304 BEPORT— 1902. 



Summary. 



I conclude, tlien, that factory legislation has altered some customs of 

 the industry, and Avithout really affecting earnings has increased the 

 efficiency of the women workers. It has also raised the standard of 

 morality for all. 



Note on Kingsimod. — These remarks apply to both districts ; but in 

 Kingswood the factory inspector notes that the Act of 1895 was a direct 

 cause of the extension of the factory system. This Act prohibited over- 

 time for young persons, and it was then the custom for a man to work in 

 a workshop attached to his own house, with perhaps five or six boys. 

 Denied the opportunity of earning a good wage through this overtime the 

 lads left the trade, and the men in small business could not compete without 

 their labour. The factory proprietors took advantage of this opportunity 

 of boy labour, and an expansion set in immediately. The Acts have there- 

 fore induced the application of machinery and hastened the extension of 

 the factory system. The eflFect of this is seen in that the Kingswood 

 heavy trade is now nearly as much a factory industry as the Bristol light 

 trade. 



V. — Leicester and NortJiamj^ton. 

 [Compiled from Mr. K. Halstead's Report,] 



Mr. Halstead obtained information from employers in four hosiery 

 firms in Leicester, Hinckley, and Loughborough, and fi'om two trade- 

 union officials and two women workers in that trade. In the shoe trade 

 he interviewed managers of seven co-ojDerative manufacturing societies in 

 Leicester, Barwell, Glenfield, Desborough, Kettering, and Rushden, a 

 private emjDloyer in Leicester, three officials of employers' associations at 

 Northampton and Kettering, and six trade-union officials in Leicester, 

 Northampton, Kettering, and Rushden. Information was also obtained 

 from one employer in the box trade, one employer and one manager in 

 the corset trade, one employer and one manager in the ready-made tailor- 

 ing trade, one manager in the elastic-web trade, and two employers and 

 one woman worker in the hat and cap trade. 



I. (1) The general opinion expressed was that legislation regulating 

 women's labour has had little to do with moulding the more important 

 customs of the trades. Employers attributed the customs of their trade 

 mainly to the nature of the machinery they employed and the resulting 

 subdivision and organisation of labour. Several, however, thought it 

 possible that legislation had increased the pace and brought about 

 uniformity in factory reform. One manager thought it had in the first 

 instance decided the customs of the boot trade as to hours of work and 

 sanitation, but that since this initial stage the trade generally had been 

 in advance of legislation. A few employers, who had been in the habit 

 of employing out workers, said that the recent more stringent regulations 

 as to out-work were having the eflect of driving the work into their 

 factories ; but the change was mainly due to a growing desii'e to have all 

 work under one supervision inside the factory. The trade-union officials 

 attached more importance to trade-union action in fixing customs, 

 although by one of them it was held that legislation had been one of the 

 means of enforcing what had been won by trade-unionism. 



