instance being chiefly dairying? Farmers observe Sunday much more religiously than do those townspeople who want the end of the week to enact the leisured-class role. There is one incentive only for a Saturday half-holiday, it being the absolute fact that all shops requiring hired labor would be able to effect a very considerable saving in wage output, as I find even town residents do not come forward for Friday market day. All towns of any prominence in this province are situated along our main line, causing on either side a considerable drive to each, except in the case of Eltham and Stratford. Surely all town dwellers know that a farmer’s week, like theirs, begins on a Monday. They know also that he and his hired help must continue working right on through that week, with an essential break for an occasional cattle sale. Under those conditions Friday could be no fixed or sure marketing day. Saturday is the farmers’ recognised day for town, and they work overtime to secure it. The day following is one of rest as far as possible for all on the section. Will some Saturday half-holiday advocate kindly state some actual reason or reasons why a mid-week rest is now unsuitable for him? It would not possibly be an active housewife, against whom some contemptibleminded individual has levelled the remark, “Soane women are always on the street.’’ Also the impertinent assurance that “country children, in the event of Saturday half-holiday being carried, would get as much town as is good for them.’’ Is that individual prepared to remove his family even twenty miles out in the open country, from the well-improved township in which he resides? In conclusion, is. there any town in Taranaki supplied with people about sufficient to attend to the wants of its vast outlying country? Should a farmer make a mid-week finish, his neighbors are in need of his labor and implements, the cultivation of the land being hampered by the climate' and scarcity of reliable hired labor. As yet no practical reason has been given whv this small body of dissatisfied 1 town-dwefers require their Saturday half-holiday, anti all enquirers are either unanswered or told that, those desiring a mid-week res} are selfish, and to me It seems that the week-end rest agitators are shell-fish and shut within their shallow minds.—l am, etc., TOWN DWELLER. Stratford, May 2, 1921.