FACTORY LAWS IN NEW ZEALAND. 
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a weak place here, for, as there is only right of entry during working 
hours, it would not be easy to check the growth and extension of 
overtime labour. This brief but important Act is slightly amended 
in the following year, 1874. First of all, in the interpretation, 
“employ” in the 1873 Act was to apply to all kinds of manual work 
and labour — “not being contract or piecework.” Evidently the female 
workers must in some cases have been put on piecework in order to 
evade the section ordaining Saturday and other holidays, for in the 
amendment of 1874 “employ’ is to apply to any manual labour 
exercised by way of trade, or for purposes of gain in or incidental to 
the altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, or otherwise adapting 
by way of trade or for purposes of gain or for sale of any article.” 
The hours of work, although eight a day, were extended from 9 a.m. 
to 8 a.m., and an important clause added to the effect that upon 
the employer of female labour should rest the onus of sending in a 
written statement to the resident magistrate’s court detailing the hours 
of work of females in his employ. The following year we find a 
further outgrowth in an Amendment Act, 1875. And here for the 
first time comes in the word “ factory” ; the interpretation of factory 
being “ any manufactory, workshop, or other establishment or business 
where any female, child, or young person shall be employed.” “ Child” 
shall mean boy or girl between ages of ten and fourteen ; “ young 
person,” fourteen to eighteen. There is a penalty of £50 attached to 
the employment of a person under the age of ten years. 
The 1875 Amendment Act also regulates that neither children, 
young persons, nor females shall be employed continuously for more 
than four hours and a-half without an interval of at least half-an- 
hour for a meal, and that children — i.e., from ten to fourteen — shall 
only be employed for half-a-day, or on alternate whole days, and 
that neither children nor females are to be employed during hours 
set apart for meals. Employers are bouud to post up notices 
specifying hours of employment, and forward copies of same to the 
resident magistrate’s office, and also to the inspector of police for 
the district. Certain special regulations and exceptions are made for 
woollen mills, printing offices, &c. Retail saleswomen are exempt from 
the Act. 
By this bird’s-eye view one may see that the factory legislation in 
New Zealand began in a purely tentative manner ; each step in 
advance was hut a natural sequence and development. There was no 
rushing into legislation in obedience to a popular cry ; but, on the 
contrary, the law-makers were practically educating the people. The 
next we hear of factory legislation is six years later, in 1881, when a 
Bill was brought in to consolidate the three previous Acts. It passed 
both Houses with an amendment in committee raising the limit of age 
of employment from ten to twelve years. “No person shall be 
employed in any factory uuder the ag3 of twelve years.” Here factory 
legislation rested for three years, when a flaw in the working of the 
Act was detected and remedied in 1884 by the omission of the words 
“ during working hours ’ in the clause dealing with factory inspection, 
thus giving authorised inspectors the power to enter and" inspect fac- 
tories and workrooms at any time. Of course, unless the inspectors 
had this power it would be absolutely impossible to check the growth of 
sweating and overtime work. The following year a further amendment 
