BAZAARS DENOUNCED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9113, 12 June 1908, Page 3

BAZAARS DENOUNCED.

The current number of the Monthly Magazine of Burton Wood Parish Church 'Lancashire, of which the Rev. A. M. Mitchell, M.A., is the vicar, contains a bitter attack on bazaara under the heading "A Religious Swindle." Appended arc extracts from the article: "A swinde is a cheating or a fraud. No truer or better definition can we have of bazaars and fancy fairs for religious objects. What are those if not religious swindles? They rob God and swindle man. Promoters of bazaars, world's fairs, Church marts, and so forth will, of course, resent, and strongly, the sin laid to their charge. But the sin is not theirs notwithstanding, and on their own confession, too. "The suggestion that 3tall holders and fancy fair acolytes should 'fleece the public' is still freely made at bazaar openings, and has on occasions even come from Church dignitaries—jovial but silly clergy. Such is always relished as a joke, evoking hearty laughter and loud applause. Occasionally a bazaar opener proves to be epigrammatic, -like the gentleman who said of theinteuded victims: 'They come to be chaated a little; they deserve to be? much.' Bazaars are thu3 tacitly recognised as places where cheating is approved and commended, nn 1 swindling is blessed and sanctifial. "Great energy follows the decision (to have a bazaar). Workers, male •and female, sot to with a will, and f.ir thfl next fovv months nothing is talked about but the forthcoming bazaar, and church life is transformed and degraded into a number of committees for the provision of concert halls, card rorm3, kitchens, cafes chantant3, and entertainment bureaux. All is under the everready patronage of Bacchus, Cupid, and the Goddess of Revels. What wonder if the Church repels the very men it seeks to win—the thoughtful and deeply earnest. Realliving interest in religion is not qjicicened by such doings; it is killed. The Church is not strengthened but enfeebled by such worldly and silly antics, these .Vrfspactable frauds, these religious ■swindles. "Bazaar promoting ... is rightly accused of taking the bread out of other people's mouths, and it has been asserted that many of the g>ods sent to bazaars aro procured by bagging from or bla;.cmailing shopkeepers."