A PROTEST.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8362, 19 February 1907, Page 5

A PROTEST.

(To the Editor). Sir.—A most unusual procedure has been instituted at the forthcoming Show with regard to the treatment of persons who pay the prescribed fee to enter and re-enter the grounds, inasmuch as, if any persons require to go out from such grounds, they have to suffer the indignity of being branded. This, Sir, I think is an innovation that we, in this free country, will not put up with tamely. However, be this as it may, there is quite another aspect of the case, and this is from a health point of view. Only fancy a person suffering from some contagious or infectious disease being branded and then the branding instrument, without being disinfected, being applied to some healthy person, to wit, perhaps, your own wife or pretty daughter, and thus disease spread. We sometimes strain at the gnat and swallow the camel. We have a very stringent law regarding health. Yet a certain section of our Agricultural and Pastoral Association who, I hope, have inadvertently made this regulation re branding, and thus promoting the. likelihood of spreading contagion among thousands of human beings hitherto immune from disease. In conclusion, I would ask the promoters of this branding of human beings, if they would subject their stock to a risk of disease.—l am, etc. SANITARY.

(To the Editor). Sir,—This Agricultural Show branding business is too funny for words. It does not say much for the united wisdom of the 137 committeemen, or thereabouts, if they cannot devise some better system of passes than stabbing the general public on the back of the hand with a rubberstamp. The head-chief McGregor says they do this sort of thing in Scotland, but they do all sorts of funny things there which would hardly appeal to the free and easy colonist. I would recommend that the clan attend in kilts, when the branding operation might be performed with a greater amount of success upon a more remote but possibly plumper portion of the anatomy than the hand. Again, what about the gentlemen with hairy hands? The rubber stamp would take no effect unless the backs of the hands were shaved in readiness. I presume the individual with a pink shirt and a blue wart on his nose will pass without branding, as being easy of recognition, also Chinese, cripples, and the maimed, halt and blind generally who are usually the most appreciative attendants at functions of this kind. It is very peculiar that the Society seem to think that the catastrophe of a general exodus will come about lunch time, when, judging from the experience of previous years, they supply at top price a lunch that would give a spring-chicken the nightmare! The Society have made a grave mistake in nbt auctioneering the billets of gatekeepers with a heavy reserve. Fancy the privilege of holding the little hands of the hundreds of the fair sex one by one while gently you impressed thereon the guileless rubber-stamp. Also it does not apparently matter to the sages who guide the destinies of the Society how many skin or other diseases are transmitted during the branding process upon the multitude, including all nationalities, whether savoury or otherwise. It also does not / occur to, certain members of "the committee of the Society that once a man has paid for admission to the ground he can pass and re-pass as often as he likes during that day, and can push any person stopping him with a big rude push. The branding act may be all very well for the exhibits —and they would avoid it if they could—but the ordinary human individual does not care to be classed with bullocks and sheep, unless, like the wise-acres who invented the rubberstamp business, they have so become wrapped-up in stock of all descriptions as to apparently completely lose their own identity!—l am, etc., C. A. POWNALL.