TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 707 



(1) Compulsory registration of all worksliops. 



(2) The landlord, jointly with the employer, to be made responsible for the 

 sanitary condition of work- places. 



(3) Extension of Clause 107 of the Act of 1901 to all industries. This clause 

 requires that in any class of work specified by special order of the Secretary of 

 State, the occupier of a factory or workshop, or contractor employed by him, shall 

 keep lists of the out-workera eraploj'ed, such lists to be sent twice a year to the 

 district council, and to the factory inspector, when required. 



3. The Administration of the Factory and Worksliojjs Acts by Local 

 Sanitary Authorities. By Miss A. Harrison. 



Domestic workshops have been more or less under legislative control for 

 nearly forty years, and during this time various experiments have been made 

 with regard to the administration of the Factory and Workshops Act in work- 

 shops. These experiments are particularly interesting to students of Local 

 Government, as they present problems in connection with the relation between 

 central and local authorities. 



Domestic industries were for a long time considered to be beyond the province 

 of legislative control, partly because it was thought that it would be inipossible 

 to enforce the regulations in small scattered workshops, and in the homes of 

 industrial workers. The Children's Employment Commissioners of 1864 

 pointed out that this objection could no longer be raised, as the local inspectors 

 appointed under the Public Health Act needed only to be armed with specific 

 powers to enforce the Factory Acts in workshops. 



In 1867 the experiment was made of placing the Workshops' Eegulation Act 

 in the hands of the local sanitary authorities. With a few notable exceptions 

 the local authorities either ignored the Act or refused to administer it. 



The experiment failed for the following reasons : — 



(1) No form of control was exercised by the central authority over the local 

 bodies to compel them to imdertake the duties laid upon them. 



(2) Inadequate powers were given to the officei's of the local authorities. 



(3) The indefinite nature of the regulations made the Act a most difficult 

 one to administer. 



In 1871 the administration of the Workshops' Regulation Act was handed over 

 to the Home Office, and for the next twenty years the inspection of workshops 

 under the Factory Acts was carried on entirely by the inspectors of factories. 

 Owing to the large number of scattered domestic and other workshops the factory 

 inspectors met with great difficulty in their attempts to discover unnotified work- 

 shops, and many of those in which the worst conditions prevailed escaped 

 inspection altogether. 



In 1891, when women's workshops were brought under the same sanitary 

 regulations as ordinary workshops, and when the law with regard to the sanitary 

 condition of workshops generally was made more stringent, the local authorities 

 were made responsible for the sanitary condition of all workshops, and the duty 

 of discovering unnotified workshops was placed upon them. With a few excep- 

 tions, the local authorities have merely acted upon complaints, and have failed to 

 take any initiative with regard to the discovery and inspection of workshops. This 

 is to be accounted for by (1) the lack of central control, and (2) the absence of 

 facilities for enabling local authorities to undertake the inspection of out- 

 workers. 



These defects are partly remedied by the Factory Act of 1901, which requires 

 that lists of out-workers shall be sent to the district councils, and provides for a 

 certain amount of central control, by requiring local authorities to keep registers 

 of workshops, and to report on the administration of the Factory and Workshops 

 Act. But it is probable that more control will have to be exercised by the 

 central authority over the local bodies to compel them to appoint an adequate 



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