ON WOMEN S LAROUR. 299 



processes, and explained that he hoped to improve them gradually, 

 showing what had already been done. It is in these directions, the 

 provisions for health and safety, that Mr. Knyvett considers the factory 

 inspector exercises his most important function in modern times, and 

 one is strongly inclined to agree with this view. The very fact that 

 appliances and safeguards have to be used, thought out, and paid for 

 puts a premium on the generous and thoughtful employer, and tends 

 towards the crowding out of the unfit ; and much the same can be 

 observed in the sanitary administration of workshops. The Factory and 

 Workshop Act and the Public Health Act become in the hands of the 

 sanitary authority a really civilising force. Pressui-e is steadily put 

 on to enforce a mininmm of cleanliness and decency, and it is made 

 inconvenient to fall short of it. There is distinct evidence that women 

 have lost their employment in workshops from the requirement of 

 the Acts. In about twenty workshops, Mr. Keasey thought, women 

 had been dismissed, and boys taken on in their place, because the 

 women were in so small a minority that it was not worth the masters' 

 while to provide separate sanitary accommodation for them. Here we 

 see that the most ordinary requirements of civilised life may inflict 

 hardship, or what may be construed as hardship, in individual cases. Mr. 

 Keasey, however, thought that the women probably found employment 

 in other shops where their own sex was more largely represented, and it 

 is not very likely that even an extremist would object to the working of 

 the Act in similar cases. In the enforcement of sanitary regulations we 

 Bee one of the most, if not the most, important agencies of such reform 

 at work, and it is impossible to doubt that the women employed under 

 these better conditions do become thereby more ' efficient,' both indus- 

 trially and 'as members of society.' The effects of the legislation and its 

 administration become more and more evident as the elder generation, 

 to whom reform may be a stumbling-block and rock of offence, becomes 

 superseded by the younger, which has time to grow up in better ways. 



IV. — The Boot and Shoe Trades of Bristol and Kingswood. 

 By Mr. G. H. Wood, F.S.S. 



In wilting the following report I am able to utilise a personal expe- 

 rience as a worker in the trade for some time, and have for some years 

 closely watched its development. My personal experience was as a clerk 

 in a boot factory. 



When the industry was first brought under the Factory Acts in 1867 

 few workers were affected by them in this district, as the system then 

 obtaining was almost entirely domestic. Nearly all the woi'k was done 

 at that time in small workshops at home for local retailers or for middle- 

 men selling to local retailers. Hence the industry has grown up under 

 the Acts, and has not been prevented by them from developing itself. 



There are two distinct districts and two distinct trades in Bristol 

 and Kingswood. In Bristol the light boots are made ; in Kingswood the 

 work is 'heavy -nailed' work. In only one or two cases do the same 

 firms make the two classes of boots, and few of the workers are able to 

 work at both. This division of the trades is essential and important. 

 Machinery can be more easily applied to the light than to the heavy work, 

 and for this reason the system of machine production has worked out 

 from the Bristol light trade to the Kingswood heavy trade. Hence the 



