Page:Advanced Australia.djvu/67

, boot and shoe-making, clothing, and white work. No one is permitted to work outside a factory without receiving a permit from the chief inspector. The competition of the alien races is most severely restrained. One Chinaman working at the furniture trade is by law a factory, and is treated, and inspected, as such. The effect of all this legislation has been to make the condition of the slow, the aged, or the unhealthy workman worse than ever, the tendency being to drive all factories to employ only the best hands. It does not pay them to find room for the slow at piecework, and factories are not allowed to give the work out except under stringent conditions. When a minimum weekly or daily wage is fixed, as it is in some cases, only those who are well worth that wage are employed, and inferior or slow workmen have been driven out of work altogether, in spite of their piteous appeals to be allowed to earn what they can, and in spite of the reluctance of humane employers to refuse work to such cases. So great was the cruelty in many instances that the Chief Secretary has been obliged to break his own law, or to wink at its evasions. But the cry is for still more legislation, and just before the last session closed a Bill was introduced which provided that, where the door of any shop was found to be open after the closing hours fixed by law, the occupier should be deemed to be selling after hours, and be required to prove a negative to avoid a fine. At this proposal the Assembly revolted, and it was struck out; for it was pointed out that in hundreds of cases in the metropolis the front door of the shops is the only safe entry, after nightfall, to the dwelling attached. The dominion of the petty inspector is rapidly extending and becoming more burdensome. Whenever he finds a difficulty in obtaining a conviction, he asks for an amendment of the law; but fortunately there is a point at which the