1. _Until the Close of the 15th Century._--Of the main conditions of
industrial labour in early Anglo-Saxon England details are scanty.
Monastic industrial communities were added in Christian times to village
industrial communities. While generally husbandry was the first object
of toil, and developed under elaborate regulation in the manorial
system, still a considerable variety of industries grew up, the aim
being expressly to make each social group self-sufficing, and to protect
and regulate village artisans in the interest of village resources. This
protective system, resting on a communal or co-operative view of labour
and social life, has been compared as analogous to the much later and
wider system under which the main purpose was to keep England as a whole
self-sufficing.[3] It has also been shown how greatly a fresh spirit of
enterprise in industry and trade was stimulated first by the Danish and
next by the Norman invasion; the former brought in a vigour shown in
growth of villages, increase in number of freemen, and formation of
trading towns; the latter especially opened up new communications with
the most civilized continental people, and was followed by a
considerable immigration of artisans, particularly of Flemings. In Saxon
England slavery in the strictest sense existed, as is shown in the
earliest English laws, but it seems that the true slave class as
distinct from the serf class was comparatively small, and it may well be
that the labour of an ordinary serf was not practically more severe, and
the remuneration in maintenance and kind not much less than that of
agricultural labourers in recent times. In spite of the steady protest
of the Church, slavery (as the exception, not the general rule) did not
die out for many centuries, and was apt to be revived as a punishment
for criminals, e.g. in the fierce provisions of the statute of Edward
VI. against beggars, not repealed until 1597. At no time, however, was
it general, and as the larger village and city populations grew the
ratio of serfs and slaves to the freemen in the whole population rapidly
diminished, for the city populations "had not the habit and use of
slavery," and while serfs might sometimes find a refuge in the cities
from exceptionally severe taskmasters, "there is no doubt that freemen
gradually united with them under the lord's protection, that strangers
engaged in trade sojourned among them, and that a race of artisans
gradually grew up in which original class feelings were greatly
modified." From these conditions grew two parallel tendencies in
regulation of labour. On the one hand there was, under royal charters,
the burgh or municipal organization and control of artisan and craft
labour, passing later into the more specialized organization in craft
gilds; on the other hand, there was a necessity, sometimes acute, to
prevent undue diminution in the numbers available for husbandry or
agricultural labour. To the latter cause must be traced a provision
appearing in a succession of statutes (see especially an act of Richard
II., 1388), that a child under twelve years once employed in agriculture
might never be transferred to apprenticeship in a craft. The steady
development of England, first as a wool-growing, later as a
cloth-producing country, would accentuate this difficulty. During the
13th century, side by side with development of trading companies for the
export of wool from England, may be noted many agreements on the part of
monasteries to sell their wool to Florentines, and during the same
century absorption of alien artisans into the municipal system was
practically completed. Charters of Henry I. provided for naturalization
of these aliens. From the time of Edward I. to Edward III. a gradual
transference of burgh customs, so far as recognized for the common good,
to statute law was in progress, together with an assertion of the rights
of the crown against ecclesiastical orders. "The statutes of Edward I.,"
says Dr. Cunningham, "mark the first attempt to deal with Industry and
Trade as a public matter which concerns the whole state, not as the
particular affair of leading men in each separate locality." The first
direct legislation for labour by statute, however, is not earlier than
the twenty-third year of the reign of Edward III., and it arose in an
attempt to control the decay and ruin, both in rural and urban
districts, which followed the Hundred Years' War, and the pestilence
known as the Black Death. This first "Statute of Labourers" was designed
for the benefit of the community, not for the protection of labour or
prevention of oppression, and the policy of enforcing customary wages
and compelling the able-bodied labourer, whether free or bond, not
living in merchandise or exercising any craft, to work for hire at
recognized rates of pay, must be reviewed in the circumstances and
ideals of the time. Regulation generally in the middle ages aimed at
preventing any individual or section of the community from making what
was considered an exceptional profit through the necessity of others.[4]
The scarcity of labour by the reduction of the population through
pestilence was not admitted as a justification for the demands for
increased pay, and while the unemployed labourer was liable to be
committed to gaol if he refused service at current rates, the lords of
the towns or manors who promised or paid more to their servants were
liable to be sued treble the sum in question. Similar restrictions were
made applicable to artificers and workmen. By another statute, two years
later, labourers or artificers who left their work and went into another
county were liable to be arrested by the sheriff and brought back. These
and similar provisions with similar aims were confirmed by statutes of
1360, 1368 and 1388, but the act of 1360, while prohibiting "all
alliances and covins of masons, carpenters, congregations, chapters,
ordinances and oaths betwixt them made," allowed "every lord to bargain
or covenant for their works in gross with such labourers and artificers
when it pleaseth them, so that they perform such works well and lawfully
according to the bargain and covenant with them thereof made." Powers
were given by the acts of 1368 and 1388 to justices to determine matters
under these statutes and to fix wages. Records show that workmen of
various descriptions were pressed by writs addressed to sheriffs to work
for their king at wages regardless of their will as to terms and place
of work. These proceedings were founded on notions of royal prerogative,
of which impressment of seamen survived as an example to a far later
date. By an act of 1388 no servant or labourer, man or woman, however,
could depart out of the hundred to serve elsewhere unless bearing a
letter patent under the king's seal stating the cause of going and time
of return. Such provisions would appear to have widely failed in their
purpose, for an act of 1414 declares that the servants and labourers
fled from county to county, and justices were empowered to send writs to
the sheriffs for fugitive labourers as for felons, and to examine
labourers, servants and their masters, as well as artificers, and to
punish them on confession. An act of 1405, while putting a property
qualification on apprenticeship and requiring parents under heavy
penalties to put their children to such labour as their estates
required, made a reservation giving freedom to any person "to send their
children to school to learn literature." Up to the end of the 15th
century a monotonous succession of statutes strengthening, modifying,
amending the various attempts (since the first Statute of Labourers) to
limit free movement of labour, or demands by labourers for increased
wages, may be seen in the acts of 1411, 1427, 1444, 1495. It was clearly
found extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to carry out the minute
control of wages considered desirable, and exceptions in favour of
certain occupations were in some of the statutes themselves. In 1512 the
penalties for giving wages contrary to law were repealed so far as
related to masters, but it also appears that London workmen would not
endure the prevalent restrictions as to wages, and that they secured in
practice a greater freedom to arrange rates when working within the
city. Several of these statutes, and especially one of 1514, fixed the
hours of labour when limiting wages. During March to September the
limits were 5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M., with half an hour off for breakfast
and an hour and a half off for mid-day dinner. In winter the outside
limits were fixed by the length of daylight.
Throughout the 15th century the rapidly increasing manufacture of cloth
was subject to a regulation which aimed at maintaining the standard of
production and prevention of bad workmanship, and the noteworthy statute
4 Edward IV. c. 1, while giving power to royal officers to supervise
size of cloths, modes of sealing, &c., also repressed payment to workers
in "pins, girdles and unprofitable wares," and ordained payment in true
and lawful money. This statute (the first against "Truck") gives an
interesting picture of the way in which clothiers--or, as we should call
them, wholesale merchants and manufacturers--delivered wool to spinners,
carders, &c., by weight, and paid for the work when brought back
finished. It appears that the work was carried on in rural as well as
town districts. While this industry was growing and thriving other
trades remained backward, and agriculture was in a depressed condition.
Craft gilds had primarily the same purpose as the Edwardian statutes,
that is, of securing that the public should be well served with good
wares, and that the trade and manufacture itself should be on a sound
basis as to quality of products and should flourish. Incidentally there
was considerable regulation by the gilds of the conditions of labour,
but not primarily in the interests of the labourer. Thus night work was
prohibited because it tended to secrecy and so to bad execution of work;
working on holidays was prohibited to secure fair play between craftsmen
and so on. The position of apprentices was made clear through
indentures, but the position of journeymen was less certain. Signs are
not wanting of a struggle between journeymen and masters, and towards
the end of the 15th century masters themselves, in at least the great
wool trade, tended to develop from craftsmen into something more like
the modern capitalist employer; from an act of 1555 touching weavers it
is quite clear that this development had greatly advanced and that
cloth-making was carried on largely by employers with large capitals.
Before this, however, while a struggle went on between the town
authorities and the craft gilds, journeymen began to form companies of
their own, and the result of the various conflicts may be seen in an act
of Henry VI., providing that in future new ordinances of gilds shall be
submitted to justices of the peace--a measure which was strengthened in
1503.
2. _From Tudor Days until the Close of the 18th Century._--A detailed
history of labour regulation in the 16th century would include some
account of the Tudor laws against vagrancy and methods of dealing with
the increase of pauperism, attributable, at least in part, to the
dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII., and to the
confiscation of craft gild funds, which proceeded under Somerset and
Edward VI. It is sufficient here to point to the general recognition of
the public right to compel labourers to work and thus secure control of
unemployed as well as employed. The statutes of Henry VIII. and Edward
VI. against vagrancy differed rather in degree of severity than in
principle from legislation for similar purposes in previous and
subsequent reigns. The Statute of Labourers, passed in the fifth year of
Elizabeth's reign (1562), as well as the poor law of the same year, was
to a considerable extent both a consolidating and an amending code of
law, and was so securely based on public opinion and deeply rooted
custom that it was maintained in force for two centuries. It avowedly
approves of principles and aims in earlier acts, regulating wages,
punishing refusal to work, and preventing free migration of labour. It
makes, however, a great advance in its express aim of protecting the
poor labourer against insufficient wages, and of devising a machinery,
by frequent meeting of justices, which might yield "unto the hired
person both in time of scarcity and in time of plenty a convenient
proportion of wages." Minute regulations were made governing the
contract between master and servant, and their mutual rights and
obligations on parallel lines for (a) artificers, (b) labourers in
husbandry. Hiring was to be by the year, and any unemployed person
qualified in either calling was bound to accept service on pain of
imprisonment, if required, unless possessed of property of a specified
amount or engaged in art, science or letters, or being a "gentleman."
Persons leaving a service were bound to obtain a testimonial, and might
not be taken into fresh employment without producing such testimonial,
or, if in a new district, until after showing it to the authorities of
the place. A master might be fined £5, and a labourer imprisoned, and if
contumacious, whipped, for breach of this rule. The carefully devised
scheme for technical training of apprentices embodied to a considerable
extent the methods and experiences of the craft gilds. Hours of labour
were as follows: "All artificers and labourers being hired for wages by
the day or week shall, betwixt the midst of the months of March and
September, be and continue at their work at or before 5 o'clock in the
morning and continue at work and not depart until betwixt 7 and 8
o'clock at night, except it be in the time of breakfast, dinner or
drinking, the which time at the most shall not exceed two hours and a
half in a day, that is to say, at every drinking half an hour, for his
dinner one hour and for his sleep when he is allowed to sleep, the which
is from the midst of May to the midst of August, half an hour; and all
the said artificers and labourers betwixt the midst of September and the
midst of March shall be and continue at their work from the spring of
the day in the morning until the night of the same day, except it be in
time afore appointed for breakfast and dinner, upon pain to lose and
forfeit one penny for every hour's absence, to be deducted and defaulked
out of his wages that shall so offend." Although the standpoint of the
Factory Act and Truck Act in force at the beginning of the 20th century
as regards hours of labour or regulation of fines deducted from wages is
completely reversed, yet the difference is not great between the average
length of hours of labour permissible under the present law for women
and those hours imposed upon the adult labourer in Elizabeth's statute.
Apart from the standpoint of compulsory imposition of fines, one
advantage in the definiteness of amount deductable from wages would
appear to lie on the side of the earlier statute.
Three points remain to be touched on in connexion with the Elizabethan
poor law. In addition to (a) consolidation of measures for setting
vagrants to work, we find the first compulsory contributions from the
well-to-do towards poor relief there provided for, (b) at least a
theoretical recognition of a right as well as an obligation on the part
of the labourer to be hired, (c) careful provision for the apprenticing
of destitute children and orphans to a trade.
One provision of considerable interest arose in Scotland, which was
nearly a century later in organizing provisions for fixing conditions of
hire and wages of workmen, labourers and servants, similar to those
consolidated in the Elizabethan Statute of Labourers. In 1617 it was
provided (and reaffirmed in 1661) that power should be given to the
sheriffs to compel payment of wages, "that servants may be the more
willing to obey the ordinance." The difficulties in regulation of
compulsory labour in Scotland must, however, have been great, for in
1672 houses of correction were erected for disobedient servants, and
masters of these houses were empowered to force them to work and to
correct them according to their demerits. While servants in manufacture
were compelled to work at reasonable rates they might not enter on a new
hire without their previous master's consent.
Such legislation continued, at least theoretically, in force until the
awakening effected by the beginning of the industrial revolution--that
is, until the combined effects of steady concentration of capital in the
hands of employers and expansion of trade, followed closely by an
unexampled development of invention in machinery and application of
power to its use. completely altered the face of industrial England.
From time to time, in respect of particular trades, provisions against
truck and for payment of wages in current coin, similar to the act of
Edward IV. in the woollen industry, were found necessary, and this
branch of labour legislation developed through the reigns of Anne and
the four Georges until consolidation and amendment were effected, after
the completion of the industrial revolution, in the Truck Act of 1831.
From the close of the 17th century and during the 18th century the
legislature is no longer mainly engaged in devising means for compelling
labourers and artisans to enter into involuntary service, but rather in
regulating the summary powers of justices of the peace in the matter of
dispute between masters and servants in relation to contracts and
agreements, express or implied, presumed to have been entered into
voluntarily on both sides. While the movement to refer labour questions
to the jurisdiction of the justices thus gradually developed, the main
subject matter for their exercise of jurisdiction in regard to labour
also changed, even when theoretically for a time the two sets of
powers--such as (a) moderation of craft gild ordinances and punishment
of workers refusing hire, or (b) fixing scales of wages and enforcement
of labour contracts--might be concurrently exercised. Even in an act of
George II. (1746) for settlement of disputes and differences as to wages
or other conditions under a contract of labour, power was retained for
the justices, on complaint of the masters of misdemeanour or
ill-behaviour on the part of the servant, to discharge the latter from
service or to send him to a house of correction "there to be corrected,"
that is, to be held to hard labour for a term not exceeding a month or
to be corrected by whipping. In an act with similar aims of George IV.
(1823), with a rather wider scope, the power to order corporal
punishment, and in 1867 to hard labour, for breach of labour contracts
had disappeared, and soon after the middle of the 19th century the right
to enforce contracts of labour also disappeared. Then breach of such
labour contracts became simply a question of recovery of damages, unless
both parties agreed that security for performance of the contract shall
be given instead of damages.
While the endeavour to enforce labour apart from a contract died out in
the latter end of the 18th century, sentiment for some time had strongly
grown in favour of developing early industrial training of children. It
appears to have been a special object of charitable and philanthropic
endeavour in the 17th century, as well as the 18th, to found houses of
industry, in which little children, even under five years of age, might
be trained for apprenticeship with employers. Connected as this
development was with poor relief, one of its chief aims was to prevent
future unemployment and vagrancy by training in habits and knowledge of
industry, but not unavowed was another motive: "from children thus
trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the lowering of its
price."[5] The evils and excesses which lay enfolded within such a
movement gave the first impulse to the new ventures in labour
legislation which are specially the work of the 19th century. Evident as
it is "that before the Industrial Revolution very young children were
largely employed both in their own homes and as apprentices under the
Poor Law," and that "long before Peel's time there were misgivings about
the apprenticeship system," still it needed the concentration and
prominence of suffering and injury to child life in the factory system
to lead to parliamentary intervention.
3. _From 1800 to the Codes of 1872 and 1878._--A serious outbreak of
fever in 1784 in cotton mills near Manchester appears to have first
drawn widespread and influential public opinion to the overwork of
children, under terribly dangerous and insanitary conditions, on which
the factory system was then largely being carried on. A local inquiry,
chiefly by a group of medical men presided over by Dr Percival, was
instituted by the justices of the peace for Lancashire, and in the
forefront of the resulting report stood a recommendation for limitation
and control of the working hours of the children. A resolution by the
county justices followed, in which they declared their intention in
future to refuse "indentures of parish Apprentices whereby they shall be
bound to Owners of Cotton Mills and other works in which children are
obliged to work in the night or more than ten hours in the day." In 1795
the Manchester Board of Health was formed, which, with fuller
information, more definitely advised legislation for the regulation of
the hours and conditions of labour in factories. In 1802 the Health and
Morals of Apprentices Act was passed, which in effect formed the first
step towards prevention of injury to and protection of labour in
factories. It was directly aimed only at evils of the apprentice system,
under which large numbers of pauper children were worked in cotton and
woollen mills without education, for excessive hours, under wretched
conditions. It did not apply to places employing fewer than twenty
persons or three apprentices, and it applied the principle of limitation
of hours (to twelve a day) and abolition of night work, as well as
educational requirements, only to apprentices. Religious teaching and
suitable sleeping accommodation and clothing were provided for in the
act, also as regards apprentices. Lime-washing and ventilation
provisions applied to all cotton and woollen factories employing more
than twenty persons. "Visitors" were to be appointed by county justices
for repression of contraventions, and were empowered to "direct the
adoption of such sanitary regulations as they might on advice think
proper." The mills were to be registered by the clerk of the peace, and
justices had power to inflict fines of from £2 to £5 for contraventions.
Although enforcement of the very limited provisions of the act was in
many cases poor or non-existent, in some districts excellent work was
done by justices, and in 1803 the West Riding of Yorkshire justices
passed a resolution substituting the ten hours' limit for the twelve
hours' limit of the act, as a condition of permission for indenturing of
apprentices in mills.
Rapid development of the application of steam power to manufacture led
to growth of employment of children in populous centres, otherwise than
on the apprenticeship system, and before long the evils attendant on
this change brought the general question of regulation and protection of
child labour in textile factories to the front. The act of 1819, limited
as it was, was a noteworthy step forward, in that it dealt with this
wider scope of employment of children in cotton factories, and it is
satisfactory to record that it was the outcome of the efforts and
practical experiments of a great manufacturer, Robert Owen. Its
provisions fell on every point lower than the aims he put forward on his
own experience as practicable, and notably in its application only to
cotton mills instead of all textile factories. Prohibition of child
labour under nine years of age and limitation of the working day to
twelve in the twenty-four (without specifying the precise hour of
beginning and closing) were the main provisions of this act. No
provision was made for enforcement of the law beyond such as was
attempted in the act of 1802. Slight amendments were attempted in the
acts of 1825 and 1831, but the first really important factory act was in
1833 applying to textile factories generally, limiting employment of
young persons under eighteen years of age, as well as children,
prohibiting night work between 8.30 P.M. and 5.30 A.M., and first
providing for "inspectors" to enforce the law. This is the act which was
based on the devoted efforts of Michael Sadler, with whose name in this
connexion that of Lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury, was from
1832 associated. The importance of this act lay in its provision for
skilled inspection and thus for enforcement of the law by an independent
body of men unconnected with the locality in which the manufactures lay,
whose specialization in their work enabled them to acquire information
needed for further development of legislation for protection of labour.
Their powers were to a certain extent judicial, being assimilated to
those possessed by justices; they could administer oaths and make such
"rules, regulations and orders" as were necessary for execution of the
act, and could hear complaints and impose penalties under the act. In
1844 a textile factory act modified these extensive inspectoral powers,
organizing the service on lines resembling those of our own time, and
added provision for certifying surgeons to examine workers under sixteen
years of age as to physical fitness for employment and to grant
certificates of age and ordinary strength. Hours of labour, by the act
of 1833, were limited for children under eleven to 9 a day or 48 in the
week, and for young persons under eighteen to 12 a day or 69 in the
week. Between 1833 and 1844 the movement in favour of a ten hours' day,
which had long been in progress, reached its height in a time of great
commercial and industrial distress, but could not be carried into effect
until 1847. By the act of 1844 the hours of adult women were first
regulated, and were limited (as were already those of "young persons")
to 12 a day; children were permitted either to work the same hours on
alternate days or "half-time," with compulsory school attendance as a
condition of their employment. The aim in thus adjusting the hours of
the three classes of workers was to provide for a practical standard
working-day. For the first time detailed provisions for health and
safety began to make their appearance in the law. Penal compensation for
preventible injuries due to unfenced machinery was also provided, and
appears to have been the outcome of a discussion by witnesses before the
Royal Commission on Labour of Young Persons in Mines and Manufactures in
1841.
From this date, 1841, begin the first attempts at protective legislation
for labour in mining. The first Mines Act of 1842 following the terrible
revelations of the Royal Commission referred to excluded women and girls
from underground working, and limited the employment of boys, excluding
from underground working those under ten years, but it was not until
1850 that systematic reporting of fatal accidents and until 1855 that
other safeguards for health, life and limb in mines were seriously
provided by law. With the exception of regulations against truck there
was no protection for the miner before 1842; before 1814 it was not
customary to hold inquests on miners killed by accidents in mines. From
1842 onwards considerable interaction in the development of the two sets
of acts (mines and factories), as regards special protection against
industrial injury to health and limb, took place, both in parliament and
in the department (Home Office) administering them. Another strong
influence tending towards ultimate development of scientific protection
of health and life in industry began in the work and reports of the
series of sanitary commissions and Board of Health reports from 1843
onwards. In 1844 the mines inspector made his first report, but two
years later women were still employed to some extent underground.
Organized inspection began in 1850, and in 1854 the Select Committee on
Accidents adopted a suggestion of the inspectors for legislative
extension of the practice of several colliery owners in framing special
safety rules for working in mines. The act of 1855 provided seven
general rules, relating to ventilation, fencing of disused shafts,
proper means for signalling, proper gauges and valve for steam-boiler,
indicator and brake for machine lowering and raising; also it provided
that detailed special rules submitted by mine-owners to the secretary of
state, might, on his approval, have the force of law and be enforceable
by penalty. The Mines Act of 1860, besides extending the law to
ironstone mines, following as it did on a series of disastrous accidents
and explosions, strengthened some of the provisions for safety. At
several inquests strong evidence was given of incompetent management and
neglect of rules, and a demand was made for enforcing employment only of
certificated managers of coal mines. This was not met until the act of
1872, but in 1860 certain sections relating to wages and education were
introduced. Steady development of the coal industry, increasing
association among miners, and increased scientific knowledge of means of
ventilation and of other methods for securing safety, all paved the way
to the Coal Mines Act of 1872, and in the same year health and safety in
metalliferous mines received their first legislative treatment in a code
of similar scope and character to that of the Coal Mines Act. This act
was amended in 1886, and repealed and recodified in 1887; its principal
provisions are still in force, with certain revised special rules and
modifications as regards reporting of accidents (1906) and employment of
children (1903). It was based on the recommendations of a Royal
Commission, which had reported in 1864, and which had shown the grave
excess of mortality and sickness among metalliferous miners, attributed
to the inhalation of gritty particles, imperfect ventilation, great
changes of temperature, excessive physical exertion, exposure to wet,
and other causes. The prohibition of employment of women and of boys
under ten years underground in this class of mines, as well as in coal
mines, had been effected by the act of 1842, and inspection had been
provided for in the act of 1860; these were in amended form included in
the code of 1872, the age of employment of boys underground being raised
to twelve. In the Coal Mines Act of 1872 we see the first important
effort to provide a complete code of regulation for the special dangers
to health, life and limb in coal mines apart from other mines; it
applied to "mines of coal, mines of stratified ironstone, mines of shale
and mines of fire-clay." Unlike the companion act--applying to all other
mines--it maintained the age limit of entering underground employment
for boys at ten years, but for those between ten and twelve it provided
for a system of working analogous to the half-time system in factories,
including compulsory school attendance. The limits of employment for
boys from twelve to sixteen were 10 hours in any one day and 54 in
anyone week. The chief characteristics of the act lay in extension of
the "general" safety rules, improvement of the method of formulating
"special" safety rules, provision for certificated and competent
management, and increased inspection. Several important matters were
transferred from the special to the general rules, such as compulsory
use of safety lamps where needed, regulation of use of explosives, and
securing of roofs and sides. Special rules, before being submitted to
the secretary of state for approval, must be posted in the mine for two
weeks, with a notice that objections might be sent by any person
employed to the district inspector. Wilful neglect of safety provisions
became punishable in the case of employers as well as miners by
imprisonment with hard labour. But the most important new step lay in
the sections relating to daily control and supervision of every mine by
a manager holding a certificate of competency from the secretary of
state, after examination by a board of examiners appointed by the
secretary of state, power being retained for him to cause later inquiry
into competency of the holder of the certificate, and to cancel or
suspend the certificate in case of proved unfitness.
Returning to the development of factory and workshop law from the year
1844, the main line of effort--after the act of 1847 had restricted
hours of women and young persons to 10 a day and fixed the daily limits
between 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. (Saturday 6 A.M. to 2 P.M.)--lay in bringing
trade after trade in some degree under the scope of this branch of law,
which had hitherto only regulated conditions in textile factories.
Bleaching and dyeing works were included by the acts of 1860 and 1862;
lace factories by that of 1861; calendering and finishing by acts of
1863 and 1864; bakehouses became partially regulated by an act of 1863,
with special reference to local authorities for administration of its
clauses. The report of the third Children's Employment Commission
brought together in accessible form the miserable facts relating to
child labour in a number of unregulated industries in the year 1862, and
the act of 1864 brought some of (these earthenware-making, lucifer
match-making, percussion cap and cartridge making, paper-staining, and
fustian cutting) partly under the scope of the various textile factory
acts in force. A larger addition of trades was made three years later,
but the act of 1864 is particularly interesting in that it first
embodied some of the results of inquiries of expert medical and sanitary
commissioners, by requiring ventilation to be applied to the removal of
injurious gases, dust, and other impurities generated in manufacture,
and made a first attempt to engraft part of the special rules system
from the mines acts. The provisions for framing such rules disappeared
in the Consolidating Act of 1878, to be revived in a better form later.
The Sanitary Act of 1866, administered by local authorities, provided
for general sanitation in any factories and workshops not under existing
factory acts, and the Workshops Regulation Act of 1867, similarly to be
administered by local authorities, amended in 1870, practically
completed the application of the main principle of the factory acts to
all places in which manual labour was exercised for gain in the making
or finishing of articles or parts of articles for sale. A few specially
dangerous or injurious trades brought under regulation in 1864 and 1867
(e.g. earthenware and lucifer match making, glass-making) ranked as
"factories," although not using mechanical power, and for a time
employment of less than fifty persons relegated certain workplaces to
the category of "workshops," but broadly the presence or absence of such
motor power in aid of process was made and has remained the distinction
between factories and workshops. The Factory Act of 1874, the last of
the series before the great Consolidating Act of 1878, raised the
minimum age of employment for children to ten years in textile
factories. In most of the great inquiries into conditions of child
labour the fact has come clearly to light, in regard to textile and
non-textile trades alike, that parents as much as any employers have
been responsible for too early employment and excessive hours of
employment of children, and from early times until to-day in factory
legislation it has been recognized that they must to some extent be held
responsible for due observation of the limits imposed. For example, in
1831 it was found necessary to protect occupiers against parental
responsibility for false certificates of age, and in 1833 parents of a
child or "any Person having any benefit from the wages of such child"
were made to share responsibility for employment of children without
school attendance or beyond legal hours.
During the discussions on the bill which became law in 1874, it had
become apparent that revision and consolidation of the multiplicity of
statutes then regulating manufacturing industry had become pressingly
necessary; modifications and exceptions for exceptional conditions in
separate industries needed reconsideration and systematization on clear
principles, and the main requirements of the law could with great
advantage be applied more generally to all the industries. In
particular, the daily limits as to period of employment, pauses for
meals, and holidays, needed to be unified for non-textile factories and
workshops, so as to bring about a standard working-day, and thus prevent
the tendency in "the larger establishments to farm out work among the
smaller, where it is done under less favourable conditions both sanitary
and educational."[6] In these main directions, and that of simplifying
definitions, summarizing special sanitary provisions that had been
gradually introduced for various trades, and centralizing and improving
the organization of the inspectorate, the Commission of 1876 on the
Factory Acts made its recommendations, and the Factory Act of 1878 took
effect. In the fixed working-day, provisions for pauses, holidays,
general and special exceptions, distinctions between systems of
employment for children, young persons and women, education of children
and certificates of fitness for children and young persons, limited
regulation of domestic workshops, general principles of administration
and definitions, the law of 1878 was made practically the same as that
embodied in the later principal act of 1901. More or less completely
revised are: (a) the sections in the 1878 act relating to mode of
controlling sanitary conditions in workshops (since 1891 primarily
enforced by the local sanitary authority); (b) provision for reporting
accidents and for enforcing safety (other than fencing of mill gearing
and dangerous machinery); (c) detailed regulation of injurious and
dangerous process and trades; (d) powers of certifying surgeons; (e)
amount of overtime permissible (greatly reduced in amount and now
confined to adults); (f) age for permissible employment of a child has
been raised from ten years to twelve years. Entirely new since the act
of 1878 are the provisions: (a) for control of outwork; (b) for
supplying particulars of work and wages to piece-workers, enabling them
to compute the total amount of wages payable to them; (e) extension of
the act to laundries; (f) a tentative effort to limit the too early
employment of mothers after childbirth.