Littell's Living Age/Volume 134/Issue 1729/A New Zealand Divine on Early Closing
A NEW ZEALAND DIVINE ON EARLY CLOSING.
The Rev. R. L. Stanford preached at All Saints' Church, Dunedin, on April 22nd, on the subject of "A Wrong-doing in our Midst." In the course of his sermon the reverend gentleman said: "I want to speak more especially about a wrongdoing in our midst which does, I fancy, escape attention, but which is producing evils of which we shall sooner or later have to bear the consequences. I refer to the wretched habit of keeping banks especially, but also some commercial houses, open half the night. Open, that is, in so far as the clerks are concerned. In the first place, the forcing young men to stay till nine or ten o'clock at least at work, night after night, is a defrauding of a neighbor, for there is an unwritten law here declaring that a certain wage is given for a certain time of labor. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that it is becoming the settled habit of the banks to keep the men in their employment at work till ten or eleven night after night, by a sort of irresistible moral pressure, which it is utterly impossible for them to resist. This miserable policy arises from two causes. One great cause of it is simply bad management. The other mere greediness. I understand that these young men are often by no means too busily employed all day. In some of those institutions which are the worst offenders, and where this is the case, the evil is one solely of bad management. In those cases where work goes on all day and half the night, it is simply a question of greediness. The place is short-handed, in the desire to give larger dividends, and every shareholder is concerned in the sin. I am well aware of the difficulty of dealing with a subject like this. It seems when we inquire into it to be just nobody's fault. It is one of those matters that ought to be banned by public opinion, and it can, I think, be cured in no other way. I should like to point out to you, some of whom may have brothers, or husbands, or sons, suffering under the enormous evil, the consequences that are almost certain to follow from this wrongdoing. It is simply impossible to hope that a young man, often a mere lad, entering one of these places, can go on leading a healthy, God-fearing, honest life, with nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to conceal, such as I love to think of as the ideal of a young man's life. God has implanted instincts of happiness and animal spirits in your son, which will find an outlet, healthy or unhealthy, as the case may be, To turn him out of his office at ten or eleven o'clock at night, after a whole day spent more or less in the vitiated atmosphere, is to deprive him of all means of healthy recreation, and as an inevitable consequence to drive him at last to unhealthy amusement. Don't suppose this a far-fetched prediction. I have seen this happen with my own eyes again and again in this country. You, the managers or shareholders in banks, you who have some influence more or less, and who are shutting your eyes and holding your tongues about this monstrous crime, are responsible before God for the ruin, moral and physical, of many a young man who might have lived to be a useful member of society. I trace swiftly his career. No chance is given the lad for cricket or boating, and so on. Every chance is given him for gambling and drinking at midnight. Gambling leads to debt, and debt leads to thieving. I say that we have all known young, promising lads run the gamut of disgrace, and lose their life's chances through nothing else but this miserable crime of keeping them at work all the evening. Do you ask how you can interfere? Oh, you can find plenty of ways if you really desire to bring about any moral reform. You can cut out these ulcers if you choose. Would to God it were only as easy to remedy the ill effects they have left behind them. By your silence you are giving consent and approval, and helping the immediate manager to defraud his servant and rob him, — rob him of health, happiness, honors and honesty. I speak strongly of this social fraud, because I think it wants attention attracted to it, until it becomes well understood that an office that requires to be constantly open at night is thoroughly badly managed. I have nothing, of course, to say about occasional pressure on mail nights. There is a great deal of nonsense, remember, about all this pretence of hard work, constantly requiring night work, that wants exposing. I repeat it, and challenge contradiction; in every case where late hours have become the habit, it is either owing to miserly management or bad management. Once more, and in connection with this subject, I remind you of the social sin of late shopping on Saturdays, by which you defraud your neighbor, and rob him of his holiday. The free-thinking part of the community are, I fear, strong enough to keep the shops open in their selfish indifference to their neighbors' wrongs. I am sure that no servant of Christ, when once his or her attention is attracted to the question will go on repeating the sin. The wrong done to the shopmen of this town is of the same nature as that wrong done to the bank clerks; it is greater in the numbers of the sufferers, it is less as regards the effects, because it is only on one night, not every night, that it is perpetrated. The offenders will have to answer for their sin one day, when it will seem a very poor excuse to say that you never meant any harm, that you never thought of what you were doing, or you never remembered what the consequences might be. You cannot escape the responsibilities under which you lie with regard to your brethren."