In addition to low pay and 'living-in', the issue of greatest concern to shop assistants was that of shop opening hours. Unregulated competition drove traders to open their shops for as many hours as possible.
It was quite common for shops to open from 8 am to 10 pm on Monday to Thursday, from 8 am to 11 pm on Friday and from 8 am to midnight on Saturday. Early closing meant at 5 pm on one of the days from Monday to Thursday.
Shop assistants had long understood that the only real solution for their excessive working hours lay in the reduction of shop opening times.
For many years they had supported various campaigns led by MPs, Church leaders and the Early Closing Association, largely aimed atsecuring the voluntary agreement of traders to restrict opening hours.
Along with the development of trade union organisation among shop assistants, grew an understanding that traders should be compelled,by law, to limit opening hours and that this would only be achievedthrough their own collective action.
In the early 1900s demonstrations organised by the NAUSAW&C for shop assistants, fed up with their long hours and exploitation, tookplace in London.
This poem appeared in the Daily Express following evidence given to a House of Lords Committee examining Early Closing.
The Cry of the Shopman
The shutters are down at eight,
And till midnight is drawing nigh
I am here at the counter to serve and wait
On those who may come to buy.
And plodding from day to day
Too heavy of heart to rebel,
I feel I have given my soul away
And my life - 'tis a shoddy sell!
When the summer eves are sweet,
And the country ways are fair
It would take the weariness out of my feet
To be going a-roaming there.
But at eve, when others are free
I am doomed at my post to stop,
And the country is only a dream to me
A dream in the flare of the shop!
At the close of each long day's rounds
No time to live can I take,
And my children's voices have alien sounds
So seldom do I see them awake.
In slumbers my Sundays pass -
For I am thankful at rest to be -
Too tired to go wandering over the grass
That will some day cover me.
My duty I do not shirk
But so easily I were blest!
Or is it that some have no leisure for work
As I have none for rest?
'Tis little for them to give
And yet it were much to deny -
For all I ask is the time to live,
As well as the time to die.
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