Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/47

 Rh democratic community, a ministry cannot afford to offend any considerable section of the population by inflicting penalties on them for judging for themselves on what they will think the purely personal question, whether they will have an hour's pay or an hour's leisure. A few of the factories—clothing factories chiefly—seem, however, to have adopted the eight hours rule of their own accord, but now they usually give out work to be done at home after factory hours, and no doubt specially to be paid for. But in the less important factories, and especially in private workshops, there is, according to the Report of the Royal Commission on Employés in Shops in 1884, no rule about hours of labour. 'Employés generally commence at 8.30 or 9 A.M.. and with half an hour's, or sometimes only a quarter of an hour's intermission for meals, they continue to labour often far into the night. Some of the hands also carry home the work with them, and labour for many hours after the factories are closed. In millinery and dressmaking there is often a show of complying with the more humane system of eight hours work daily; as a matter of fact, however, this is the exception rather than the rule. The front doors are closed, and young girls are kept for many hours, and during the busy season all night, to work and execute the orders received. There is reason to believe that no appreciable extra remuneration is given for the work done during over-hours. The greatest offenders in this respect—and this shows another of the means by which the eight hours Factory Act has been nullified—are employers who contract to evade the provisions of the Act by engaging only the number of hands that exempt them and their premises from the operation of the Act, and young girls are for the greater part the sufferers.'

There are a few special Acts with an eight hours clause in them, but even these seem to have been attended with some difficulty in the execution. Mr. Fairfield mentions two in his interesting essay on 'State Socialism in the Antipodes' in Mr. Mackay's Plea for Liberty. One is the Regulation of Mines Act, 1883, which forbids the employment of any person underground, except in case of emergency, for more than eight consecutive hours from the time he commences to descend the mine until he is relieved of his work, and for its better enforcement this Act was supplemented in 1886 by an Amending Act, which threw the burden of proving innocence of charges under it upon the mine-owner. The other is the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Act, also of the year 1883—the year in which, through the Shop Commission and general causes, public attention was specially