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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

(d) Legislative Action

(d) Legislative Action.

The more ignorant writers in the daily press, and some of the parliamentary representatives of non-manufacturing constituencies, still persist in declaring that there is no precedent in the history of English legislation for interference on the part of the State with the hours of adult male labor. But those who remember the long fight over the Factory Acts know better than this. "When the Ten Hours Bill was being discussed in 1814, Sir C. Wood, in opposing it, said: "The object of the Bill before them was the limitation of the hours of labor, not of young persons and women only, but of all factory labor. To the credit of the delegates from the manufacturing districts they had fairly and openly acknowledged that such was the object. It would therefore be waste of time to discuss it on any other footing than on that of a Bill for limiting all labor in factories to ten hours a day."

Sir George Grey, in supporting the Bill, was equally frank. He said : "I do not wish to argue the question or to support the Bill on false pretences. I admit that it is a fair argument against the Bill that, looking to the number of young children and adult and females in factories, the restriction of the hours of labor for them to ten or eleven hours a day will practically restrict the working of male adults to the same period. I am not in the least disposed to deny the fact."

In the debates on the 1874 Bill, all the old arguments were brought up by Professor Fawcett, who once more pointed out to the House of Commons that the measure would apply to the hours of men. "Although," said he, the Bill nominally applied to women only, its real effect would be to place a Parliamentary limit on tne length of the day's work, and its general application would be precisely the same in a great majority of cases as if in every clause after the word 'woman' they had inserted the word 'man.'" Not withstanding this explicit statement, Parliament reduced the hours of labor in textile factories from 60 to 56½ hours per week. Four years later the whole body of factory legislation was codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. This Act confirmed the statutory) week of 56½ hours in textile factories, and of 60 hours m non- page 9 textile factories, with a certain margin of overtime for the latter only. Workshops—i.e., places where no steam or other power is employed—are on much the same footing as non-textile factories, but the provisions of the law are slightly less stringent. In each case the limitation of hours nominally applies only to women and children : practically, wherever men are engaged in work requiring the assistance of women or of children, their hours of labor are also limited. That this result was foreseen at the time the original Acts were passed has been amply proved by the above quotations.

It was with all this in his mind that Mr. Gladstone, speaking, October 1890, said: "I make another admission, which is this—that our legislation with regard to Factories has been legislation which has embraced the case of men, and, therefore, I hold that this business of the Eight Hours Bill for miners is a matter perfectly open for free and unprejudiced consideration."

Finally, in the colony of Victoria, the favorite instance of those who rely upon the unaided efficiency of public opinion of Trade Unionism, it has been found necessary to fix by law the hours of labor of miners underground; of engineers in charge of mining machinery; of tramway workers; of men employed by the contractors on various public works; of the servants of public bodies. And attempts at similar legislation in other colonies are constantly being made, but have, as yet, been defeated by the capitalistic second chambers. Switzerland, moreover, has a universal Eleven Hours Law, applying to men as well as to women, in all industries whatsoever. Austria and France also expressly limit men's labor.