Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/545

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 523 part of its weaving business. But the two demands most generally preferred on behalf of the workpeople were for an amendment of the Employers' Liability Act, making the employer responsible for accidents, whether he received notice of defect in the machinery or no, and for more efficient factory inspection. It was strongly represented by most of the working-class witnesses that the number of inspectors. was far too few, and Mr. Mawdsley passed some very severe criticism on the way they did their duty. ' Crib-time' he alleged, though sup- pressed entirely in some places through the activity of the inspectors, was habitually practised elswhere to the extent of two and a half hours a week beyond the legal time. Two teachers gave evidence against the physical and educational effects of the half-time system, and Mr. Simpson for the employers asked, among other things, for a law to suppress picketing, though he was unable to explain what he exactly desired. The third group of trades investigated by the Commission is much less happily situated than the other two, organization being as yet immature,. and life and opinion being dominated by the great fact of the extreme irregularity of employment prevailing in them. Even among the dock and riverside labourers however, some groups are comparatively free from complaint. The stevedores, for example, according to Messrs. Cridge and Donoran, members of the Stevedores' Union, had been little better than slaves before 1872 when they founded their union, but the union immediately got their wages raised from 4s. to 6s. a day, and they now made on an average of the whole year about 18s. a week, and forty or fifty per cent. of them made something extra as members of the Naval Reserve, putting in their drill in the slack seasons of their own trade. To mitigate irregularity a little and spread the work better, the union made it a rule that no member should work consecutively more than one day and one night (i.e. nine hours and eleven hours), after which he must give place to another man, and rest himself for twenty-four hours; and Mr. Donoran was in fayour of extending this principle and restricting all stevedore work to forty-eight hours a week, which however he thought could not be done by the union but only by law. They settled disputes by conciliation and arbitration, and had only had one strike in nineteen years. The only nrgent demand they preferred was for better protection against accidents, by altering the doctrines of common employ- nent and contributory negligence in the Employers' Liability Act, and by the official inspection of all stevedore gearing by government inspectors, who ought to be practical men. Mr. Donoran was in fayour of the co-.operative gang system, and Mr. Cridge of constituting the vhole union a single co-operative gang, to undertake all work and divide the proceeds equally. The various branches of the dockers were represented by many witnesses, the principal being Mr. Ben Tillett, the general secretary of their mion, who gave a very dark picture of the situation. Things were worse, he said, for the casual worker since the strike, and other witnesses corroborated the statement. The dock