industries under special rules in England, may by the German code be
ordered wherever it seems desirable by the local authority, who may
also require that they shall be heated in cold weather. In France,
although it is laid down that all workrooms must be cleared, and
the air entirely renewed during meal hours, the law is silent as
regards provision of meal rooms; consequently, as in certain cases in
England, inspectors report difficulties in enforcing the evacuation
of workrooms during meal hours. It is frankly admitted in the latest
annual report that the law has hitherto only been strictly applied
where the nature of the manufacturing process makes the restriction
essential for protection of the health of the worker: mostly in trades
classed in this country as injurious. The Belgian law does not in this
matter go quite so far as the French, the restriction applying only to
rooms in which poisonous substances are handled. Suitable lavatories,
cloakrooms, and drinking water are required in all factories and
workshops in France by the decree of 1894, a requirement going far
beyond those of other countries, for example Germany, where provision
of lavatories and cloakrooms depend on their being required by the
nature of the work, and where a detailed order must be made to that
effect by the police authority for specified classes of workplaces. As
in the case of meals in workrooms, it appears from the official reports
that in France the provision of washing appliances is enforced only
in chemical works, workplaces where poisonous substances are handled,
rag-sorting shops, tobacco factories, and a few other classes of
workplace, where the nature of the work makes it important that such
protection should be given.
The French and the Belgian laws are as yet the only ones which attempt
to define precisely a standard, independent of local conditions,
for sufficient and suitable sanitary conveniences. The German code
makes a general requirement as to sufficiency and suitability, having
regard to number and sex of workers, and leaves details to police
regulation. In Belgium the number must be one convenience at least for
every twenty-five workers, in France for every fifty workers, and in
neither country may there be direct communication with workrooms. It
is clearly stated in inspectors’ reports that in France the conditions
in sanitary respects are far from being fully enforced, although the
general limit of one in fifty is not infringed. These two countries
again have general provision for the very important matters of drainage
of floors and frequent cleansing of workrooms, and prompt removal from
them of organic matter. “The floor shall be cleansed, thoroughly, at
least once a day before or after the period of employment,” in the
French decree of 1893, is a provision which appears to be well enforced
and is applicable to all industries. The inspectors are specially
instructed to draw attention to the hygienic value of a cleansing which
takes place before the entry of workers. The sanitary value of such a
practice, whether in dusty, poisonous, or ordinary workshops, cannot
possibly be overrated.
Glancing for a moment at general regulations to protect women and young
workers, as distinct from adult workers, two points only can be touched
on, protection of young workers against overstrain, and women from
accidents and from too early employment after childbirth. The brevity
of this article makes it impossible to compare in detail the limits
of age for child labour in the different countries, but some special
safeguards under the French law cannot be passed by: (_a_) careful
detailed regulation of the weights that may be pushed, lifted, carried
by girls and boys under eighteen years of age; (_b_) prohibition
of employment of girls under sixteen at machines driven by treadles;
(_c_) prohibition of employment of young workers in a large number
of processes scheduled as unhealthy; (_d_) cleaning of machinery
in motion is prohibited not only for young workers but also for
women. The German Industrial Code especially insists on the peculiar
responsibility of employers to take every possible step to protect
young workers from risks of all kinds.
The limitations as regards employment of women after childbirth may be
briefly summarised as follows:--
_Belgium._--“Women must not be employed in industry within four
weeks after childbirth” (sect. 5 of Law of 5th December 1889).
_Switzerland._--“A total absence from employment in factories of
women during eight weeks before and after childirth must be observed,
and on their return to work proof must be tendered of an absence
since birth of the child of at least six weeks” (section 15 of the
Federal Law of 23rd March 1877). An order of the Federal Council, 1897,
indicates a further abstinence from employment before confinement
(the length of time unspecified) in certain dangerous occupations,
_e.g._, in processes in which fumes of white phosphorus are
produced; or in manipulation of lead or lead products; or where mercury
or sulphuric acid are used; in dry cleaning works; in indiarubber
works; any processes involving lifting or carrying heavy weights, or
risk of violent shocks. As the limit of the period is undefined, and
means of enforcing the prohibition unspecified, it is difficult to see
how the regulation does more than outline an excellent theoretical
protection.
_Holland._--“Women must not be employed in factories or workshops
within four weeks after childbirth” (Law of 5th May 1889).
_Denmark._--“Women must not be employed within four weeks of
childbirth except on production of a medical certificate showing that
the mother’s employment will not be injurious to herself or the child”
(Law of 1st July 1901).
_Germany._--The Industrial Code contains the same absolute
prohibition of employment during four weeks as the Dutch law, but
extends it to six weeks if a medical certificate cannot be produced
approving employment at the end of four weeks.
_Austria._--The Industrial Code lays down the same prohibition as
the Dutch law.
_Spain_, by a law of 13th March 1900, prohibits employment of
women within three weeks of childbirth, but lays a further obligation
on employers to allow one hour at least in the ordinary period of
employment (for which there must be no deduction from wages) to nursing
mothers to nurse their infants. This hour may be divided into two
separate absences of half-an-hour, and may be fixed at pleasure by the
mother, whose only obligation is to notify the times she chooses to the
overlooker.
Turning to _accidents_ and their prevention in factory and
workshop employment, it is probable that only in Germany and Austria,
through the operation of the long-established insurance laws, is there
anything approaching the completeness of information with regard to
occurrence and causes of accidents secured in England by the duty of
reporting so precisely defined in the Factory Acts. On the other hand,
through the operation of the same insurance laws, the fencing and other
precautions against occurrence of accidents, necessarily tend to be
far completer than in any country where this motive has only recently
arisen (as in France and England). It is indeed expressly stated in
the last annual report of the French inspectors, that the statistics
of accidents are very far from indicating the real state of affairs,
and that it cannot be known until the law of employers’ liability for
accidents, of 1898, has come fully into operation. Possibly to the
admittedly ineffectual control by Government in France of the causes
and prevention of accidents is due the formation and steady growth
of Employers’ Associations with the object of reducing industrial
accidents by careful fencing and organisation of work. Details as
to methods adopted in the various countries for guarding machinery
and reducing risk of accidents would be too elaborate and technical
for this article. So far as the various laws, distinguished from
administrative regulation, are concerned, none contain so complete
a series of provisions as the English Factory Acts, though Belgian
and French decrees contain some excellent safeguards. In Germany,
as can be readily verified by reference to any volume of Government
inspectors’ reports, much of the detailed work of enforcing use of
safeguards is done by the Trade Accident Associations, often acting in
co-operation with the State inspectors. Not only are rules relating
to safeguards--for example, the elaborate ones in aerated water
works--drawn up by the Trade Associations, but they are enforceable
by penalty both on employers and employed after they have been duly
authorised by the Imperial Insurance Office. Employers neglecting the
rules may be condemned to pay double their ordinary contribution to the
Trade Association, and the fines imposed on workers are payable to the
Sick Insurance Fund.
Turning now to governmental regulation of specially unhealthy or
injurious occupations by more closely applied and more easily amended
rules than are possible in a general code, I must revert again to
the observation made above, that only in England and Germany can a
clear comparison be made of “special rules”; this applies both to the
method of formulating such rules, and to the number and variety of
trades so regulated. Other countries have in their general factory
law powers to make somewhat similar regulation, but have relied in a
greater degree on control of injurious occupations by local authorities
concerned with the law relating to public health, or have endeavoured,
especially in France, to lay down in a single administrative decree
general requirements as to exhaust ventilation for dust and fumes,
washing appliances, meal-rooms, etc., which would be likely to cover
the special risks in many industries. In Belgium, where special rules
for safety of workers in dangerous industries (such as manufacture
of lucifer matches by means of white or yellow phosphorus) have been
drawn up, both in pursuance of the general law regulating factories
(1889) and of the laws relating to noxious industries, under control
of local authorities, there is an increasing tendency for sanitary
regulation of workplaces to pass into the control of the central
factory inspectors.[25] There we find in the decree of 1894, relating
to general precautions in unhealthy industries, very similar provisions
to those in the French decree of the same year; but the Belgian decree
is declared in its preamble to be a codification of the conditions
liable to be attached to certificates of authorisation by the local
authorities, whereas in the French decree we clearly find the first
step in an attempt to apply the general law of 1893, relating to
hygiene in factories and workshops. An exceedingly interesting
commentary on the incomplete and unsatisfactory effect of this latter
method is found in the summary to the annual report of the French
inspectors for 1899. I gave a translation of the terms of the decree
in my annual report for 1894 to the Chief Inspector of Factories, and
need not repeat them here. The difficulties since complained of in
France are twofold--(_a_) judicial, as to interpretation in the
courts of some of the exceedingly vague terms employed, (_b_)
technical, owing to the inappropriateness in some of the industries
of rules which are admirable in others. There is a growing demand,
likely to be met after completion of current investigations in various
unhealthy industries, for more detailed and precise rules, applicable
to special processes or to classes or allied groups of industries.
Such special rules were clearly originally intended to be the outcome
of the law on hygiene, 1893, but in only one case, the manufacture
of emerald or Schweinfurth green, have special rules binding both on
employers and workers been applied (decree of 29th June 1895) to the
peculiar risks of the processes. “Does that mean,” says the official
report of 1900, “that it is only in this branch of manufacture that
the need for special protection of workers against the injurious
effects of the processes has appeared? No. The Government have had
under consideration a certain number of draft rules for application
to particular industries ... for example, industries in which lead
and lead compounds, mercury, arsenic, or arsenious acid, and varnishes
with an alcoholic base are used.” In the meantime the result of their
considerations has been that draft rules for electric accumulator
works, vulcanisation of india rubber, laundries (against danger from
infectious diseases), horn and woollen factories, handling of foreign
hides and skins, were referred to the Committee of Public Hygiene, for
an opinion to guide the Minister of Commerce and Industry before he
finally issues the decrees, embodying the rules. It appeared, however,
that the statutory powers of this Committee do not go beyond the
framing of recommendations applicable to industries in general, and the
Minister of Commerce and Industry appointed, therefore, in December
1900 a special Dangerous Trades Committee, composed of nine members,
under the Presidency of M. le Docteur Napias, Member of the _Académie
de Médecine_. The aim in selecting the members of the Committee
was to secure the technical and scientific knowledge necessary for
preparation of special rules suitable to particular classes of
industry, processes, or modes of working. In addition to expert
members such as M. Bouquet, M. Fontaine, and Professors of Chemistry,
Economics, and Representatives of Employers and Employed, four other
members may be appointed for the special technical considerations
belonging to each trade or class of work to be regulated.
As regards poisonous processes, in all but the deadliest, where the
frequency and severity of illness (as, _e.g._, amongst white
lead workers) long ago led to inquiry followed by special local
precautions, inquiry must be greatly handicapped in France, as it has
been in Germany, by the lack of complete statistics of industrial
poisoning such as have been secured in England. In no other country
has the step been taken of laying both on the occupier of a factory or
workshop and on every medical practitioner the duty of reporting to
a chief inspector of factories, or the central authority, individual
cases of industrial poisoning. The lack of information would possibly
have been earlier felt in all its seriousness in both France and
Germany had there been the centralised responsibility that followed
the appointment of a single chief inspector in England. Although in
France the attention of the Minister of Commerce and Industry has been
repeatedly drawn to the effects of lead poisoning in potteries, and
special precautions are recognised as necessary, it is difficult, as Dr
Oliver pointed out in his report of 1899 to the Home Secretary, “to
estimate the amount of lead poisoning that occurs in the potteries in
France,” owing to the incompleteness of statistics. In Germany, where
considerable information can be obtained in some districts, through
the records kept under the Sickness Insurance Laws, the incompleteness
and uncertain character of the information supplied is the subject of
frequent report by the factory inspectors. In the Potsdam district,
where there are innumerable glazed-tile stove factories, great service
was done by the action of a sick fund doctor, who reported that in the
dipping department nearly every worker suffered, more or less, from
lead poisoning. Energetic precautionary measures were taken by the
local authority, and great improvement in health of workers was soon
reported by the doctor. In other districts, on the other hand, comments
are frequent from the inspectors on the lack of effective assistance
from sick funds and their doctors in tracing the origin of industrial
diseases.
In spite of this defectiveness in statistics of industrial disease,
it is with the German Imperial Regulations (Orders of the Federal
Council made in pursuance of section 120 of the Industrial Code)
that the English method of regulating dangerous trades can be best
compared.[26] Some years before it was possible in England under
section 8 of the Factory Act of 1891 to schedule as dangerous or
injurious any process, machinery, or particular description of manual
labour in a factory or workshop, the Federal Council of the German
Empire, or the central authority in any one of the Federal States, was
empowered to draw up special rules to guard against risks of injury
to life, health or limbs of workers, and to limit hours of adults as
well as of minors. Such rules, bearing date 1888 and 1889, are still
in force. This power was strengthened by an amendment in 1891 to the
Industrial Code, applying to protected persons, which empowered the
Federal Council to forbid entirely the employment of women or young
workers, or to make it dependent on very stringent conditions in
occupations dangerous to health or morality. At no time has there been
under the German Code a power reserved to employers, similar to that
in force in the English law until 1901, of compelling such objections
as they can sustain to proposed rules to be settled by arbitration.
It has been repeatedly remarked by competent observers that special
hygiene in German factories, particularly chemical factories, has far
surpassed the standards obtaining until recently in England. This is
not surprising when the greater facilities in Germany for giving effect
by administrative measures to expert recommendations are remembered;
but the readiness of workers to submit to regulations, to which I have
referred already, is certainly a factor of importance. It is remarkable
that, in spite of the difference, more or less stringent special rules
have been established in twenty-four classes of unhealthy industries
in England, as compared with fifteen similar sets of rules in Germany;
it must be observed that in some of the latter more than one class of
works is included, as, for example, in the special rules of January
1899, which cover both horsehair spinneries and brushmaking works.
It is of interest to compare as follows the classes of industries
included, and the date of the regulations:--
SPECIAL RULES FOR INJURIOUS OCCUPATIONS.
ENGLAND.
Date of
Industry or Process. Schedule.
1 Bichromate works, 1892
2 Bottling of aerated water, 1896
3 Brass and alloy mixing and casting, 1896
4 Bricks, glazing of, by lead, 1898
5 Chemical works, 1892
6 Earthenware and china, 1892 & 1898
7 Enamelling of iron plates, 1892
8 Electric accumulator works, 1894
9 Explosive works in which
dinitrobenzole is used, 1892
10 Flax spinning and weaving, 1894
11 Lead (red and orange) works, 1894
12 Lead (white) works, 1883 & 1893
13 Lead (yellow) works, 1892
14 Lead smelting works, 1894
15 Lead, yellow chromate of, 1895
16 Lucifer match factories, 1892
17 Paint and colour works,
and extraction of arsenic, 1892
18 Skins and hides, sorting, 1898
19 Tinning and enamelling of
iron hollow ware, 1894
20 Tinning and enamelling of
metal ware, 1894
21 Transfers (lithographic) for
decoration of china,
etc., 1898
22 Vulcanising of indiarubber, 1896
23 Wool sorting, 1896
24 Wool combing, 1899
GERMANY.
Date of
Industry or Process. Regulation.
1 Basic slag works, 1899
2 Bichromate works, 1897
3 Brick works, 1892
4 Brushmaking works and
horsehair spinning, 1899
5 Cigar factories, 1893
6 Chicory works, 1892
7 Electric accumulator works, 1898
8 Glassworks, 1892
9 Hackling and preparing
rooms in textile factories, 1893
10 Lead, colour and acetate
of lead works, 1893
11 Letterpress printing works, 1897
12 Lucifer match works, 1884 & 1893
13 Sugar refineries, 1892
14 Vulcanising of indiarubber, 1888
15 Wire-drawing mills, 1892
It must not, however, be forgotten that some dangers for which no
apparent provision is made in the list of German rules are to some
extent covered by other means--for example, mercurial poisoning among
thermometer makers by rules of the Accident Insurance Associations, or
earthenware works by regulations of local authorities or by action of
separate State authorities.
On first comparison of the two sets of special rules in detail, it
would appear that whereas white lead works, earthenware works, and
indiarubber works, are far more stringently regulated in England
than in Germany, other industries, for example, electric accumulator
works, letterpress printing works, are subject to closer control
than any here. In the German rules for electric accumulator works
we find prohibition of employment of women and girls, limitation of
hours for men, detailed conditions as to construction and cleansing
of premises and floors, in addition to the more common regulations
for baths, lavatories, medical examination, sick registers; whereas
in the English rules there are only provisions for baths, lavatories,
respirators, and gloves, no restrictions on employment beyond the
ordinary factory limits, and no medical examination. It must be noted
that the enforcement of these rules does not rest solely in the hands
of the Government inspector, and that before action is possible,
the matter must be referred to the local police authority, whose
powers in Germany, however, are considerable. The special rules for
letterpress printing works are so interesting and typical that I append
a translation herewith for comparison with similar English regulations.
It seems clear that some of the rules are directed as much against
propagation of tubercular disease as against risks of lead poisoning.
In closing this brief survey, reference must not be omitted to the
experiment that has been made in three European countries--Switzerland,
Holland, and Belgium--of limiting in a single instance (in the
interests of the health of workers) the use of a poisonous material in
industry. I refer to the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of
lucifer matches. In Switzerland and Holland the use of the material in
this industry has been prohibited; in Belgium its use has been limited
to a maximum of 8 per cent. in the paste.
ADELAIDE M. ANDERSON.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
Order of the Federal Council of July 31, 1897, regulating Letterpress
Printing Works and Type Foundries in pursuance of section 120_e_
of the Industrial Code.
I. In rooms in which persons are employed in setting up type
or manufacture of type or stereotype plates the following
provisions apply:
1. The floor of workrooms must not be sunk deeper than half
a metre (1.64 feet) below the ground. Exceptions may only be
granted by the higher administrative authority where hygienic
conditions are secured by a dry area and ample means of lighting
and ventilating the rooms.
Attics may only be used as workrooms, if the roof is underdone
with lath and plaster.
2. In workrooms in which the manufacture of type or stereotype
plates is carried on the number of persons must not exceed such
as would allow at least 15 cubic metres of air space (529.31
cubic feet) to each. In the rooms in which persons are employed
only in other processes there must be at least 12 cubic metres
of air space (423.450 cubic feet) to each person.
In cases of exceptional temporary pressure the higher
administrative authority may, on the application of the
employer, permit a larger number in the workrooms for at the
most 30 days in the year, but not more than will allow 10 cubic
metres of air space (352.87 cubic feet) for each person.
3. The rooms must be at least 2.90 metres (8.528 feet) in height
where a minimum 15 cubic metres are allowed for each person, in
other cases at least 3 metres (9.84 feet in height).
The rooms must be provided with windows which are sufficient
in number and size to let in ample light for every part of the
work. The windows must be so constructed that they will open and
admit of complete renewal of air in workrooms.
Workrooms with sloping roof must have an average height equal to
the measurements given in the first paragraph of this section.
4. The rooms must be laid with a close fitting impervious
floor which can be cleared of dust by moist methods. Wooden
floors must be smoothly planed, and boards fitted to prevent
penetration of moisture.
All walls and ceilings must, if they are not of a smooth
washable surface or painted in oil, be limewashed once at least
a year. If the walls and ceilings are of a smooth washable
surface or painted in oil, they must be washed at least once a
year, and the oil paint must, if varnished, be removed once in
ten years, and if not varnished, once in five years.
The compositors’ shelves and stands for type boxes must be
either closely ranged round the room on the floor so that no
dust can collect underneath, or be fitted with long legs so that
the floor can be easily cleaned of dust underneath.
5. The workrooms must be cleared and thoroughly aired once at
least a day, and during the working hours means must be taken to
secure constant ventilation.
6. The melting vessel for type or stereotype metal must be
covered with a hood provided with exhaust ventilator or chimney
with sufficient draught to draw the fumes to the outer air.
Typefounding and melting may only be carried on in rooms
separate from other processes.
7. The rooms and fittings, particularly the walls, cornices,
and stands for type, must be thoroughly cleansed twice a year
at least. The floors must be washed or rubbed over with a damp
cloth so as to remove dust, once a day at least.
8. The type boxes must be cleansed before they are put in use,
and again as often as necessary, but not less than twice at
least in the year.
The boxes may only be dusted out with a bellows in the open air,
and this work may not be done by young persons.
9. In every workroom spittoons filled with water, and one at
least for every five persons, must be provided. Workers are
forbidden to spit upon the floor.
10. Sufficient washing appliances with soap, and at least one
towel a week for each worker, must be provided as near as
possible to the work for compositors, cutters, and polishers.
One wash-hand basin must be provided for every five workers,
with an ample supply of water laid on.
The employer must make strict provision for the use of the
washing appliances by workers before every meal, and before
leaving the works.
11. Clothes put off during working hours must either be kept
outside the workroom, or hung up in cupboards, with closely
fitting doors or curtains, which are so shut or drawn as to
prevent penetration of dust.
12. Artificial means of lighting which tend to raise the
temperature of the rooms must be so arranged or provided with
counteracting measures, that the heat of the workrooms shall not
be unduly raised.
13. The employer must draw up rules binding on the workers,
which will ensure the full observance of the provisions in
sections 8, 9, 10, and 11.
* * * * *
II. A notice must be affixed, and a copy sent to the Local
Police Authority, showing: (_a_) the length, height, and
breadth of the rooms; (_b_) the air space in cubic measure;
(_c_) the number of workers permitted in each room.
A copy of rules 1 to 13 must be affixed where it can be easily
read by all persons affected.
* * * * *
III. Provides for the method of permitting the exceptions named
above in sections 2 and 3, and makes it a condition of reduction
in cubic air space for each person employed as typefounder or
compositor, that there shall be adequate mechanical ventilation
for regulating temperature and carrying off products of
combustion from workrooms.
CHAPTER IV
PRINCIPLES OF PROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION FOR DANGEROUS TRADES
“Quot manus atteruntur ut unus niteat articulus.”--PLINY.
_Natural History_, Book II., chap. lxiii.
He who attempts to deal with the future of industrial legislation is
confronted at the outset by two obstacles. The one is inherent in
most endeavours which relate to prospective law-making. The barque
which sets forth into the sea of futurity should, if its voyage is to
terminate in the safe anchorage of a fair haven, steer clear of those
currents which only too easily carry it upon the shoals and quicksands
of controversial politics. Once launched, it is scarcely possible to
avoid stranding upon the sterile shore of party. And even a successful
cruise must bring it perilously near the Scylla and Charybdis of
government and opposition. The effort of this chapter will be to steer
as even a course as possible between these opposing forces.
The second difficulty is more of a particular than general nature:
particular to the subject under consideration. A study of what has gone
before, especially of the historical chapter preceding this, must force
the conclusion that what has up to now been achieved seems to have been
more the result of accident, or of some extraneous agitating forces,
than of any carefully considered or preconceived plan. How piecemeal
the work has been, and how intricate a fabric! Upon what lines can so
patchy a structure be developed? Upon what principle applicable to
the whole code can our industrial legislation, already a congeries of
partially connected details, proceed?
Students of the British Constitution will be tempted to draw an analogy
from their favourite example; and indeed there is much at first sight
in common between the histories of the Factory Acts and the British
Constitution. The structure of each is compounded of small accretions,
contributed by what seemed the necessity of the moment. But in the one
case, in spite of the seemingly haphazard nature of the work, judged by
the manner in which it has been performed, the British Constitution is
firmly established upon a solid foundation, the independent blocks have
fitted well into their time-assigned places, and have become welded
together into a sound, cohesive whole in the process Mr Walter Bagehot
has admirably called “the cake of custom.” How far has this been the
case with the Factory Acts? Certain warring elements have gradually
become adjusted; incongruous items have in certain cases been made to
harmonise. The best example of this is to be found in the Consolidating
Act of 1878, by which many inconsistencies were corrected. But even
this admirable piece of work left the door open to the recreation of
the incongruities and anomalies. In many cases the loopholes have been
but too freely utilised, and exemptions and exceptions have been widely
extended. These have largely tended to weaken the law and to create
confusion.
This want of homogeneity in the base work suggests problems of
procedure difficult of solution. In view of the danger that any weighty
superstructure would threaten foundations thus composed, it might be
urged that our first care should be to remodel the foundations that the
base may be secure. Such a course would involve the inevitable risk of
disturbing what is already firmly rooted, and the true answer is that
only a few reforms in the foundation work are required. These reforms,
successfully executed, would produce a basis upon which the most
elaborate fabric might rest secure.
A glance at the general nature of the work, which has been ably
described, reveals the fundamental doctrine that protection is
necessary, protection of the wage earner against cruelty or harsh
treatment, against fraud, against accident, against poisoning, even
against himself. There is a small and rapidly diminishing school of
thinkers, who hold that any protective law is wrong unless it be
applied equally to men and women. But as men and women are not equally
subject to the same risks and dangers, it is idle to argue that they
can be treated in the same way. Those who are sceptical of the value
of protective law would do well to remember that it was during the
heyday of the Manchester School, when freedom of action, and of trade,
and non-interference generally were at the zenith of their popularity,
that some of the earliest Factory Acts were passed into law. If the
necessity for the regulation of the labour of women and children was
recognised at a time when such restrictions were eminently repugnant
to the public mind, that necessity must have been great indeed. Is
it suggested by the opponents of protective measures, that although
such a necessity did exist in the past it has been dealt with and no
longer exists? The facts go to show that the need continues, and even
increases, with the volume of trade.
Statistics make it abundantly clear that there is much sickness and
mortality engendered by industrial occupations, and that a large
proportion of this is preventable. The method of prevention is the
subject which has to be considered, and before doing so, it is
desirable for a moment to refer to the historical chapter preceding
this. There it is shown that there is a multitude of injunctions laid
upon manufacturers in the form of rules known as “special rules.” The
imposition of these rules is limited to such trades as are certified
by the Secretary of State to be dangerous or injurious. The rules
are all imposed with one end in view, the safety of the worker, and
though they deal with an infinity of matters, the cleanliness of the
operative is one of the objects most commonly designed. To effect this
many forms of words have been drafted and are at present in use. In
these varying forms the duty of providing and maintaining the means for
cleanliness is laid upon the manufacturer, and the duty of availing
himself of those means is laid upon the operative. Not only does this
injunction vary in form in different trades, but different codes
embracing different standards are found in separate factories in the
same trade. It will be asked how did this come about? How could a sane
legislature or an administration outside Bedlam permit one law for the
good employer and another for the less sensitive in conscience, though
more sensitive in pocket? How could such a system creep into any code
of law? As a matter of fact, it is the creation of that hysterical
fear of compulsion, that nervous concern for the liberty of the
subject, which has carried its mischievous influence into many spheres
of activity. The plea that the employers’ grievances should be heard
has gradually developed into an argument that each employer should
be allowed to object, and objecting, he has eventually, by a process
called “arbitration,” been enabled to procure a law to his own liking.
It is scarcely necessary to demonstrate the great inconvenience
and injustice which arise from such a system. Two men carry on the
same trade; two standards of efficiency are demanded by the law.
One manufacturer is required to set up and keep in good repair an
apparatus, which is as nearly perfect as human ingenuity can devise.
The other, perhaps sceptical of the advantages of such an apparatus, or
more often for the sole reason that he objects to the cost and trouble
of erecting it, is permitted to provide something less efficient. This
system, happily described as “the creation of industrial Alsatians,” is
open to five obvious objections: (1) As between the two employers it is
a substantial injustice; (2) it is not less unjust to the operative,
compelled in his need to accept worse conditions than his comrade; (3)
it puts a premium upon resistance, in that the objecting employer is
rewarded; (4) it imperils the dignity of the law; and lastly, (5) it
embarrasses those who administer it.
The situation then demands redress. How can this best be effected?
Two reforms, one already indicated, suggest themselves as most ripe
for decision. The first is the consolidation of the special rules and
the direct enactment of such of them as are common to all or many of
the dangerous trades. Of this class consideration has already been
given to washing appliances. Such other matters as the provision of
a dining-room, the prohibition of taking meals in dusty workplaces,
the provision and maintenance of mechanical apparatus for withdrawing
fumes, gases, or dust, the prohibition of certain classes of persons
from working in certain places and processes, might each and all be
embodied in the general Acts with specific reference to particular
industries. And indeed they do find a place in the general Acts,
but owing sometimes to capriciousness of reference and sometimes to
vagueness in form, their inclusion has failed to effect that simplicity
and uniformity in the law which is so much to be desired. By such a
consolidation the multiplication of codes of special rules would be
avoided, and even in some cases their elimination would be secured. But
not only so: an immense gain would result from the uniformity which
could be achieved. If the sporadic and capricious incidence of these
obligations could be abolished, the gain would be indeed enormous.
Not less simple is the reform which is called for in the employer’s
power of objection and the system of arbitration. The working of
the existing system has long been condemned. Nobody in the House
of Commons is found to defend it; and yet, like other friendless
doctrines, such as that of “common employment” in the law of Employers’
Liability, it has lived into the twentieth century. Last year an
attempt was made to alter the law. Although this attempt would have
been a step in advance of the present situation, it was so slight a
step that it was not greeted with enthusiasm by those for whose benefit
it was intended. The proposal was to substitute a system of reference
for that of arbitration. Some advantages were claimed for this proposal
in that uniformity would be secured. But the uniformity would have been
at the expense of a thorough and stringent code of rules, which might
have been acceptable to some of the employers. The referee’s court
would have inevitably toned the rules down to suit the objectors. Evil
as is the existing system, no alteration would be a gain which, while
it purchased uniformity at such a cost and amended the procedure to so
trifling an extent, postponed a radical and effective change to the
Greek Kalends.
Full inquiry into the alleged dangers of a trade and full hearing of
the manufacturers’ case are carefully designed by the present system.
This design might well be satisfied, these effects be yet retained,
and without revolutionary change additional advantages be secured;
the advantages of a decision of the Secretary of State, unjeopardised
either by arbitration or by reference, given after consultation not
only with employers but with workpeople, and subject only to the
control of Parliament. Legal provision should be made for full inquiry
(such as it is now the practice to make by departmental committees)
into the special conditions of the trade alleged to be dangerous;
if, on the conclusion of the inquiry, regulation by Special Rules
be recommended, and the Secretary of State certify the trade to be
dangerous, he should issue to the manufacturers, and by public notice
in the factories or workshops to the workpeople, a copy of the rules he
proposes to make. The manufacturers and workpeople should be entitled
to make objection in writing to the rules, or any of them, within one
month of the receipt of such notice. Then the Secretary of State, in
consultation with the Chief Inspector of Factories and the recommenders
of the rules, should consider any objections so made, and the rules
as drawn up after such consideration should be laid on the Table of
both Houses for forty days, and have the force of law if during that
period no objection to them be raised. It might often be desirable
that the rules should be considered individually by Parliament, and
provision for such consideration should be made. Under this scheme the
clumsiness and delay now inevitable would be averted, and with proper
safeguards for his interest being retained the manufacturers’ power of
rejection would be transferred to Parliament.
Other reforms in the regulation of dangerous trades demand mention. It
is true of most poisonous substances in use in dangerous trades that
adults whose constitution is fairly established can resist their danger
more easily than can young persons. This is especially true of lead,
whose insidious character has often been dwelt upon by scientists and
statesmen; the inevitableness of its action is now recognised, and
wherever risk of poisoning by this agency is established, there are
to be found regulations and restrictions of a more or less effective
nature. But it is also true of other substances, the absorption of
which is injurious, and in all cases where much dust is generated, as
in the manufacture of flax or hemp, or in trades where steam is given
off in considerable volume, the labour of persons of immature years
should be prohibited. This would be one reform.
Again, there are other trades in which the degree of danger is
peculiarly influenced by the continuity of the exposure to it. Such,
for example, is the use of inflammable paints, where continuous
employment during the normal period of five hours inflicts injury
appreciably in excess of that caused by exposure of the same
duration but broken in its continuity. Shortened spells of work were
recommended by the Dangerous Trades Committee in the indiarubber trade,
where carbon bisulphide is used, and in the painting of ships with
inflammable paints. The special rules applying to indiarubber works
embodied this recommendation, and there should be no great difficulty
in extending the principle to other trades where it is obvious that the
danger of employment is increased by long periods of exposure to these
deleterious influences. Such trades as bronzing in lithographic works,
in wallpaper, and in paper-staining works would greatly benefit by such
a provision.
Another reform was recommended by the Dangerous Trades Committee, which
made its final report in 1899. All officials who have had occasion and
opportunity to investigate the subject are convinced that many deaths
occur which are primarily due to some industrial occupation, but are
never so classified or reported. Diseases of occupation are so numerous
and varied in character, and liable to disclose themselves in such
diverse symptoms, that the initial cause of illness is often lost sight
of, or still oftener never discovered. It consequently arises that
the statistics of illness and death from industrial causes are most
imperfect. Any improvement in the manner of obtaining such statistics
and eventually of striking at the _causa causans_ would be
valuable. All cases of death where the person has worked in a certified
dangerous trade, or in a trade to which any of the consolidated special
rules are applicable, within a prescribed period before death, should
be reported to the coroner, who would, if he thought fit, conduct an
inquiry into the circumstances of the case.
No chapter dealing with the future government of dangerous trades
would be complete without an appeal for drastic and thorough measures.
Loose wording in the rules, or, still worse, small omissions, may
involve mischief out of all proportion to their apparent significance
or to the value of the compromise effected. Numerous instances of the
injury caused by the admission of small concessions to protesting
manufacturers could be given. Possibly none is more striking than that
of the bottling of aerated waters. Conducted under proper conditions
there is no reason why the operatives should be subject to any but
unimportant and minor casualties, but conducted as it often is, grave
accidents occur with a persistent and alarming regularity. Many cases
of persons losing their eyesight, and even cases of death, from
injuries received by the bursting of bottles could be quoted. The rules
as originally outlined by the Dangerous Trades Committee contained
provisions for the protection of all persons engaged in the labelling
of bottles, but in the rules as finally issued to and accepted by
the manufacturers, persons engaged in labelling bottles standing in
cases were exempted from the safeguards. From this simple omission,
many accidents and much suffering have resulted. One is tempted to
ask how, in the first place, this apparently small precaution was
omitted, and when its importance was discovered, why the defect was
not remedied. The answer to the first question is probably that the
manufacturers demurred as to its necessity, upon which for the sake
of peace and economy of time and temper their view was adopted. This
is but a surmise. The explanation of the subsequent inaction requires
no surmise. After the danger had been established, Sir Matthew White
Ridley, in answer to a question upon the occurrence of one of these
accidents, said in the House of Commons:--“I have not the power at
pleasure to make or alter special rules. They must be settled either
by arrangement with the employers or by arbitration, and in the
present case I cannot regard the occurrence of a single accident,
much as I regret it, as sufficient reason for re-opening a question
which has just been settled, after long and difficult negotiations.”
From this answer the importance of thoroughness in translating the
recommendations of committees into special rules becomes obvious.
Nor is it sufficient to hope that by persuasion or agreement with
employers rules suggested by the Factory Department or the Secretary of
State will be effectually carried out. In some cases they may be, in
others they will not. The same unfortunate results proceed from such
a course as are to be traced to the existing system of arbitration.
It has been shown how that system is unjust both to employers and
workpeople, how it encourages the careless and irresponsible employer,
how it derogates from the dignity of the law and embarrasses its
administrators. This is true of persuasion.
As in human nature there is every gradation of sensitiveness of
conscience, so must there be in the factory, if reliance be placed
on the forces of moral suasion alone, a corresponding gradation of
conditions from excellence and thoroughness to indifference and
neglect. Uniformity in these matters is an urgent necessity; and
uniformity is incompatible with the substitution of persuasion for
compulsory powers.
Let thoroughness, then, be the watchword of those whose prerogative it
is to frame these protective measures. Let the loopholes for escape
from the provisions of the rules be closed up; let the channels for
contracting out of just obligations be carefully dammed; and do not
let small pretexts of irksomeness, or the employer’s scepticism, or
the manager’s contempt, or the workpeople’s want of care, weigh in the
balance for a moment against the health, the well-being, and the lives
of masses of working men and women.
For a strong Government and a humane House of Commons, the few reforms
indicated would be but a light undertaking. They would put no undue
strain upon the executive or the legislature; and they would, directly
and indirectly, prevent a large amount of suffering, now patiently
borne by a lowly and an inarticulate portion of the community. If
simplicity, uniformity, and thoroughness be established in the
government of the trades which carry grave risk to those engaged in
them, the national conscience will be relieved of an oppressive burden,
sometimes perhaps but dimly realised, but always real, and assuredly
its removal will enhance the security and confidence with which this
generation entrusts to its heirs the great destinies of our race.
NOTE.--The year 1901 has witnessed the efforts of the
Government and the House of Commons to amend and consolidate the
law relating to Factories and Workshops. In this effort, so far as
dangerous trades are concerned, certain changes have been effected.
There is a prohibition of eating meals in factories and workshops where
lead, arsenic, or other poisonous substance is so used as to cause
dust or fumes. Power, too, is granted to the Secretary of State to
prohibit, limit, or control the use of any material or process; but
although he had not this power before, he could practically exercise
it under section 28 of the Act of 1895. Electrical generating works,
and those railways which connect factories with each other and the
main lines, are now brought within the law for certain purposes; and
dangerous trades conducted in domestic factories or workshops can now
be regulated.
But the most important alteration is that which transfers the
responsibility for the special rules from an arbitrator or umpire
to the Secretary of State. Under the new law the Secretary of State
may frame regulations, and if they are not accepted, modified, or
withdrawn, he must (unless the objection to them is withdrawn, or
is, in his opinion, frivolous) order a public inquiry to be held by
“a competent person.” The Chief Inspector, and any person affected
by the draft rules, may appear at the inquiry either in person or by
counsel, solicitor, or agent. This inquiry will take the place of the
present arbitration, and the person holding the inquiry has, unlike the
arbitrator or umpire, no power of adjudication. He will report to the
Secretary of State, who is not bound to adopt his recommendations. The
responsibility for the rules will rest with the Secretary of State,
subject only to the control of Parliament (the rules will lie on the
table for forty days), and in this lies the main advance effected. This
advance may, however, prove more theoretical than practical, for it
is unlikely that the Secretary of State will reject the advice of the
person whom he has specially selected to advise him. The Government
insisted on retaining the competent person, in spite of the contention
of the reformers that reliance should be placed in the Committee of
Inquiry, in whose minds all the circumstances and evidence taken would
still be fresh, and in the Secretary of State’s permanent official
advisers.
After full credit has been given for the transference of the final
responsibility, the question arises: Are the two main defects of the
present system remedied? Can uniformity be said to have been achieved,
when we find that the new regulations “may provide for the exemption
of any specified class of factories or workshops either absolutely
or subject to conditions”? And is it satisfactory that we should
have still with us, in the form of the “competent person,” in one of
the most important advisory positions in the State, “the man in the
street,” “the irresponsible outsider” so properly described by Mr
Ritchie in his introductory speech on 28th March 1901?
H. J. TENNANT.
CHAPTER V
INFANT MORTALITY AND FACTORY LABOUR
I
“What is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bee.” A
better appreciation of this truth and there had been less cause for
this chapter. But in so grave a degree is a demonstrated danger to the
race tolerated in the pursuit of an imagined profit to the individual,
that it cannot be impertinent to recall the general truth and to point
its specific application.
That there is danger to the race in the engagement in factory life
of the mothers of young children, should be beyond challenge: always
danger to the child, often danger to the mother; and sacrifice of
infant life, failure of infant promise follow, have followed, and must
follow, as surely as leaves fall to frost. Statistics abound, but
for the most part they have received their lot of Bluebook burial;
and the purpose of this article is, in the main, to rescue from the
obscurity of the past its array of facts and its store of warnings.
Upon the statistical evidence of the present there is less need to
dwell. Dr Reid, in his admirable chapter, has dealt fully with the
striking results of an inquiry conducted by him as Medical Officer to
the Staffordshire County Council; and an inquiry instituted throughout
England, upon similar lines, by the Parliamentary Bills Committee of
the British Medical Association, supported, Dr Reid tells us, “in a
remarkable way the conclusions drawn from the Staffordshire figures.”
These are the Staffordshire figures:--
_Deaths of Children under 1 year in Three Classes of
Artisan Towns in Staffordshire per 1000 births._
CLASS I. CLASS II. CLASS III.
Many Women Fewer Women Practically no Women
engaged in work. engaged in work. engaged in work.
10 years (1881–90) 195 166 152
9 years (1891–99) 210 177 168[27]
At all moments they are figures to command concern, at this moment
they compel alarm. On the one hand is the infant death-rate steadily
rising, on the other the birth-rate steadily falling;[28] and to the
rising death-rate maternal neglect gives impetus, while the State
inattentively takes note. But though statistical speech is eloquent of
death, it says nothing of withering injury to life; nothing of injury
to the mother who, herself affected in health, produces less fitting
children; nothing of those children who escape death to endure life,
crippled in body and in mind, drugged and starved in infancy, neglected
in childhood. What dare we ask of their womanhood and their manhood?
What service of citizenship have we any right to demand, any reason to
expect? We must seek our answer from within our reformatories and our
asylums, from our hospitals, our workhouses, and our prisons. For the
feeble in body and dwarfed in mind there is no room in the struggle for
industrial supremacy. Their drifting place is among criminals, in the
lowest ranks of industry, or in the homes of charity.
Every deadly industry has its octogenarian; and so, too, under this
system there are those who escape, or escape at least its greatest
evils of physical and mental disability. For the girl-children full
escape seems impossible. Victims in their ignorance of home, they
become vehicles to perpetuate the system; without knowledge of the
sacred, the helpful, even the elementary elements of home life, they
in their turn, in their own married life, seek mill employment as
did their mothers before them. It is, in fact, the only occupation
they know. Baking, washing, sewing, are dead arts; and in these
children of mothers, “to a grievous extent denaturalised towards their
offspring,”[29] the deepest forces of nature seem asleep. So from
generation to generation the service of the mother to her child is
entrusted to a stranger, whose introduction as substitute housewife,
substitute mother is not without its cost. The net gain is sometimes
in money a few shillings: in influence and training there is always
loss; even in money sometimes loss. In evidence given to the Royal
Labour Commission, a Yorkshire employer quotes a case “in which the
woman drew 10s. a-week in wages, and paid 12s. a-week for the care of
her home.”[30] The case may indeed be exceptional, but an abundance of
other cases may be found where the actual gain in money is but slight.
The companion to this picture of the mother in the factory and the
paid stranger in the home, is that of the mother drudge who, neglecting
her duty to her children, placing it perhaps in pathetically inadequate
child hands, yet tries to fulfil it to her home. She may have worked
in the factory from six in the morning to six or eight in the evening;
but worker in the factory, she is worker too in the home. For her the
day is never done, and through her youth of unending labour she is
hastening to old age. There are advocates of such freedom to labour who
can be convinced of hardship to the mother, who yet claim benefit for
the child. Better far, they urge, the mother’s laboured addition to the
family fund than scanty meals; home care and influence are necessary
enough, but without bread what are they?
To this argument the answer comes from homes bread-starved during the
cotton famine in Lancashire, during the great depression of trade in
Coventry, and during the siege of Paris. “During the Lancashire cotton
famine, while privation increased the actual death-rate, the infant
death-rate was greatly lessened owing to mothers being compelled to
suckle their infants. During the siege of Paris also, while the general
mortality was doubled, the infant mortality fell 40 per cent. from
similar causes.”[31] And, writing of the effect in Coventry of the
prostration of trade in 1861, the Registrar-General says:--“The care of
the mothers of Coventry has, it would seem, counteracted some of the
effects of privation, so that neglect of their homes by mothers at work
in factories is apparently more fatal than starvation.”
In the comparative figures given by the Registrar-General for the ten
years (1859–68), the reduced infant mortality during the three cotton
famine years (1862–64) is strikingly shown.
_Deaths of Infants under 1 year of age per 1000 Births in Lancashire,
and in the whole of England and Wales, 1859–68._
Year. Lancashire. England and Wales.
1859 176 153
1860 169 148
1861 184 153
1862 168 142
1863 171 149
1864 174 153
1865 189 160
1866 200 160
1867 185 153
1868 187 155
The Registrar of Little Bolton held that the decrease of deaths was
mainly due to a greater amount of domestic superintendence, and other
registrars united in similar conclusions. The slight rise in 1863 and
1864 was apparently due to the prevalence of smallpox, scarlatina,
typhus, and measles, caused by overcrowding in workhouses and bad
sanitary conditions.
Comparison between privation and maternal care on the one hand, and
good cheer and maternal neglect on the other, to the advantage of the
meaner diet and the greater care must, as the Registrar-General admits,
be within limits. Under the stress of absolute starvation, no mother
could provide nourishment for her child. But the obviousness of the
limitation cannot diminish the significance of facts, and evidence,
official evidence of convincing weight and appealing eloquence is, if
we look for it, at our hand. It is easy to realise in its light, why
the mother, even though poorly fed herself, is a better mother than the
mother who earns a certain keep-money for her child.
Sir John Simon,[32] writing in 1897 of the inquiries conducted between
1859 and 1872 by the Medical Department of the Privy Council, of which
he was Medical Officer, says of one:--“In addition to showing on a
very large scale those sanitary wrongs of certain sorts of industry,
we had also shown as an industrial influence of very wide operation,
that in proportion as adult women were taking part in factory labour or
in agriculture, the mortality of their infants rapidly increased; that
in various registration districts, which had such employment in them,
the district death-rate of infants under one year of age had been from
two and a quarter to three times as high as in our standard districts;
and that in some of the districts more than a few of the infants were
dying of ill-treatment which was almost murderous.” Considering the
subject in greater detail, in his fourth report to the Privy Council,
he recalls the report[33] made to the General Board of Health in 1858,
in which he drew attention to the fact that in different districts
of England there were enormous differences of infantile mortality:
“Such differences, that children in some districts die at perhaps four
or five times the rate of children in other districts.” These wide
differences of death-rate he attributed “to the varying prevalence
of two local causes:--first, to differences of degree in _common
sanitary defects of residence_; ... and secondly, to _occupational
differences_ among the inhabitants; there being certain large towns
where women are greatly engaged in branches of industry away from home;
where, consequently, the home is ill kept; where the children are
little looked after; and where infants who should be at the breast are
improperly fed or starved, or have their cries of hunger and distress
quieted by those various fatal opiates which are in such request at the
centres of our manufacturing industry.” An inquiry was conducted by Dr
Greenhow into the second of these influences, and commenting upon his
report, Sir John Simon says: “It gives a very sad picture of suffering
and demoralisation, caused by the present circumstances of female
employment in factories. It corroborates very exactly the opinion above
expressed as to the probable causes of the high mortality of infants
in places of female factory occupation. And it shows that, while
the infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement which their
mothers’ occupation implies, the mothers become to a grievous extent
denaturalised towards their offspring.”
The following quotations, Sir John Simon continues, tell the main
facts of the case:--“Factory women soon return to labour after their
confinement. The longest time mentioned as the average period of their
absence from work in consequence of child-bearing was five or six
weeks; many women among the highest class of operatives in Birmingham
acknowledged to having generally returned to work at the expiration
of a month.[34]... Mothers employed in factories are, save during the
dinner-hours, absent from home all day long, and the care of their
infants during their absence is entrusted either to young children, to
hired nurse-girls, sometimes not more than eight or ten years of age,
or perhaps more commonly to elderly women, who eke out a livelihood
by taking infants to nurse. Young girls, aged seven or eight years,
are frequently removed from school for the purpose of taking charge of
younger children while the mother is absent at work, and are sometimes
said to return, on the death of the child, evidently rather pleased
that this event has released them from their toil.... Pap, made of
bread and water, and sweetened with sugar or treacle, is the sort of
nourishment usually given during the mother’s absence, even to infants
of a very tender age; and in several instances, little children not
more than six or seven years old were seen preparing and feeding babies
with this food, which in such cases consisted only of lumps of bread
floating in sweetened water.... Illness is the natural consequence of
this unnatural mode of feeding infants.... Children who are healthy at
birth rapidly dwindle under this system of mismanagement, fall into
bad health, and become uneasy, restless, and fractious. To remedy
the illness caused by mismanagement various domestic medicines are
administered, more particularly some kind of opiate such as Godfrey’s
cordial or laudanum. Wine, gin, peppermint, and other stimulants are
often given, for the purpose, as alleged, of relieving flatulence, the
actual effect being, however, rather to stupify the child. The quantity
of opiates sold for the purpose of being administered to infants in
some of the manufacturing towns is very large.... Indeed, there seems
to be no doubt that the habitual administering of opiates to infants
must be included among the causes of a high infantile mortality in
certain manufacturing towns, not only on account of an overdose being
given, but also because infants kept in a state of continual narcotism
will be thereby rendered disinclined for food, and be but imperfectly
nourished.... Parents who thus entrust the management of their children
so largely to strangers become more or less careless and indifferent
about them, and as many of these children die, the mothers become
familiarised with the fact, and speak of the deaths of their children
with a degree of nonchalance rarely met with among women who devote
themselves mainly to the care of their offspring.... Abundant proof of
the large mortality among the children of female factory operatives
was obtained during the inquiry. An operative of the better class in
Birmingham reported that he collects money for the expenses attendant
on the deaths of children among the workers in a factory where 150
women were employed, and that he believed ten out of every twelve
children born to the married women in this factory died within a few
months after birth. Many married women were questioned, as opportunity
served, in the several factories visited regarding their families,
the number of children they had borne, the number that survived, and
the manner in which they were brought up. The evidence of these women
tallied exactly with that of other persons.... It was frequently found
that two-thirds or three-fourths of the children borne to these women
had died in infancy.” In his report, which appears in the Appendix,[35]
Dr Greenhow continues: “And on the other hand, it was remarkable how,
in other instances, the majority of the children were reared when the
mothers did not work in factories, or discontinued doing so whilst
nursing, or when the infant’s supplementary food consisted partly or
chiefly of milk.” In the same report Dr Greenhow states that “all the
medical men who gave evidence on the subject of the present inquiry,
besides several clergymen, ladies who are accustomed to visit the
poorer classes at their dwellings, scripture readers, relieving
officers, and other persons who have paid attention to the subject,
unhesitatingly expressed an opinion that the system under which the
mothers of young children are employed at factories and workshops away
from home is a fruitful cause of infantile sickness and mortality.”
Among the most interesting figures in the report are those which relate
to the sale of Godfrey’s cordial. It appears that in Coventry alone
at least 12,000 doses weekly were administered, and “even a larger
quantity of opiate, in proportion to the population, is said to be sold
in Nottingham than in Coventry.” In conclusion, Dr Greenhow reports:
“The results of the inquiry may be stated as follows:--
“_1st._ The infantile death-rate bears no definite relation to the
general death-rate, but their comparative proportions to each other
vary in different districts.
“_2nd._ The infantile death-rate bears the largest proportion to
the general death-rate in districts where the infantile population
is specially exposed to unwholesome influences, as in Coventry,
Nottingham, and other manufacturing towns.
“_3rd._ The unwholesome influences to which infants are exposed
in the manufacturing towns comprised in the present inquiry may be
attributed mainly to the industrial employment of the married women,
which leads them to consign the tendance of their infants at a very
early age to young children or strangers.
“_4th._ That infants thus deprived of the mother’s care are
habitually fed on diet ill adapted to their digestive powers, and
are very frequently drugged with opiates, in order to allay the
fractiousness arising from the illness induced by improper food.
“_5th._ That infants in manufacturing towns where women are much
engaged in factory labour are likewise exposed to other causes of
sickness, proceeding from the ignorance or carelessness of the mothers
or nurses, such as deficiency of exercise, and exposure to inclement
weather.”
There is constant reference in public inquiries to the excessive use
of opiates. Mr Ernest Hart, giving evidence in 1871 before the Select
Committee on the Protection of Infant Life, says:--
“... We wish also to take measures to prevent the habitual drugging of
children in those day-nurseries. You will get evidence easily from the
manufacturing districts that opiates are sold by gallons by druggists
there. The sale of opiates for that purpose forms a very large part of
the trade of many of the druggists in those districts.” Later, Dr Lyon
Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair), a member of the same Committee,
in examining a witness, refers to “the evidence of three druggists
in Deansgate, who state that they supply 1260 families per week with
opiates,” and to the experience of “Mr Ransome, a distinguished surgeon
who lived in Manchester, ... that out of the children who attended his
dispensary, about one-half he found to be drugged with opiates.”
Mr Curgenven, another surgeon witness before the Committee, speaking of
the high death-rate among insured children, says:--
“... They know that if they put their children out with their
neighbours, as it is said, to be nursed, brought up by hand, while they
are at work in the factories, there is very great chance that they will
die, and therefore they calculate that the sum which they receive from
the burial club will more than cover the expense of the burial. And
the deaths amongst the children of the operatives in the manufacturing
towns amount to about 40 to 56 per cent., because they are left by
their mothers at an early age, when they are only a few weeks old, and
are placed in the hands of women to be brought up. They are drugged
frequently with Godfrey’s cordial and other opiates to keep them quiet.
They are fed upon bread and water with very little milk, so that they
are half-starved. The consequence is that more than half of them die.”
And again:--“... The infantile mortality has decreased so far as
the mothers were enabled to remain at home to nurse their children.
It is only when they are employed in the factories, away from their
homes, leaving their children to be brought up by hand by their kind
neighbours, that they die.”
Turning to another inquiry, we find Mr Foulkes, a certifying surgeon,
giving evidence before the Factory and Workshops Acts Commission of
1875, and pleading for a prohibition upon the return of mothers to
their employment within six months of their confinement. “... Many
of the women are at work within a month after they are confined; the
result is that the child is left at home, and it is invariably fed
upon the same thing, bread, water, and sugar, and the children dwindle
away, and that has a great deal to do with the infant mortality of the
place. What is done with the children in this district generally when
the mothers are at work? They are often left with the other children;
there is no provision made, and they are very badly treated and sadly
neglected....”
Before the same Commission, Mr Baker, first a surgeon in practice at
Leeds and then joint chief of the Factory Department with Mr Redgrave,
gives it as his experience that “very considerable mischief arises with
women going to work, not only to the mother, but also to the child.”
He is then asked by the Chairman Sir James Fergusson: “We may take it
for granted that it is not theoretically desirable that women should
go to daily work immediately after confinement, leaving the child all
day to somebody else; but, practically speaking, do you think from
your experience of this matter, that if Parliament interfered with it,
it could be enforced with uniformity and without hardship?” And his
answer is: “Yes, I think it might. I think that by the visitation of
certifying surgeons it might be enforced decently, and delicately, and
sufficiently, so as to make it very useful.”
One more reference to Sir John Simon shall almost close this array of
quotations from buried reports. In this last instance the inquiry was
conducted in agricultural districts:--
“The discovery that an enormous infantile mortality was prevailing in
several purely agricultural districts, suggested at first sight that
perhaps in these districts some third[36] sort of destructive influence
was at work. The result of this new inquiry, however, has been to show
that the monstrous infantine death-rate of the examined agricultural
districts depends only on the fact that there has been introduced
into those districts the influence which has already been recognised
as enormously fatal to the infants of manufacturing populations--the
influence of the _employment of adult women_. ‘The opinions’
(says Dr Hunter) ‘of about seventy medical practitioners, with those
of other gentlemen acquainted with the condition of the poor, were
obtained. With wonderful accord, the cause of the mortality was traced
by nearly all these well-qualified witnesses to the bringing of the
land under tillage--that is, to the cause which has banished malaria
and has substituted a fertile though unsightly garden for the winter
marshes and summer pastures of fifty or a hundred years ago. It was
generally thought that the infants no longer received any injury from
soil, climate, or malarious influences, but that a more fatal enemy
had been introduced by the employment of the mothers in the field.’ On
this agricultural employment of women there follow identically the same
results as have already been traced to result from the employment of
women in manufacture.”
This, then, is the finding of skilled inquirers, the teaching of half
a century’s statistics: that, for the child, the employment of the
mother in the field is “a more fatal enemy” than malaria; and her
employment in the factory, “apparently more fatal than starvation.”
And what is our answering record of effort? A pathetic capacity for
inquiry. Not certainly because we lack facts, or because the need for
action has passed; for, on the contrary, it becomes cumulatively more
acute. In Dundee, for example, in 1881, 19.4 per cent. of married
women were employed in its mills and factories; in 1891, 24 per cent.
were so employed, and the infantile death-rate rises accordingly. In
the following table, prepared by Dr Templeman, Dundee’s able medical
officer of health, this death-rate can be seen for a period of
twenty-eight years:--
Average General Death-rate of Infantile
Death-rate. Children. Death-rate.
1860–69 30.4 per 1000 Not ascertained Not ascertained
1870–79 25 „ 81 per 1000 153 per 1000 births
1880–89 22.2 „ 63 „ 155 „ „
1890–97 20.8 „ 68 „ 176 „ „
First among the causes Dr Templeman puts “Industrial Conditions:”
first, too, this recognition should be in the conscience of the
parent, in the conscience of the employer, in the conscience of the
State. Of all who are responsible, the State has least acknowledged
the responsibility. The examples may be rare, it is true, of parents
who make sacrifices themselves that their homes and children may have
benefit, but yet there are examples. The efforts of employers of
labour may, too, be rare, but still they are appreciable, notably in
Yorkshire; more frequent are the efforts of philanthropy: there is one
effort by the State;[37] not to save the life of the child, for that
admittedly it does not do, one effort, barely calculable in its result,
to protect the health of the mother.
All credit to those who, singly as employers, or collectively as
philanthropists, have endeavoured to save life and preserve efficiency
for the nation. But such effort of necessity is ineffective. It
can never be complete, and the abstention of a few mill owners in
a district is sufficient to annul the effort of the majority. The
helplessness of such a position was so strongly felt by one mill owner
in Yorkshire, that his rule prohibiting the employment of married women
was abandoned: “Other mills being open to married women, the rule
failed to serve the purpose for which it had been designed--that of
keeping the women at home.”[38]
The attempt of philanthropy to establish day nurseries, discouraging
as it has been, would even in apparent success serve but as a prop to
an evil system, as an anæsthetic to the manufacturer’s conscience. It
can but alleviate, it cannot cure; and its condemnation many years
ago, for the involved exposure of the infant to unsuitable hours
and inclement weather, holds equal force to-day. Better than the
drug-nursery, but bad in itself, for the most excellently managed
crèche might well provoke the situation described by Dr Greenhow, in
Coventry[39]:--“Women being obliged to attend at the factory at an
early hour are always hurried in the morning, and may be seen on their
way to the mills, hastening along the street with their children only
half dressed, carrying the remainder of their clothes, and their food
for the day, to be left with the person who has charge of the child
during its mother’s absence; and this ofttimes on a cold winter’s
morning in the midst of sleet or snow.”
Widows without children of earning age may, as part of their burden,
be forced to imperil the welfare of their infants in one direction
while they seek it in another. And here philanthropy has just scope,
for, save in exceptional cases, the crèche is the only practicable
form of aid to the mother. Better, then, this care of her infant than
its abandonment to a child, itself a candidate for the nursery, or to
the elderly woman who confesses unfitness for all other employments.
But this is the smallest section of the whole. In its widest aspect
it is not a question for the make-shift, though devoted, benevolence
of philanthropy; it is a problem for the State in its responsibility
to the nation. What are the terrors that lie in its handling? The
dread of a barrier raised before the freedom of employment: the fear
that the prohibition of employment within say six, or even three,
months after childbirth might embarrass a large class in its endeavour
to earn a living. But the freedom to labour is no sacred right when
its exercise involves injury to others; it is not even so held when
it clearly threatens injury to ourselves. The worker in a dangerous
trade is suspended from employment on the verdict of the certifying
surgeon during such period as he considers to be necessary: in certain
departments in a white-lead factory the employment of women and girls
is altogether prohibited. There is therefore no inviolate right. Is
there in this case necessity? What is the motive-power which drives
the mothers of young children into factories? Commonly, ignorance of
home duties, and the consequent unattractiveness of the home; the
companionship of factory life, where the companionship of children has
no meaning; often, fashion; least often, true poverty. There is poverty
in Glasgow and in Paisley, as in Dundee, but its cure is not felt to
lie in the employment of mothers. The father accepts the obligation of
breadwinner; he is ashamed that his wife should work outside his home.
“If a Glasgow lad wearies o’ work, he must marry a Dundee lassie.”
There poverty conjures excuse, and a man is not ashamed to claim his
wife before her time in the hospital is over, that she may come out and
earn his bread. Exceptional, it must be hoped, are such cases, but at
least the system which breeds them is not, and what some towns claim as
a necessity, others will not tolerate, in their rejection disproving
the need.
Within the space of this chapter it has been impossible to consider
arguments to which place would otherwise have properly been given.
It is left only to suggest a comparison of the possible evils which
lie in action, and the certain evils which have come of inaction. The
principle of regulation is already accepted in our laws, and in the
laws of other countries, as Miss Anderson’s deeply-interesting chapter
shows; it but needs extension to render it effective. The State holds
the scales: difficulties on the one side, not light it is true; but
on the other, forces weighted already with accomplished evil, charged
with greater evil to come: on the one side, the fancied interests of
the individual; on the other, the deepest interests of the nation. “It
cannot be too distinctly recognised,” says Sir John Simon, “that a high
local mortality of children must almost necessarily denote a high local
prevalence of those causes which determine the degeneration of the
race.”
MAY TENNANT.
II
Although a steady decline has taken place in the general mortality of
the country coincident with, and, no doubt, in the main, consequent
upon sanitary progress, it cannot be said that the infant mortality
has diminished in like proportion, and among the many factors which
contribute to the maintenance of a lamentably high death-rate among
infants, not the least important is improper feeding, the result of
ignorance on the part of mothers. If by some means the simple fact
could be brought home to mothers that milk, and preferably human milk,
is the only permissible diet for infants, the natural instincts of
motherhood would prevail in the majority of cases, and thousands of
otherwise healthy infants who do not now survive the first few months
of life would reach an age when greater license in diet is permissible,
and the chances of living are immensely greater. But, in a humanitarian
sense, the saving of life which would thus be effected is of small
moment when compared with the mitigation of the pain and misery which
infants now have to suffer, and which has to be borne, not only by
those whom death ultimately relieves, but by the still larger number
who manage to survive the ordeal, and who thus have to suffer for a
longer period.
From inquiries made some years ago, Dr Hope of Liverpool came to the
conclusion that among the artisan classes in that town upwards of 50
per cent. of infants during the first three months of life are entirely
breast-fed, 35 per cent. are reared on other food in addition to
breast-milk, and 15 per cent. are entirely artificially fed. Analysing
upon this basis a large number of deaths from diarrhœa, he found that
for every death attributed to that cause among entirely breast-fed
infants under three months’ old, 15 occurred among the mixed class,
and that for every death which occurred among the breast-fed and mixed
class combined, 22 occurred among the entirely artificially fed class.
He also found that among infants aged from three to six months, for
every death from diarrhœa among the partially breast-fed, 6 occurred
among the entirely artificially fed class. Other observers who have
devoted attention to this matter bear out Dr Hope’s conclusions, and
it is a well-known fact that in countries where artificial feeding of
infants is largely practised, the mortality is very high compared with
other countries where natural feeding prevails.
Now the practice as regards the feeding of infants varies in different
districts according to circumstances which will presently be referred
to, and no one can dispute the fact that, other things being equal,
infants reared for the first few months entirely on breast-milk have a
far better chance of survival than either of the other two classes. No
doubt this is very largely due to the gross ignorance which prevails,
especially among the artisan classes, as to the only permissible
substitutes for breast-milk; but we must deal with circumstances as
we find them, and, up to the present at any rate, our efforts to
bring about a better order of things have proved unavailing. When
we ultimately succeed, as we must do, in getting the teaching of
elementary hygiene introduced as a compulsory subject in all elementary
schools, the more rational feeding of future generations of infants
must follow as a natural consequence, and then, even if the proportion
of breast-fed infants is not increased, the difference in the
death-rates among the different classes (entirely breast-fed, partially
breast-fed, and entirely artificially fed) will be greatly lessened,
for the artificial food administered will more nearly approach nature’s
requirements.
From what has been said, it follows that if from any cause the
proportion of entirely artificially fed infants in a district were
abnormally large, in the absence of any counteracting influences the
infantile death-rate of the district would compare unfavourably with
that of other districts in which circumstances did not prevail which
disturbed what may be called the normal grouping of the children
according to the methods of feeding. If, for example, taking Dr Hope’s
figures, instead of 15 per cent. only of the infants under three months
being entirely artificially fed, the number, from disturbing causes,
more nearly approached say 85 per cent., the remaining 15 per cent.
only being either partly or entirely breast-fed, it would certainly
be surprising if the effect were not apparent in a greatly-increased
mortality among infants.
Some twelve years ago, when, in my capacity as County Medical Officer,
I first had occasion, among other duties, to inquire into the mortality
returns of the various districts in Staffordshire, I was greatly
impressed by a very marked dissimilarity in the infant mortality of
the two groups of populous artisan towns, one in the north and the
other in the south of the county, a dissimilarity which I subsequently
found could not be accounted for by any apparent difference in the
sanitary surroundings of the northern and southern towns. In view of
the fact, however, that, generally speaking, the trades carried on
in the southern group of towns did not afford much employment for
women, whereas in the northern group the conditions in this respect
were different, it occurred to me that in this was to be found the
explanation of the high infant mortality of the northern compared with
the southern towns. In order to test the accuracy of this conclusion,
with the help of the District Medical Officers of Health, and from
information obtained from manufacturers regarding the proportion of
married women workers, I classified the purely artisan towns in the
county into three groups, and obtained the infant mortality figures for
previous years, in order to allow of more reliable conclusions being
drawn. Since then I have continued to record the figures according
to the same plan annually, and I have now records covering a period
of 20 years, and relating to artisan towns only, with a mean total
population of about 529,000. One may fairly claim, allowing that the
home conditions in the towns in question, in other respects, apart from
the proportion of artificially-fed infants, are practically identical,
that records from such a large population and for so long a period
may legitimately be used for our purpose from a statistical point of
view, provided care is exercised in the classification of the towns in
accordance with the number of young married women workers employed away
from home, and who are thus prevented from suckling their children.
In the classification of the towns it was found impossible to arrive at
the actual number of married women workers, but one was able to divide
them into three groups, as follows:--
(1) Many Married Women Workers.
(2) A good number of Married Women Workers.
(3) Practically no Married Women Workers.
Adopting this classification, the figures of infant mortality in the
different groups of towns are set forth in the following table:--
_Deaths in Children under One Year per Thousand Births in Three
Classes of Artisan Towns in Staffordshire._
CLASS I. CLASS II. CLASS III.
Many Women Fewer Women Practically no Women
engaged in work. engaged in work. engaged in work.
10 Years (1881–90) 195 166 152
10 Years (1891–1900) 211 177 167
The figures speak for themselves, and it will be noticed that while
there has been a general increase in the infant death-rate, practically
the same relative proportion has been maintained between the three
groups of towns.
As the outcome of a paper I read before the Public Health Section
of the British Medical Association, at the Annual Meeting held at
Nottingham in 1892, the question was taken up by the Parliamentary
Bills Committee, with a view to securing some legislative remedy, and
an inquiry was instituted throughout England on similar lines to the
Staffordshire inquiry. Returns were thus obtained from a large number
of artisan towns, and these returns bore out in a remarkable way the
conclusions drawn from the Staffordshire figures.
It appears, then, to be a fact that the State is permitting a
practice to be followed which is directly responsible for the deaths
of thousands of infants annually. Deliberate cruelty on the part of
parents is a punishable offence, and in a strict sense starvation comes
within this category; it does not seem to matter, however, what sort of
food is provided, so long as, theoretically, some provision is made for
the care of the infant during the absence of the mother. Possibly, in
many cases, owing to ignorance and other causes, the infant might not
receive any better care at home, but there, at least, the natural food
would be available, and in the majority of instances it would be given.
It is true we cannot legislate as to how mothers shall feed their
infants, but surely it is not too much to ask that the legislature
shall not allow any deliberate disregard of parental responsibilities.
The law at present does provide some amount of protection, by making it
illegal for a mother to return to work under one month after the birth
of her child; but although this restriction is valuable from the point
of view of the mother’s health, it can hardly benefit the child, for,
if factory work is to be engaged in after a month’s interval only, it
is not likely that the mother will commence suckling her child. The
period of restriction should undoubtedly be extended, and the shortest
serviceable time is probably three months. The probability is that if
such an extension of time limit were enforced the mother would suckle
her child until she returned to work, and thus the most precarious
period in the life of the child would be tided over, and its chances of
survival would be considerably increased.
In many cases the wife--it may be from choice, or because of
improvident habits on the part of the husband--goes to work, while at
the same time the husband is earning ample wages. In Lancashire it is
common for a man to receive 25s. a week while his wife earns from 15s.
to 20s., and in Staffordshire, when the potting trade is ordinarily
prosperous, the weekly wages of a man and his wife amount to 30s. and
12s. respectively. These figures represent a fair average, but many of
the men workers receive much higher wages.
In seeking for a solution of the question, we may learn something from
other countries. In Switzerland, for example, a period of absence from
work of eight weeks is enforced on mothers, the time to be counted
from two weeks before confinement; and in Germany, by a process of
compulsory assurance, the working woman, while prevented from working
owing to childbirth, receives a sum equal to half her ordinary daily
wages. In the former case the period, for reasons already given, is not
long enough, and the latter expedient could hardly be made applicable
to economic conditions in this country. However, a way out of the
difficulty ought to be found, and it would seem that it should be
sought for in the direction of State control.
GEORGE REID.
CHAPTER VI
CHILD LABOUR
The half-time system is dying. The age of the full-timer in the mill
or factory is being steadily raised. But as long as poverty exists
children must feel the pinch of it. They must help also to bear the
burdens of their parents, and share their anxieties and cares. One
would be very wrong, however, in supposing that the most anxious and
harassed parents and children are to be found at the bottom of the
social ladder. At the bottom of the social ladder will be found little
care and much movement--a _tourbillon_ of change--marriages,
accidents, tragedies, crimes, all succeeding each other pell-mell, and
obliterating one another. The parents and the children of the slums are
occupied, not with thoughts of to-morrow, but with thoughts of to-day.
Here, for example, is a large Board School in a slum district of a
big northern city. It is difficult for the head teacher to keep the
register, for large numbers of children are always flowing through the
school like a shoal of mackerel on a tide. Families arrive, and encamp
in the fair ground close by, or find shelter in the poor lodging houses
of the neighbourhood. The children attend school for a short time,
pick up a smattering of the three R’s., and then disappear. There are
of course regular residents, and the children of such people are much
better attenders. But they have this in common with their migratory
neighbours, that their lives are varied by exciting and gruesome
events, which they do not take to heart too seriously. A certain
unfortunate mother of ten loses several of her children in succession.
Then suddenly her husband, who is a drunkard, falls down some steps and
is killed. There is a tragic gathering of friends at the house on the
eve of the funeral. A few months later the widow marries again. But the
second husband turns out to be a scamp. She leaves him and takes refuge
with a married daughter. The children change homes, take the ups and
downs of their rocky life, and attend school pretty regularly. Some
children are deserted, and go into neighbours’ homes. The strong ties
of kinship are dispensed with; and other ties, equally strong, for the
hour at least, take their place.
Apart from the family drama, the children have their own struggles and
adventures. They have to help to earn the living. In some families a
child is the breadwinner. In many, children are important co-helpers
with the parents. How does a child earn money? In provincial towns,
also in London, the newspaper offices are responsible for a great deal
of out-of-door child labour. A crowd of boys rush every afternoon to
the “offices.” Some of these children are already employers of labour.
They engage a smaller or less lucky comrade to deliver some of the
papers, and pay him twopence or threepence, according to his success.
They--the small employers--may earn 6s. per week and even more at
times. Besides the newsboys there are the errand boys, and those who
help shopkeepers. These form a large contingent of the children’s army
of labour. And so, alas! do the vagrant sellers of chips, flowers,
etc., who have to cultivate the beggar’s as well as the vendor’s art.
At a Conference in April 1900 between the School Board and Board
of Guardians of Bradford, a return was presented showing that 91
children--84 of whom were of school age--were found begging and hawking
in the streets in the course of three evenings of December 1899.
The domestic toilers in such a district as that which we are now
considering would be mainly nurses. Little cooking and less washing
is done in some of the homes. There are no regular meals, no regular
duties, and the elder children are useful therefore mainly in taking
charge of the younger ones, or earning pence in the street. Taking
their roving habits into account, it is strange to learn that such
children suffer from lack of proper exercise. Yet such is the case.
About a year ago Dr Kerr, the medical adviser of the Bradford School
Board, made an examination of the children attending a school situated
in an “insanitary area.” He found that nearly all the children were
ill-nourished. And this ill-nutrition was not simply the result of
insufficient food. “Lack of exercise,” he writes, “has a very large
share in it. And the exercise required is not careful gymnastics, but
coarse work, such as running round the playground.”
There are many kinds of physical exercise, just as there are many kinds
of food, and one order of exercise does not take the place of another.
Moreover, the same kinds of movements, executed under different
conditions, have quite different effects. This is the important fact
which is lost sight of by those who declare that the child can rest
from the labours of the school by engaging in the labours of the mill.
It is ignored also, or forgotten, by those rural educationists who
believe that six hours of weeding or potato-picking mean the same thing
for a child as six hours of free play. But the fact remains that work
does not take the place of play, not even when that work is very easy,
and involves walking or running. Here in this school of the slum,
“careful gymnastics” are not required. And we may safely add that
running about the streets, and the carrying of milk-cans and babies,
are not required. For the children have had a good deal of this kind
of physical exercise, and are suffering, nevertheless, from defective
circulation and want of muscular tone. Only movements that imply the
removal of tension from the nervous system are required. There is
no real substitute for such free, natural movements in any factory,
schoolroom, nor even we may add in any gymnasium in the world.
Let us turn from those whom we may call the “casuals” of the
child-labour world, to the State-recognised little toilers who work
in factories or mills. These form still a large contingent of the
child-labour world, numbering as they do over a hundred thousand
children, one-third of whom work in Lancashire cotton-mills. A goodly
proportion, too, work in Yorkshire, the seat of the woollen and worsted
trades. The rate of decline of the half-time system among factory and
non-factory child-workers may be seen from the following figures,
compiled in Bradford.
Number of half-time cases in Bradford in each year for the past twelve
years:--
+-------+----------+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
| | | Non-Factory. | | |
| Year. | Factory. | Domestic Errand | Total granted in | Number on |
| | | Boys, etc. | each year. | School Roll. |
+-------+----------+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
| 1889 | 3.194 | 679 | 3.873 | 7.046 |
| 1890 | 2.567 | 575 | 3.142 | 6.490 |
| 1891 | 2.129 | 708 | 2.837 | 6.151 |
| 1892 | 1.838 | 728 | 2.566 | 5.624 |
| 1893 | 1.653 | 540 | 2.193 | 5.097 |
| 1894 | 1.434 | 655 | 2.089 | 4.178 |
| 1895 | 1.887 | 580 | 2.467 | 4.309 |
| 1896 | 1.509 | 306 | 1.815 | 3.276 |
| 1897 | 1.451 | 250 | 1.701 | 2.564 |
| 1898 | 1.329 | 314 | 1.643 | 2.211 |
| 1899 | 1.187 | 193 | 1.380 | 1.869 |
| 1900 | 1.444 | 129 | 1.573 | 2.198 |
+-------+----------+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
The half-time system is dying fast in some towns, more slowly in
others--but it is passing away even in Lancashire. No one appears to be
more indifferent than the masters. It is not even fair to say that the
masters are indifferent, for many of them have tried to hasten the end.
And yet forty or fifty years ago the masters, as a class (there were,
of course, honourable exceptions) opposed the raising of the age. Even
ten years ago some masters showed concern when it was proposed to raise
the age of half-timers to eleven. “Younger children,” they said, “have
special aptitudes which the elder ones have lost.” The wails of regret
came usually from masters who could remember long bye-gone days. “Ah!”
they cried, letting their thoughts drift back into the dim past, “when
the children came to us very young, say at five or six years old, a
great deal was possible that has since become quite impossible! It is
of no use to speak of that now.” No, it is of no use to speak of it,
since the age had been raised, and raised again. And with every rise
the commercial value of the child in the labour world has diminished.
And now you may hear a manager say, “The child who comes at twelve
years old is more dexterous than the one who comes at thirteen,” but
the masters are evidently of opinion that so far as they are concerned
the matter is no longer worthy of discussion. That the children come a
year earlier or later makes little difference when the minimum age is
raised to twelve.
The masters’ claim that the younger children had special aptitude,
undoubtedly rests not upon fiction but upon fact. Every physiologist
knows that the various sensory centres of the brain are plastic in
early childhood, and that this period of plasticity is very short.
It begins to wane already in the seventh year. Previous to this age,
however, every human being is in a peculiarly receptive and responsive
state. So that, during the first six or seven years “a great many
things,” as the silk manufacturers said, “are possible.” For example,
the sense of touch may be developed within very narrow limits, and
complex and specialised movements may be learned so well that they
become automatic. This can be done. It can be done only at great cost.
(Probably the employers did not know the actual cost.) It implies the
atrophy of many cells, the impoverishment of the whole life. It is
a kind of psychic mutilation. But it can be done, and it has to be
done quickly, since the spring tide of opportunity soon wanes. Alas!
for the old adage, “It is never too late to mend.” The mending, and
making, and altering time is over for a great many people at the
age of eight, and of this employers were well aware, thanks to their
opportunities for observation and experiment. So as the age of the
half-timer was raised the masters’ interest in him declined, and
the latter-day champion of the half-time system stepped forward in
the person of _the half-timer’s own father_,--his father, not
his widowed mother. For the “poor widow,” who looms so large in the
consciousness of controversialists on the half-time question, is seen
and known wonderfully little in the school attendance rooms, where
applications for half-time are considered. The applicants belong very
largely to the better class of working people. Mechanics, engineers,
railwaymen, overlookers, and, now and again, a mill operative. Of
course these various trades represent a great variety of wages. Some
applicants earn but £1 per week, or even less, and out of this support
a large family. But many earn from 30s. to £2 or £3 per week. Indeed,
men with £4 and upwards per week coming in have been known to apply,
though these are exceptional cases. It is certain that the average
working-man champion of child-labour to-day is not a thriftless,
irresponsible person. He is, very often, a man with money in the bank,
with ambitions and views of his own, also with a will of his own, and
a strong Trades organisation behind him, through which he can express
that will. Neither is he a person lacking in parental susceptibility
and ambition. It is almost impossible to overrate the influence which
custom has on sentient beings. The caterpillars of the Bombyx Hesperus
feed in a state of nature on the leaves of the _café diable_. Yet
Darwin found that certain caterpillars of the Bombyx family, having
been reared on another variety, refused to touch the leaves of _café
diable_. They preferred to die of hunger. Thus caterpillars can
become, in a sense, unnatural. Kindhearted people, too, may follow a
course of conduct with their own offspring which appears monstrous to
the stranger. In certain districts where child-labour is a tradition
and custom, the very idea of associating it with inhumanity does not
occur to the people. “Why, they mun be all clean off their heads,”
cried a Yorkshireman, who had been hearing of poor parents who sent
their sons to school till they were fifteen or sixteen years old. He
had gone to “t’ miln” at seven, and it seemed to him that all “workin’
foaks” children should do the same.
It is not then to the parent you must go in order to learn what
the effect of half-time is on the young. Nor need you turn with
very confident hopes to the statistician. It is, indeed, a little
discouraging to reflect how little the statistician can help us in
establishing the most obvious ill effects of child-labour. The effect
of half-time exemption a little while ago was to filter off a number
of mentally sharp children who passed their standards rapidly and were
ready to go to work at eleven. These bright children were a continual
stumbling-block to the statistician. For example, it was proposed to
test the vision of the half-timers and other children with a view to
finding out the effect of the mill life on this important sense. Now
the stupidest boys and girls are those who have most defective visual
acuity. They are also the deafest.[40] And the bright children who
went to the mill at eleven, are, of course, the children gifted with
the keenest senses. By the time these bright young half-timers had got
to full time, the duller ones came on as half-timers, and by their
transference appeared to increase the percentage of defective vision
with age in half-timers and diminish it among the non-half-timers. Thus
defective vision apparently increased with the age of half-timers,
only because those kept back by defective brain or eyes alone were
half-timers at the age of twelve. This is but one example of the great
difficulty of collecting reliable evidence to establish even the most
reasonable assumption.
But it is hardly an “assumption” that children suffer in England
through half-time labour, and unregulated toil out of school hours. You
cannot put tired eyes, pallid cheeks, and languid little limbs into
statistics, and yet when you see them they are more convincing than
figures. And in many schools you can receive this kind of evidence.
The younger children who work out of school hours have undoubtedly the
worst time of it. They come to school looking dull and heavy-eyed. Some
are irritable and restless, others so languid that they appear almost
oblivious of everything around them. “It seems as if they haven’t the
force to work through the school day,” said a young master in a school
of very poor children. “They may be bright enough children, but they
haven’t the strength to show it.”
The factory half-timers are doubtless more fortunate than the younger
casuals; for the former have arrived at an age when many of the
critical turnings of child life have been passed. And yet the child
of twelve no sooner enters a mill than the teacher begins to see a
deplorable change in him. He loses interest in his school work, his
manners become rougher. Manners are forms of mental expression, so the
teacher may presage from this fact alone a certain decline of brain
power. But there are many other indications of decline. The other day a
teacher showed me the copy-books of children who had been at the mill
_for one week_, and allowed me to compare these with the work done
by the same children while they were whole-day scholars. As full-day
scholars they all did creditable work. Their sums were correct, their
writing good, and books were kept perfectly clean. Yet in the course
of one week the progress of months seemed to be cancelled: for the
half-timers’ sums were all marked with a “W.” The writing was careless,
the pages soiled and blotted. The children had changed and their work
had changed. Their achievements had slipped from their grasp as a
waggon slips back when driver and horse are arrested suddenly on a
steep hill.
Indeed, though the factory child suffers less in some ways than the
“casual,” he appears to be under certain great disadvantages from
which the latter is exempt. Ask any master of an elementary school
and he will tell you that the characteristic of the factory child is
_dulness_. The casual is not dull. Not at all, he is glad to talk
to-you about his “business,” and the chances of his work-a-day life in
the street. Not so the young factory hand. After the first fortnight in
the mill he is a disillusioned person. He does not want to talk about
his work or his prospects. He loses interest not only in others but in
himself.
What is the secret of this subtle change? Why does the factory boy
of twelve become so torpid? It is because in the mill growth and
development are _arrested_. At the age of twelve a boy or girl
is still a child, not an adult. It is true he has passed already
through certain stages of growth, but the whole period of growth
and development has not come to an end. His sensory organs are as
acute, rather more acute, indeed, than a full-grown man’s, and yet
in the matter of sight and hearing he is inferior. It is through
_psychic_ development that the full harvest of the sensory and
motor powers is reaped. This is why, at the age of twelve, if growth
is to continue, the boy or girl should enter an atmosphere of varied
mental interests and activities. The richer the forces of human life
the more intricate will be the means by which they can be put into
operation. The mill does not provide an atmosphere in which the new
order of human development _due_ at this hour can take place.
“Still the mill-child is not always dull,” you will say, “sometimes
he is very noisy.” Yes, at “loosing time” the mill-yard and streets
ring with loud talk and laughter. But the noise itself proves the same
thing as the torpor of the mill child. In the jostling and shouting of
the youth or mill girl the scientist sees not a vice but a reaction.
In the desire for alcohol, the feverish love of betting and gambling,
we behold the revolt of nascent human powers. These human powers, so
varied and so subtle, are dammed up all day long, without possibility
of exercise or escape. So the wild torrent of life surges free at
last round the mill-gates, and escapes in the voice and glance of the
excited lads who learn to love gambling and betting to the despair of
good people. “A weak or insensible limb is certain of rough usage,”
said Donaldson, for, obeying a natural instinct, its owner will insist
on having a sensation through it. If the whole nature is dwarfed or
blunted, only violent pleasures can be appreciated.
It is said that the poor “have no room to live”; what is even as
serious--they have no time to grow. As long as such is the case
we may be sure that, despite all the efforts of educationists and
philanthropists, there will be a great many undeveloped persons.
Meantime the scientist advances, taking account of all, and stating
all fearlessly. Year by year the processes of growth and development
become clearer, and the conditions of human progress more defined.
And although we cannot at once remove even the more obvious causes of
arrested development and weakness, yet it must be evident to all that
the future belongs to the nations who permit and enable their children
to come to full human stature.
MARGARET M’MILLAN.
CHAPTER VII
HOME-WORK
There is perhaps no section of industrial life regarding which so much
misconception prevails as out-work, or, as it is popularly called,
home-work.
To many persons the name home-work is synonymous with the idyllic term
cottage industries, and this again calls up the picture of the model
villager in the model village. The clean and tidy widow, so dear to
the heart of the philanthropist and of the district visitor, is the
favourite type. She dwells in an ivy-clad cottage surrounded by all
the accessories of highly picturesque poverty, the kettle sings on her
well-burnished hob, and geraniums bloom perennially on her window sill.
How does this picture compare with the grim realities of home-work in
our city slums? We shall see from the cases which I quote further on,
and which have been revealed by the investigations of the Scottish
Council for Women’s Trades, and the Women’s Industrial Council of
London.
The reason why the popular conception of home-work has lagged so far
behind actual fact is, that this is practically the No Man’s Land of
the industrial world. Here treads not the foot of the labour agitator,
for the home-workers are composed largely of “casuals”--dreary
phantoms, who come and go, whence and whither no man can tell, and no
organising secretary of any trade union, however enterprising, would
waste time or effort in inducing them to join its ranks. Each worker is
a sort of industrial Ishmael, working only for his or her own hand.
Nor has the home-worker been much better off in respect of Government
protection. For while the factory and workshop hand has had the
conditions of her work regulated by law, the home-worker has been
treated as a step-child by the State, and has been left outside the
protecting pale of the Factory Acts.
Apart from the points of starvation wages and excessive hours, one of
the main facts brought out by recent investigations into home-work is
the grave danger to the health of both the worker and the community at
large arising from the making of garments, etc., in disease-infected
and otherwise insanitary houses, and public opinion has been gradually
ripening to the conclusion that legal regulation of some kind is
necessary as a protection to public health. Further, it is beginning
to be recognised that the application to out-work of the laws that
regulate labour in the factory is a perfectly reasonable and logical
extension, as out-work, in the modern expression of it, is practically
an extension of factory work, or it may be more properly described as
its back-wash. Out-workers are employed mainly on the surplusage of
the factory orders--the unskilled, poorly paid work that the workshop
hand rejects, or that the pressure of a big order prevents her wholly
overtaking. The low degree of skill required for the most part, and the
consequent low earnings, have their inevitable result in placing this
section of the industry in the hands of the very class of workers whose
conditions most need supervision and control.
Previous to the passing of the Factory and Workshop Act of 1891, some
agitation with respect to the conditions of home-work had begun to make
itself felt, and in recognition of this a provision was made in that
Act giving the Secretary of State power to require employers to keep
lists of all the out-workers they employed. These lists were to be open
to the inspection of the Factory Inspector and the Sanitary Inspector.
This was carried a step further by the Act of 1895, in which it was
decreed that copies of these lists should be sent twice a year to the
Factory Inspector. But while the latter may visit the homes of the
out-workers, he has no power to remedy any defects he may find there;
all he can do is to report insanitary conditions to the Local Sanitary
Authority; except, of course, in the case of out-workers who employ
others to help them, and whose premises thus become a workshop within
the meaning of the Factory and Workshop Acts, and are accordingly
subject to their provisions. But these after all form a comparatively
limited class; consequently the great majority of out-workers are left
entirely outside the scope of these Acts.
The following cases will convey some idea of the actual conditions
under which out-work is carried on:--
1. Is the wife of a labourer, who is sick and in the infirmary; works
from twelve to sixteen hours per day finishing trousers; is paid 4½d.
and 5d. per pair; earns 2s. per day; supplies thread and twist, which
cost about 8d. per week; works in a very untidy, dirty kitchen. Has no
time to clean up except once a week. Children carry the work to the
workshop.
2. Is a widow living alone; finishes trousers; is paid 2¼d. and 2½d.
per pair; earns 9½d. per day of nine and ten hours, and provides
thread, which costs about 9½d. a week. Her earnings are supplemented by
2s. 6d. a week from the parish.
3. Married woman, husband out of work; finishes shirts; is paid 2½d.
per dozen, and earns about 7½d. per day of eighteen hours; supplies
thread, which costs about 8d. per week. When work is brisk she can earn
4s. 8d. a week by getting up at three and four in the morning.
4. Is the wife of a bricklayer; she works eight to nine hours a day
making matchboxes; is paid 2¼d. per gross, and earns about 1s. 4d. a
day. A girl of eight out of school hours helps the mother, who has to
supply paste and hemp, which costs about 6d. a week.
5. Is the wife of a porter; works ten to twelve hours a day making
matchboxes; earns 1s. 3¾d. per day, and her little boy, who is four
years old, helps her by folding the paper after it is pasted over the
cardboard.
6. Is a married woman; makes bead trimming; is paid ¾d. to 1¼d. per
yard, and earns from 1s. to 1s. 6d. per day, working twelve to fifteen
hours. Little boy of eight helps out of school hours.
7. Two girls work at fur-pulling eleven hours a day, and earn about 8s.
6d. per week each. Three girls sleep in workroom in one filthy bed.
Elder girl said her chest was bad, but she was accustomed to this.
8. Is the wife of a labourer in irregular employment; finishes shirts,
and works from 5 A.M. to 11 P.M.; is paid 2½d. to 5d. per dozen; pays
about 1d. out of every 1s. earned for thread. The highest wage she ever
earned was 4s. 10d. a week, “working late and early.” The eldest girl
does the housework. House in filthy condition; work piled upon the
floor.
9. Two single women living together, the daughters of a city missionary
deceased; work about ten hours a day finishing children’s shirts and
making pinafores, and earn from 4s. to 6s. per week each. On the day
visited, one had worked seven hours and had made 7d. Her wages-book
for ten consecutive weeks showed 2s. 4d., 4s. 4d., 5s. 8d. (week and
half), 7s. ½d., 3s. 1½d., 3s., 2s. 3d., 3s. 9d., 3s. 1d., and 5s.
House, attic room, beautifully clean, rent 8s. per month.
10. Is the wife of a labourer irregularly employed; has three young
children; “makes shirts throughout and finishes them,” earns 5s. to 6s.
per week, working twelve to fourteen hours per day. She pays 1s. 6d.
per week for machine, and 4d. per six dozen for thread. Occupies house
of two rooms, very dirty and almost destitute of furniture.
11. Is a widow; lives in one-roomed house, which is very dirty;
“finishes” woollen shirts; is paid from 2½d. to 6d. per dozen,
according to the amount of work put upon the garments. Her average
earnings are from 5s. to 6s. per week. Two children were lying ill in
the room, and were covered up with the shirts on which the mother was
employed; she could not tell what was the matter.
12. Is the wife of a surfaceman earning 16s. a week; makes aprons,
pinafores, and chemises, and earns about 5s. per week. She is in
delicate health; has had eight children, only one of whom now survives.
And so on, through this dreary tale “of poverty, hunger, and dirt.”
The evidence collected in respect to out-work by expert investigators
in these and other cases seems to prove conclusively that it is usually
accompanied by very low wages, inordinately long and irregular hours,
and distressingly insanitary conditions. With the matter of wages
British legislators have not yet seen fit to deal directly, and it is
obvious that any regulation of hours for work carried on by workers in
their own homes would be extremely difficult to enforce. What remains
is the sanitary condition of the house and of the worker. And there is
the double ground for interference here, in that the making of clothing
and other articles for public use in insanitary dwellings is not only a
danger to the workers themselves, but also to the public generally.
How does the law on this point at present stand? Perhaps the most
important legislation we have had dealing with out-work is to be found
in sections 5 and 6 of the Factory Act of 1895, which contain the
following provisions:--
See. 5. (1) “If an inspector gives notice in writing to the
occupier of a factory or workshop, or to any contractor employed
by any such occupier, that any place in which work is carried
on for the purpose of or in connection with the business of the
factory or workshop is injurious or dangerous to the health
of the persons employed therein, then, if the occupier or
contractor after the expiration of one month from receipt of the
notice gives out work to be done in that place, and the place
is found by the court having cognizance of the case to be so
injurious or dangerous, he shall be liable on summary conviction
to a fine not exceeding ten pounds.
(2) “This section shall apply in the case of the occupier of any
place from which any work is given out as if that place were a
workshop.
(3) “Provided that this section shall not apply except in the
case of persons employed in such classes of work, and in the
case of persons giving out employment and employed within
such areas, as may from time to time be specified by the
Secretary of State by order made in accordance with section 65
of the principal Act, and no such order shall be made except
with respect to an area where, by reason of the number and
distribution of the population or the conditions under which
work is carried on, there are special risks of injury or danger
to the health of the persons employed and of the district.
Sec. 6. “If any occupier of a factory or workshop or laundry or
of any place from which any work is given out, or any contractor
employed by any such occupier causes or allows wearing apparel
to be made, cleaned, or repaired in any dwelling-house
or building occupied therewith, whilst any inmate of the
dwelling-house is suffering from scarlet fever or smallpox,
then, unless he proves that he was not aware of the existence
of the illness in the dwelling-house, and could not reasonably
have been expected to become aware of it, he shall be liable to
a fine not exceeding ten pounds.”
I have no doubt sub-section 1 of section 5 might have gone a long
way to improve the sanitary conditions under which out-workers are
employed, and reduce the danger to the public, had it not been for
the restriction imposed by sub-section 3, which makes it practically
inoperative.
Notwithstanding the many overcrowded and insanitary districts in our
large cities, I am not aware that a single area has been specified to
which the section should apply. The reason for this will probably be
found in the difficulty to prove the existence of “special risks of
injury or danger to the health of the persons employed _and_ of
the district.” And in any case the month’s notice to be given would
simply mean that by a system of removing--which would be nothing
unusual with the class of workers concerned--the purpose of the Act
could be successfully evaded.
It would seem to be the desire of the legislature to place all
responsibility for compliance with the law upon the employer, or the
person giving out the work, but it stops short at providing him with
the means of ascertaining whether the law is being complied with.
The limited space at my disposal will not allow me to deal with the
many economic issues involved in the question of out-work. I can only
make a brief reference to its possible effect on wages.
Many of the more intelligent workers in the factories and workshops
speak very strongly against it on the ground that the long and
irregular hours tend surely, if indirectly, to lower wages, and
workshop hands in some cases, even where the total earnings were very
low, have on principle refrained from taking work home to finish after
the workshop hours, through fear of thus producing an artificial
standard of wages. Out-workers are often used as a lever for reducing
rates of wages. They are not restricted by any law to a specified
number of hours per day as in factories, and they are often found
working from early morning till late at night. With the help of some
other members of the family, a fair wage may be earned, in consequence
of which the employer is inclined to make comparisons which show the
factory hands at a disadvantage. Subsequently rates are reduced for
everybody.
It may be interesting to note that a large number of out-workers met
with during these inquiries were in receipt of parochial relief,
although they were working full time for their employers. Attention
has been directed to this subject from time to time in the official
reports of the Factory Department, and various suggestions have been
put forward as to the best methods for the efficient regulation of
home-work; but sooner or later the Government will be obliged to deal
with this question, and as the matter will therefore be in the hands of
the Home Office it would be unwise of me to anticipate the manner in
which they might treat the subject.
A. BALLANTYNE.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF WORK AND FATIGUE
There is a limit to man’s power of doing work. This varies in different
individuals. In an ordinary way work is conducive to health, and
even under abnormal circumstances work is often the main factor that
tends to prolong life. Mental not less than physical occupation has
been known to raise men and women above worries that otherwise would
have crushed them and lifted them above the depressing influences of
an incurable malady. In itself work is a good thing. It is when we
come to consider the effects of overwork and fatigue in an age when
all is hurry and excitement, when every one is pressed, and work is
undertaken under such unhealthy conditions as exist in some overheated,
overcrowded, and ill-ventilated factories, that one of the worst sides
of excessive toil is seen. In order to understand more fully the evils
of overwork and fatigue, physical and mental, let us learn something of
the physiological conditions under which muscular work is performed.
We are frequently reminded that the human body resembles a
steam-engine. From the circulation within the body of the absorbed
products obtained from digested food are evolved those chemical and
mechanical forces which direct all work, physical and mental. The
human body differs from the steam-engine in being able to transform
some of the food products into living tissue, whereby during work it
calls upon its stored-up energy and loses weight. Human life can only
be supported by oxygen and the ingestion of foods of vegetable or
animal origin. In the internal laboratory of the human body chemical
changes are continually taking place, resulting in the formation of
such waste products as carbonic acid, water, and urea. These have to
be removed by the lungs, the kidneys, and skin. A pure atmosphere,
healthy surroundings, and an adequate supply of water and proper
food, are therefore required in order to introduce into the system
the ordinary necessaries of life. Health can only be maintained by a
normal functional activity of the emunctories, whereby waste products
are eliminated.
All organs when in a state of greater functional activity than usual
draw to them, by a kind of automatic arrangement of the nervous system,
a larger supply of blood. The demand upon the muscles of the labourer
is met by an increased flow of blood at the time, therefore, when most
required, and when changes within his muscular system are most active.
In a similar fashion, a quickening of the cerebral circulation occurs
during the processes of thinking and mental attention. We are, however,
at this particular part of our inquiry concerned rather with that
large army of workers, men, women, and young persons, who are either
day or weekly wage earners, whose life is one of hard toil, and who in
reaching home of an evening are frequently tired out with the day’s
labour. Work while physiologically making for health may, if pushed too
far so as to induce fatigue, ultimately unfit the individual for his
allotted task.