_ or 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 597 
3. Sweating and Legislation. By L. G. Cutozza Money, J.P. 
Defining sweating as ‘a condition of employment in which, through any or all 
of the following factors, (a) low rates of remuneration, (b) excessive hours of 
Jabour, or (c) unhealthy workplaces, the workers are unable to sustain physical 
efficiency,’ existing legislation touching on these three heads is briefly as 
follows :— 
1. Wages.—lIt is at present perfectly legal to sweat by under-payment. The 
method of payment of wages is in part controlled by existing legislation, but 
home-workers have practically no protection under the Truck Acts. 
2. Hours of Labcur.—There has been legislative interference with the hours 
of females, of young persons, and of children; but home-wonkers, not being within 
the scope of the Factory Act, are not subject to regulation in respect of hours. 
3. Environment during Labour.—The Factory and Public Health Acts 
regulate the conditions under which work is carried on. The Factory Act, which 
imposes conditions as to cubic air-space, ventilation, &c., has little application to 
home-workers. In practice the home-worker is subject to little more than the 
provisions of the Public Health Act. 
Summing up existing labour legislation, while it is found to be timid in many 
respects, even in its application to factory, workshops, laundries, mines, &c., it has 
little or no application to the home-worker. Thus the tendency of existing legis- 
lation is to put a premium upon home-work, 
Proposals for legislation on the subject of sweating are next considered. 
1, To Make all Workplaces Legal ‘ Workshops. —This proposal seeks to make 
an employer as liable for the condition of the home of the outworker as he is for 
his own factory or workshop. 
2. To Register and License Outworkers —This proposal seeks to prevent work 
being done under insanitary conditions. It provides that it shall be illegal to give 
out work save to a licensed person. 
The foregoing proposals do not touch the question of remuneration. The next 
deals solely with the wages question. 
3. To Establish Wages Boards.—This proposal is to establish wages boards, 
on the lines of those in existence in Victoria, to control wages in the sweated 
trades by arranging minimum rates either for piece or time work. If adopted 
it would be the first act of legislative interference with rates of remuneration. 
It stands or falls with the principle of the minimum wage. 
The conclusions submitted are :— 
That sweating is a widespread evil which endangers at once the physical life 
and the industral strength of the nation. 
That the question of under-payment demands the recognition and adoption of 
the principle of the minimum wage. 
That the further questions of excessive hours of labour and unhealthy environ- 
ment during labour demand the drastic strengthening of labour law and its 
application to all workplaces, large and small, without exception. 
That it is advisable entirely to prohibit the giving out of home-work to middle- 
men. 
MONDAY, AUGUST 5. 
The following Papers and Report were read :— 
1. Small Occupying Ownerships. 
By the Right Hon. Jesse Cotuines, U.P. 
The British land system, namely, that of landlord, farmer, and labourer—which 
meant three separate castes—has broken down in every other eountry in Europe, 
