Dora
Haley, Andrew G.
44 THE COMMONWEAL May 15, 1929 DORA By ANDREW G. HALEY THE United States cannot claim a monopoly on the issue of prohibition in its national elections. Recent events would indicate that...
...The tobacconist, who is forced to shut down at eight o'clock, may affix an automatic vendor of cigarettes to the outside of his door where the cigarettes may be purchased...
...In any event it is patent that a considerable portion of the British public resent Dora...
...Opponents counter with the statement that Dora is properly a wartime measure, and that public officers, desiring to keep the power it gave them, have continued it in effect until it has almost become an institution...
...This is highly reminiscent of similar statements made by William Gibbs McAdoo two years ago before the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, when he was discussing prohibition...
...He has been named "Jix" by opponents, and under this label enjoys a popularity somewhat analogous to that accorded various reformers in the recent history of this country...
...A woman writer went so far as to state that if Dora is not soon repealed London, like Chicago, may see machine guns in the streets...
...The original D. O. R. A. war regulations, advanced for the purpose of economizing coal and light, Were not suspended when hostilities ceased, but were continued in effect from year to year...
...The British press takes a lively interest in them...
...These regulations together with later enactments have since uniformly been called Dora...
...This called for a broadside from the anti-Dora press and political leaders...
...Various English periodicals have given considerable space to agitation calling for the repeal of Dora...
...While a newsboy is selling evening papers on the street, the owner of a candy store may not sell a paper in his shop after eight o'clock...
...The Home Secretary's fiat was staunchly upheld by Lord Birkenhead, but was vigorously attacked in other quarters...
...Proponents of Dora maintain that this was done because the regulations had been found to benefit a hitherto unhappy section of the population—the assistants in those shops rating a classification between the great stores which would close before evening in any event, and the one-man shops which remain open indefinitely to get the scattered ends of trade...
...England's problem is not to decide a clearcut issue of wetness or dryness...
...Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary, appointed a committee to examine the question...
...As a result the proprietor of the one-man shop is the chief sufferer...
...There are many interesting points of analogy between the battle over Dora and our experiences with prohibition during the last campaign...
...The proprietor of a small general store in Liverpool was fined recently for allowing a customer to call at night for a bundle of firewood purchased during the day...
...Labor members, especially those interested in the Shop May 15, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 45 Assistants' Union, hotly attacked this clause, and with the aid of Joynson-Hicks succeeded in defeating it...
...But the prospective buyer of tobacco can step into a licensed public house and purchase both tobacco and drinks until ten o'clock...
...Interest concerning it steadily became more active...
...His statement concerning the twenty candidates was challenged...
...Dora really is a patronymic...
...Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the official charged with enforcing the provisions of Dora has added pitch to the fire of opposition during the past few months...
...This measure and similar legislation have been dubbed "Dora" by the British press, and are caricatured as a severe-looking old woman, dressed in black, with a very long finger raised in admonishment...
...A brief history of the subject will serve to shed light on the current situation...
...This resulted in the introduction by Sir Park Goff of the Shops Hours bill into the House of Commons on March 9, 1928...
...Various anomalies have resulted from the enforcement of Dora...
...Others question the advisability of making it a dominant issue of discussion at the present moment...
...Joynson-Hicks got into further difficulties with sections of the press when he recently said: I say quite frankly that you have got to realize that the old days of the right of every man to do as he likes with his own are a relic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and will not work in the twentieth...
...It is claimed they are also indirectly connected with an effort to render betting and gambling illegal...
...Manifest absurdities of the law were paraded, and instances of fines imposed on small shopkeepers were cited as indications of its oppressive features...
...During the first part of the year the Home Secretary made the mistake of saying that "actually very little is left now" of Dora...
...It centers around the principle and progeny of the Defense of the Realm Act...
...Recent events would indicate that England can boast of a fair-sized prohibition question which may play a rather important part in the forthcoming general election...
...Some of them are endeavoring to make its repeal an issue at the general election, and they label it Jixism as we would talk of Volsteadism...
...During the great war various regulations were promulgated pursuant to the Defense of the Realm Act...
...A prominent weekly magazine declared editorially that the people will sit in judgment, and that in the coming summer Jix may be eclipsed...
...In a combined tobacco and candy store the sale of tobacco must cease at eight o'clock in the evening while candy may be purveyed until halfpast nine...
...These are only a few of the anomalies resulting from Dora...
...Not twenty candidates at the general election will pledge themselves to repeal Dora, so what is the good of making my life a burden and throwing brickbats at me...
...The solution of her difficulty is much more involved...
...A police bribery case involving one Sergeant Goddard evoked the opinion that Dora would in time do much to corrupt the law-enforcing bodies...
...They feel it is a reversion to the Conqueror's curfew law...
...Some assailed it as a neat statement of bureaucratic tyranny, others inferred that it is directly contrary to those principles of liberty which the British people prize so highly...
...At the time of passage most of the debate centered around a clause providing that any shop may be kept open during the general closing hours if no person other than the owner of the shop is employed or engaged in or about the business of the shop during these hours...
...They are directly concerned with limiting the business hours of shops and with curbing the sale of alcoholic refreshments by closing hour laws...
...The bill as passed simply sets forth certain hours at which certain shops must be closed throughout the country, and repeals obsolete rules bearing on the subject...
...In a speech at the Oxford Luncheon Club, the Home Secretary created further interest by stating: Now, about Dora...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 2
