The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-01-04 00:00:00

THE NEW LAW ON FACTORIES AND

WORKSHOPS.

On Wednesday (Jan. 1), the new Act to consolidate
and amend the law relating to factories and workshops
came into force. It is a long Act, containing some
107 sections and several schedules with numerous
regulations to carry out the new law. An abstract of
the Act is to be placed in eveu factory and workshop.
It is divided into four parts% The first part has refer-
ence to the general law relating to factories and work.
shops, including the safety of machinery, the employ-
ment of cht:dren, and the meal-ti toes appointed. The
second relates to special provisions of particular
classes ; and the third part to administrative penalties
and legal proceedings under the Act, which latter
division embraces the appointment of oTcers by the
Home Secretary, and the inspection of factories. The
fourth has reference to definitions, and to the repeal of
nearly twenty statutes and parts by the new law.
There are various provisions as to holidays and the
employment of young children. :Notice of an accident
is to be sent to the Government inspector forthwith,
and in default the offeinder to be liable to a penalty of
£5. Considerable powers are conferred on inspectors
to enter all factories, and any person who wilfully
delays an inspector in the exercise of his duty to be
liable to penalties. There are various important
provisions in the new law, and some time must
necessarily elapsito bring it into working order.

The Times has the following leader on the above
Act:—

Although it makes some important changes and amend-
ments in the law, it contains no new principle. It Is
eseeetially a Coesolidation Act. Persons Interested in the
regulation of the labour of *women, and of boys and girls
under fourteen and under eighteen, will no longer have to
search the Sratute-book for the prov!sions effecting these
classts. Mr. Cross's Act embodies, with improvements, the
various restrictions upon their emplojnient which the Legis-
lature has at different times imposed This is in itself a
very valuate result. What is or still higher value is that
the Factory and Workshop Act may beregatded as a solemn
and deliberate ratification by the nation of a movement
widdi has been iu progress for the past sixty years In the
last year but one of the mien of Ge.irge 111. the first Factory'
Act was passed. It was passed in the teeth of vehement op-
position, and warnings that h was laying the axe at the root
of Bthish industry. The tong French war of the Revolution
had given English manufacturers $ monopbly of the
textile trade of the world. Cheap labour was required
to work the new machinery, and millowners found it in
the abundant youthful population. In mauufacturiog
towns parents reckoned each child as an annual supplement
to their incomes. Iu the southern towns aud in agricultural
parishes the local authoriles disembarrassed themselves of a
burden by selling pauper children, under the name of ap-
prentices, to Lancashire and Yorkshire manufacturers.
Fifteen hours were an ordinary day's labour for children of
the age of seven. Sir Robert Peel declared that this horrible
experience commenced commonly at tbe age of six. Yet even
merciful men justified the system ; and ten years elapsed
before Parliament could be persuaded to interpose.

Some measure of the amelioration of the hardness of life
between 1819 and 1879 may be arrived at by comparing the
Factory Act of George IH 'a reign with the Factory Act
which began to operate yesterday. The former Act was an
experiment. It forbade the employment of chitdren under
the age of nine, and restricted the hours of work to twelve
a day, but it introduced no adequate supervision to prevent
tratiegre:rnons of its orders. Women were scarcely in those
days comic ered tit subjects for protection by law. To the legis-
lators of George M.'s sea regulatlons for the education of
children engaged in factories would have been simply unintel-
ligible. The age was eqoally unripe for theenforcement on em-
royers of ordinary care for the lives and limbs of their
servants who were not likely to take thought for them-
selves. A long series of measures has gradually fenced
round children and even adalt women with sat, guards
against their own recklessness and the greed of others
hording to them various rela,ions of trust. The
Home Sezretary's Act is like the coat of mail of a
medimval cavalier a museum of arms. It reads
smoothly enough, and every clause enacta only what any
just and upright manufacturer would now desire to pro-
v.de without Parlianuentsry pressure. But, for those
who can read between the lines, there is not a direction
which would not have appeared an extraordinary
innovation some time within the last half century; there ia
not a sentence which is not iliated and battered with the
marks of angry controversies. She objections which masters
would in these days raise against its regulations is that the
law interferes to compel them to do what their own humanity
would suggest. Millowners who employ children imagine,
doubtless in good faith, that no statute was needed to make
them fiance round dangerous wheels. Yet the unhappy
experience of many years demonstrated that buys and
girls were let loose in a labyrinth of machinery which
threatened death at every step. For women and per-
sons of either sex under eighteen a day's labour of
twelve -hours would be generolly admitted by em-
ployers .to be as much as can be borne for a con-
tinuance. For children who have not received the elements
of an ordinary education, it would be theoretically acknow-
ledged that half that time is the utmost which can be pro-
perly devoted to work in a factory if they are not tq grow up
in aco di.iun of degrading ignorance. But what is now
admitted in terms was violently denied not many years ago.
Legislation by those oho for the most part were not mauu-
lecturers has educated manufacturers themselves to the
point of believing that what they have been taught by statutes
ought to be done they would have done of their own free
wilt. Inspectors and penal provisions are not now neces-
sary to keep the great Lancashire millowners from
reauciug children and women to the condition of
galley slaves. It may, how ver, be fairly question° it
Lancashire would have ever learned of itself that labour
may he bought too cheap Factory legislation is commoniy
regarded as required in the interests only of women and
children. It has been equally required as an aid to the
kindly and equitable impulses of employers, which were
being stifled and sPenced oy competition. Successive Fac-
tory Acts, ending in that of the last Session, have embodied
the sentiments of manufacturers who could think of their
hands as human beings. These manufacturers would have
experienced many dcubtings of heart before they could have
persuaded themselves to leave their machinery idle for three
or mpre hours during which less philanthropic neighbours
were working theirs.
Even from the point of view of the profitable employment
of women and children, the regulations embodied in the
present Act may be accepted and commended All who
have studied human capacity for work know that labour
protracted beyond the limits laid down in the Act loses its
edge and its energy. The limits may be extended without
danger on occasion; and for such temporary enlargement
the measure provides. But it is preposterous to suppose
that a boy or a girl can tend a machine for more than a dozen
hours day after day and the master not suffer. That
the employment is routine and mechanical does not
diminish tl e wearing effect of undo)), prolonged exertion.
We are not, however, without apprehensions that what had
come to be a received truth even among • employers in
prosperous times may be doubted in times of a very altered
complexion. Signs are not wanting that attempts may he
made to turn the statutory regulation ul juvenile and
women's labour into a scapegoat fur the sins of panslavinn
and Asiatic drou_hts. Other mahulacturing countrtee are
suffering in proportion to their smaller staae in manufac-
turing induttry, greater hardships than ourselves. Yet
a cry begins to be raised that legislative bene-
volence is accuuntable for a atiignatiou of trade which is
felt still more grievously in States free from the suspicion
of any such tenderheartedness. Cheapness of labour is a
very e siential element in the acquisition ef the control of a
market, but labour is not necessarily cheap in the rate of the
number of hours over which it is protracted. To tighten
the s'rain upon juvenile and women's labour beyond break-
ing point is to cripple British manufacturing industry in the
future as well as the pt.( sent. .

A wall at Dundee barracks fell in on Tuesday owing
to the subsiding of the foundation caused by the recent
wet weather. A soldier on guard was killed, his horse
Injured, and a coal-shed demolished.