The Six o'Clock Curfew
As if war had not already done enough to reduce the takings of small shopkeepers the Government has now stepped in with another Order which might have been de- signed to drive them out of business altogether. It is all very well for the big stores to decide in their own interests to close at six or earlier, but to impose a six o'clock closing hour on small shops which do at least a third of their busi- ness between 5.3o and 8 is to handicap them even further in an already unequal competition and to threaten them with ruin. The ostensible object of the Order is economy in lighting and the convenience of employees in getting home in the dark. But shop lighting ought not to be economised to the point of destroying trade; and in the winter months it will be dark in any case before the employees can get home. Moreover, a large proportion of the small shopkeepers are their own salesmen and live on the premises. It is not surprising that the latter should believe that this Order is framed in the interests of the big stores and with a view to their own elimination from business, and that in Birmingham and elsewhere they have co-operated to defy it. When will Government departments with an itch for exercising their new powers of law-making, and with their eyes on only one aspect of a question, be stopped from taking ill-considered measures which tend to the further reduction of trade and the spreading of unemployment?
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