THE RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF LABOUR PROTECTION TO EACH
OTHER.
If the various chief branches of Labour Protection are compared with
each other after they have all been examined separately, they appear to
be indispensable and inseparable members of one system, for no one
branch can be spared. But they are very different in nature, and by no
means equal in importance.
Protection of truck and contract have long ago reached their full
development. Both are almost universal in their extension, and are
exercised by the regular administrative courts and petty courts of
justice. They are characterised on the whole by legal precision, which
affords little room for interpretation and extension at the will of the
administration. Protection of contract and protection of intercourse are
required less in the immediate interest of the whole State than in that
of individuals.
But when we come to protection in occupation, it is altogether another
matter.
_Protection by limitations of employment_, which forms the central point
of the latest protective movement, is in all its aims more or less in
contrast to protection of contract and intercourse. It is not a matter
of universal application. It requires special administrative organs,
special methods of procedure with many technical differences of detail
adapted to the peculiarities of different trades. Its full development
requires general legal enactments, a central authority, and a uniform
exercise of administration; it has to deal with the entire working
class, nay more, with the whole body of citizens, and with the spiritual
as well as the material life of the workers and of the nation, because
it constantly affects and influences the lives of larger masses of
labourers.
It must not be supposed that any one branch of protection by limitation
of employment is more important in itself than all the rest. It is not
protection of holidays alone, nor the maximum working-day alone that
will restore the workman to himself, to his place in the human family,
to civic life, to his family, to the performances of his spiritual
duties; but all measures of protection by prohibiting and limiting
employment must work together to effect this. Protection by limitation
of employment, as a whole, seeks to ensure those moral benefits so
finely emphasised in the preamble of the Confederate Factory Act: "The
benefits which may accrue to the country from the factory system depend
almost entirely upon its being ensured that the worker shall not be
deprived of time or inclination to be the educator of his children, and
the head and prop of his family." The maximum working-day effects this
by securing the evening free to all--to fathers, mothers, children, and
young people. Protection of holidays works towards the same end by
securing to everyone the seventh day free for his own life, the life of
his family, and intercourse with his fellow citizens, and for the
performance of his spiritual duties. Prohibition of night work also
contributes its quota towards the same result. Without all this
protection by limitation of employment, the father of the family would
lose his family, the child would lose its training and care, the mother
and wife would lose her children and husband; and all of them would lose
their joint life as citizens, as members of society, and of a religious
community.
It is from these considerations that we must justify the immense
importance which it is the growing tendency of Labour Protection in the
present day to attach to the whole question of protection by limitation
of employment.