SNAGS FOR THE BARBER

ENERALLY SPEAKING, bar-
bers and hairdressers in this
country can consider themselves

far more fortunate than their foreign
colleagues in the few legislative re-
strictions placed upon them. They
have not, for example, had to contend
with anything like the German law of
1939 which required barbers to sep-
arate clippings from the other rubbish
on the floor.

‘That law did, however, have a pur-
pose. There are still ersatz-wool car-
pets cherished in German homes that
were made of human hair.

In the U.S.A., on the other hand,
the barber has been for years the
victim, not of national economy, but
of legislative humor.

Since women’s organizations in
Ohio worried barbers in 1913 with a
Bill to compel men to wear full beards
—in retaliation for masculine efforts
to regulate women’s fashions—a
series of directives have poked fun at
hairdressers.

At Elkhart, in Indiana, there is one
which solemnly prohibits barbers
from threatening to cut off the ears
of juvenile clients!

Nebraska is a State noted for its
serious law-making. Yet one of its
towns, Waterloo, has an ordinance

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which forbids barbers to eat onions
during working hours.

Apart from such efforts at humor
in the statute-books, American bar-
bers have had to resist attempts by
legislators to reduce the price of hair-
cuts for men lacking a complete head
of hair. As a large number of their
customers are either bald or going
bald, any reduction in price would
lose the barbers a lot of money.

Even when a law is not specifically
aimed at them, American hairdressers
complain that other laws can be
stretched to make their professional
errors into crimes. A few months ago
a beauty parlor proprietor in Chi-
cago was convicted of “disorderly con-
duct” for cutting off too much of a
woman client’s hair.

The client, a twenty-one-year-old
girl, had arranged specially for a
“short cut,’ but when she saw the re-
sult in the mirror she disliked it and
burst into tears. “You've cut off too
much; it looks ridiculous!” she claims
she told the apologetic hairdresser.

And when she lost her job because
her employer objected to her new
hair style, the girl reported the hair-
dresser‘s misdeeds to the police. As no
other offence seemed to cover this
slip of the scissors, the charge was
“disorderly conduct.”

Lawyers have advised hairdressers
that they would need a special Act to
protect themselves against cases of
that kind. But American hairdressers
have been unlucky with the Bills they
have promoted.

Every attempt to stop women from
doing hairdressing in their own
homes has failed, and a third of the

women in the U.S.A. never visit hair-
dressers.

Hairdressers did succeed in obtain-
ing a law in Oregon making it a mis-
demeanor to do any beauty treatment
at home. But, as the law was so drafted
that it forbade a woman even to
powder her own face, it was ruled as
being unconstitutional within a week.

Another law, in Nevada, aimed at
stopping the use of “home perm” sets.
But its final draft contained a loop-
hole so big as to make it useless from
the point of view of those owning
beauty salons.

Whilst it banned a girl from “perm-
ing” her friend’s hair at the expense
of either of them, the law allowed her
to do so if another member of the
family bought the set in the first place.

But of all the barbers, the Soviet
barber has to comply with the most
stringent set of legal requirements.

Before he attends to a fresh cus-
tomer the Russian barber is required
by law to wash his hands thoroughly.
Then he must disinfect, in boiling
water or carbolic acid, every instru-
ment, including the combs, he has
used on his last client.

The barber who cuts his customer
and fails to paint the wound with
iodine can be prosecuted by the local
Sanitary-Culture Commission, and it
is an offence for a salon not to supply
each customer with a clean towel and
cover.

But the most shocking interference
with the individual liberty of the
Soviet barber, by British and Ameri-
can standards, is that he is forbidden
to talk whilst shaving or cutting hair.
(Constabulary Gazette, Belfast.) * *

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