TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 185 



and for construction of sowers, say £65,000, you reduce the actual cost of the im- 

 provements to £178,462, arising from waste rents, interest of ground remaining for 

 a time unbuilt upon before being sold, parliamentary expenses, and expenses of 

 management. In this estimate the author has been anxious not to give the most 

 favourable view of the case. 



The result of the operations of the Committee has been entirely to renovate large 

 portions of the city. Wide and handsome streets, with large spacious shops and 

 dwellings, have taken the place of narrow streets and lanes, of old and dilapidated 

 buildings. The narrow closes, where the criminal classes were wont to combine 

 for all sorts of crimes, and from whence they nightly sallied out to rob and plunder, 

 have given place to respectable dwellings. Fever-dens have been extirpated, and, 

 by the aid of the Sanitary Committee, the death-rate has been in these districts 

 greatly reduced. Many of the vicious who inhabited these localities being driven 

 from them, have been forced either to labour or to emigrate. The moral effect 

 produced it is not easy fully to ascertain, and this effect can only be gradual. It 

 must, however, be apparent to every one that there are few things more likely to 

 raise the tone of the working classes than clean and comfortable homes in healthy 

 localities and respectable neighbourhoods. 



The author is glad to find that the important town of Birmingham is proposing 

 to engage in the good work ; and he hopes the result of what has been done in 

 Glasgow will be sufficient to encourage other towns throughout the kingdom, 

 "where reform of this kind is wanted, to follow the example. 



Oil a proposed Reduction to System of the ' Modifications] or Privileges to 

 work Overtime, which are granted under the Factory Acts to particular 

 Trades. By Sir George Young, Bart. 



After a preface claiming that the Factory Acts, if rightly considered, were not 

 out of harmony with the principles of political economy, and were even a good 

 exemplification of the principles of legislation which are founded on political eco- 

 nomy, the paper proceeded, " The principal enactments under which overtime can 

 be worked are these: — 1. Provisions for leave to be given to " season trades " to 

 work overtime to the extent of 1| or 2^ hours in the day, for a maximum of 72 or 

 96 days. This applies in some cases to women and boys over 14; in others to 

 women and boys over 10. The list includes the makers of wearing apparel, Christ- 

 mas goods, &c. 2. Exemptions of lads of 16 from the provisions of the Acts, so 

 that they may be worked as adults. 3. Permission to work "according to the 

 accustomed hours of the trade," which amounts, in fact, to an almost entire absence 

 of regulation. This applies to paper-making and Turkey red dyeing. 4. Suspen- 

 sion of the Acts for particular emergencies, such as the danger of spontaneous com- 

 bustion in Turke3 r red dyeing and the gutting and salting of fish immediately on 

 their arrival in the boats. 5. Permissions for night-work in the case of boys over 

 1-'!. The metal trades, blast-furnaces and foundries, and paper-making profit by 

 these. The working of females at night has never been permitted. 6. Water- 

 in iwer manufactories have been allowed to make up for time lost by flood or 

 drought ; but the recent course of legislation has been adverse to the privileges. 

 7. Half an hour's extra time is allowed to bleach-works and glass-blowing to finish 

 an incomplete process. There are also miscellaneous enactments, consulting the 

 requirements of Jewish employers, of lace factories, glass foundries, &c. The com- 

 plexity of these rules occasions great difficulty in ascertaining and administering 

 the law. The commissioners recommend that they should be simplified, upon a 

 plan of which the following are the leading principles : — 1. They did not interfere 

 with the prohibition of female labour at night. 2. The regulations permitting 

 night-work to boys of 13 would be by their recommendations altered so aa to limit 

 tho minimum age to 14. 3. They desired to limit, so far as possible, the oppor- 

 tunities of working overtime. 4. They recommend that these privileges should 

 be conceded to whole trades and not to particular trades, on personal application ; 

 but as this would enormously increase tho opportunities of working overtime, 

 they propose to diminish considerably the maximum which is allowed to be worked. 

 1877. 15 



