A Plea For The Clerks

It is the pathetic irony of history that the holy festival of the Child should become the season when many little children are overtaxed and underpaid. If the season of the ChristChild means anything to us except a season for commercial profit and material trafficking in gifts, it should quicken us with a care for all the little ones, and give us that tender anxiety for the happiness of childhood that will prompt us to do what we can toward preventing the season becoming one of unthinking cruelty to the very children who should enlist our sympathy and care.

Christmas shopping has become a Christmas scandal, entailing untold suffering. In the retail departments all the employes are harrassed and overtired, even in the stores that close at six o'clock. In the unpacking rooms, unseen by shoppers, men and boys work until midnight. In the delivery rooms clerks work to the point of exhaustion in order that goods may be promptly delivered. In the days before Christmas deliverymen who left their stables at seven in the morning are out until eleven at night. And this overworking of men, women and children is a part of the celebration of the birth of Christ.

As the Christmas shopping is almost entirely in the hands of women, it is to supply their demands that employers are obliged to overwork their employes. Until their attention has been called to the matter, comparatively few of them realize how much their thoughtlessness, as shoppers, adds to the burdens of both the workers and the employer. If ladies shop just before closing hours, clerks are detained afterward to put their stock in order. The League strongly urges all shoppers to patronize stores that close at six o'clock.

The following simple rules, if faithfully observed, will mitigate much of the suffering incident to the overwork of the season:

1. Do only necessary shopping during the week or two preceeding Christmas.

2. Shop early.

3. Go shopping with classified lists.

4. Do not ask to have parcels delivered same day.

5. Let it be understood that you "will not receive goods delivered after 7 p. m.

Thanking you in advance for any co-operation you may be able to give us in this or in other ways, not only in this Christmas emergency, but throughout the year, we are, MICHIGAN CONSUMERS LEAGUE.