ON WOjMEN'S LAI50UH. 317 



would have desired. On the other hand, much information as to these 

 towns and industries has been found in the reports of the Chief Factory 

 Inspectors. The difficulty of investigation in industries of this class lies, 

 in a great part, in the general ignorance of the facts by the only persons 

 who are in a position to know them. 



The Committee have interpreted the subject referred to them as 

 applying only to tliat part of legislation which discriminates between 

 men and women ; they do not, therefore, report on the effect of laws 

 relating to the prevention of accidents, to sanitation, and to special regu- 

 lations for dangerous trades, except in the few cases where they affect 

 women differently from men, or where women are a great majority of the 

 persons affected. The main regulations with which the Committee are 

 concerned are therefore those which define the hours of employment. In 

 this final Report they confine themselves to Great Britain. ^ 



These regulations are of great complexity, and have frequently been 

 extended and amended. The greater part of those now in force is contained 

 in the Factory and Workshop Act of .1901. Their history, change, and 

 development can be most easily studied in ' The Factory System and the 

 Factory Acts,' by R. W. Cooke Taylor, 1894 ; ' The Factory Acts,' by 

 A. Redgrave, 1895 ; ' The Law relating to Factories and Workshops,' 

 by M. Abraham and A. LI. Davies, 1896 ; 'The Law of Factories and 

 Workshops,' by A. H. Ruegg and L. Mossop, 1901, and 'A History of 

 Factory Legislation,' by B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, 1903, which 

 last contains a nearly complete bibliography on the subject, as far as 

 Great Britain is concerned. 



It will be convenient, however, to give a very condensed summary of 

 the principal regulations. 



In textile factories the hours of women were limited in 1850 to a 

 period of 12 hours less H hour for meal-times on the first 5 working days, 

 and to 7i hours on Saturday, amounting to 60 hours per week. In 

 1874, \ hour was cut off each of the 5 days and 1 hour off Saturday, 

 making the total hours per week 56^ ; on January 1, 1902, another hour 

 was cut off Saturday, making the total hours 55^. 



Regulations of women's hours, resulting by 1878 in a uniform 60 

 hours' week as legal maximum (viz. not more than 10^ hours on 5 days, 

 to be taken in the 12 hours beginning either at 6 or 7 or 8 a.m., and 

 1\ hours on the sixth day), were extended in 1864, 1867, 1870, and 1878 

 successively, to all non-textile factories in which mechanical power is used, 

 and tvorkshops where manual labour is employed in making, repairing, or 

 altering any article for sale. In addition to these hours, overtime is 

 allowed under certain restrictions in certain industries (notably book- 

 binding and the making of wearing apparel), where there is a seasonal or 

 sudden occasional pressure, or where the materials are liable to spoil, 

 e.g., fruit-preserving and fish-curing ; before 1895 overtime might be 

 worked for forty-eight evenings in the year, 2 hours an evening less ^ hour 

 for meals, not more than five evenings being in any one week ; in 1895 the 

 number of evenings permissible was reduced to thirty, not more than three 

 in one week. 



As each industry came under the Act, night work by women in it 

 was prohibited, except in the case of laundries.^ 



' In their second Report (Belfast, 1902) summaries of similar legislation in 

 several European countries were given. 

 * See the last part of Appendix I. below. 



