FACTORY LAWS US NEW ZEALAND. 
671 
and Auckland respectively. There is one woman inspector appointed 
for the North Island, and the remainder are police officers, gazetted 
as local inspectors of factories in their own districts. 
This Act of 1891 is the basis of our present legislation in regard 
to factories and workrooms. In it “ factory or workroom” is defined 
as a place where three or more persons are at work. “ Child” is a 
hoy under thirteen and a girl under fourteen. Cases are to be tried 
before a resident magistrate or two or more justices of the peace. This 
Act was slightly amended in 1892, chiefly in respect to sanitary regu- 
lations. In that session also the Minister of Labour carried through 
a Shops and Shop Assistants Act, to be worked in conjunction with 
the Factories Act, limiting the hours of business in shops. 
During the session of 1894, Mr. Reeves introduced Bills to con- 
solidate and amend the Factories Act, 1891, and the Shops Act, 1892. 
Both were passed ; the former came into operation at once, the latter 
upon the 1st of January, 1895. 
The Factories Act, 1894, under which we are working at present, 
is built on previous Acts, modified and extended in the directions found 
advisable after two years 5 practical experience of departmental working. 
In it a factory or workroom is defined as any office, building, or place 
m which two or more persons are engaged working for hire or reward 
in any handicraft, or in preparing or manufacturing articles for trade 
or sale ; and the occupier of a factory or workroom has to register 
annually before the 21st January, paying a fee according to schedule. 
The fee is 5s. per annum if not more than eight persons arc employed, 
and goes up to two guineas in cases where there are more than thirty 
employees. Records of names of persons employed, the ages of those 
under twenty, the description of their work, their weekly earnings 
have to be kept and produced for the inspector when demanded. 
Notices are posted up in each workroom with the name aud address 
of the inspector aud the working hours and holidays of the factory. 
The occupier has also to keep a record of work done for him elsewhere 
than in his factory ; and if it is done in a place not registered as a 
workroom, or in a private dwelling, must affix a label (according to 
schedule) to the articles thus made for sale, stating that they have 
been made up in a private dwelling, and giving the name and residence 
of the worker. The importance of this clause in checking sweating is 
self-evident. Take the lowest-paid work as an example -shirt and bag 
making. (One must remember here that in New Zealand there is 
a duty of 25 per cent, on imported made-up garments; consequently 
large local factories have been established for this description of 
work.) 
The registered shirt and slop factories are arranged in conformity 
with the factory laws — well-lighted, well-ventilated, with every 
sanitary convenience, with fixed working hours and holidays, and open 
to inspection at any time. But a woman goes to a retail trader and 
offers to machine shirts for him at perhaps fid. or Is. a dozen less than 
the wholesale factory price. She may do this by employing one or two 
young girls, and probably working long hours under insanitary con- 
ditions — in fact, here we have the beginning of the sweating system. 
Under this new clause of the present Act she finds that, if she employs 
even one girl, she must register as a factory and keep within the law, 
or, if she takes work home from a shop, her employer must label the 
