The Sanitary Act of 1866, administered by local authorities,
provided for general sanitation in any factories and workshops
not under existing factory acts, and the Workshops Regulation
Act of 1867, similarly to be administered by local authorities,
amended in 1870, practically completed the application of the
main principle of the factory acts to all places in which manual
labour was exercised for gain in the making or finishing of
articles or parts of articles for sale. A few specially dangerous
or injurious trades brought under regulation in 1864 and 1867
(e.g. earthenware and lucifer match making, glass-making)
ranked as “factories,” although not using mechanical power,
and for a time employment of less than fifty persons relegated
certain work-places to the category of “workshops,” but broadly
the presence or absence of such motor power in aid of process
was made and has remained the distinction between factories
and workshops. The Factory Act of 1874, the last of the series
before the great Consolidating Act of 1878, raised the minimum
age of employment for children to ten years in textile factories.
In most of the great inquiries into conditions of child labour
the fact has come clearly to light, in regard to textile and non-textile
trades alike, that parents as much as any employers
have been responsible for too early employment and excessive
hours of employment of children, and from early times until
to-day in factory legislation it has been recognized that they
must to some extent be held responsible for due observation of
the limits imposed. For example, in 1831 it was found necessary
to protect occupiers against parental responsibility for false
certificates of age, and in 1833 parents of a child or “any Person
having any benefit from the wages of such child” were made
to share responsibility for employment of children without school
attendance or beyond legal hours.
During the discussions on the bill which became law in 1874, it had become apparent that revision and consolidation of the multiplicity of statutes then regulating manufacturing industry had become pressingly necessary; modifications and exceptions for exceptional conditions in separate industries needed reconsideration and systematization on clear principles, and the main requirements of the law could with great advantage be applied more generally to all the industries. In particular, the daily limits as to period of employment, pauses for meals, and holidays, needed to be unified for non-textile factories and workshops, so as to bring about a standard working-day, and thus prevent the tendency in “the larger establishments to farm out work among the smaller, where it is done under less favourable conditions both sanitary and educational.”[1] In these main directions, and that of simplifying definitions, summarizing special sanitary provisions that had been gradually introduced for various trades, and centralizing and improving the organization of the inspectorate, the Commission of 1876 on the Factory Acts made its recommendations, and the Factory Act of 1878 took effect. In the fixed working-day, provisions for pauses, holidays, general and special exceptions, distinctions between systems of employment for children, young persons and women, education of children and certificates of fitness for children and young persons, limited regulation of domestic workshops, general principles of administration and definitions, the law of 1878 was made practically the same as that embodied in the later principal act of 1901. More or less completely revised are: (a) the sections in the 1878 act relating to mode of controlling sanitary conditions in workshops (since 1891 primarily enforced by the local sanitary authority); (b) provision for reporting accidents and for enforcing safety (other than fencing of mill gearing and dangerous machinery); (c) detailed regulation of injurious and dangerous process and trades; (d) powers of certifying surgeons; (e) amount of overtime permissible (greatly reduced in amount and now confined to adults); (f) age for permissible employment of a child has been raised from ten years to twelve years. Entirely new since the act of 1878 are the provisions: (a) for control of outwork; (b) for supplying particulars of work and wages to piece-workers, enabling them to compute the total amount of wages payable to them; (e) extension of the act to laundries; (f) a tentative effort to limit the too early employment of mothers after childbirth.
II. Law of United Kingdom, 1910
Factories and Workshops.—The act of 1878 remained until 1901, although much had been meanwhile superimposed, a monument to the efforts of the great factory reformers of the first half of the 19th century, and the general groundwork of safety for workers in factories and workshops in the main divisions of sanitation, security against accidents, physical fitness of workers, general limitation of hours and times of employment for young workers and women. The act of 1901, which came into force 1st January 1902 (and became the principal act), was an amending as well as a consolidating act. Comparison of the two acts shows, however, that, in spite of the advantages of further consolidation and helpful changes in arrangement of sections and important additions which tend towards a specialized hygiene for factory life, the fundamental features of the law as fought out in the 19th century remain undisturbed. So far as the law has altered in character, it has done so chiefly by gradual development of certain sanitary features, originally subordinate, and by strengthening provision for security against accidents and not by retreat from its earlier aims. At the same time a basis for possible new developments can be seen in the protection of “outworkers” as well as factory workers against fraudulent or defective particulars of piece-work rates of wages.
Later acts directly and indirectly affecting the law are certain acts of 1903, 1906, 1907, to be touched on presently.
The act of 1878, in a series of acts from 1883 to 1895, received striking additions, based (1) on the experience gained in other branches of protective legislation, e.g. development of the method of regulation of dangerous trades by “special rules” and administrative inquiry into Additions to act of 1878. accidents under Coal Mines Acts; (2) on the findings of royal commissions and parliamentary inquiries, e.g. increased control of “outwork” and domestic workshops, and limitation of “overtime”; (3) on the development of administrative machinery for enforcing the more modern law relating to public health, e.g. transference of administration of sanitary provisions in workshops to the local sanitary authorities; (4) on the trade-union demand for means for securing trustworthy records of wage-contracts between employer and workman, e.g. the section requiring particulars of work and wages for piece-workers. The first additions to the act of 1878 were, however, almost purely attempts to deal more adequately than had been attempted in the code of 1878 with certain striking instances of trades injurious to health. Thus the Factory and Workshop Act of 1883 provided that white-lead factories should not be carried on without a certificate of conformity with certain conditions, and also made provision for special rules, on lines later superseded by those laid down in the act of 1891, applicable to any employment in a factory or workshop certified as dangerous or injurious by the secretary of state. The act of 1883 also dealt with sanitary conditions in bakehouses. Certain definitions and explanations of previous enactments touching overtime and employment of a child in any factory or workshop were also included in the act. A class of factories in which excessive heat and humidity seriously affected the health of operatives was next dealt with in the Cotton Cloth Factories Act 1889. This provided for special notice to the chief inspector from all occupiers of cotton cloth factories (i.e. any room, shed, or workshop or part thereof in which weaving of cotton cloth is carried on) who intend to produce humidity by artificial means; regulated both temperature of workrooms and amount of moisture in the atmosphere, and provided for tests and records of the same; and fixed a standard minimum volume of fresh air (600 cub. ft.) to be admitted in every hour for every person employed in the factory. Power was retained for the secretary of state to modify by order the standard for the maximum limit of humidity of the atmosphere at any given temperature. A short act in 1870 extended this power to other measures for the protection of health.
- ↑ Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons, 1876; quoted in History of Factory Legislation, by Harrison and Hutchinson, p. 179.
