Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/547

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 525 THE EIGHT HOURS' DAY IN AUSTRALIA. IN the last number but one of the Tiibimjen Zeitschrift fiir die Gesam,&te Staatswsenschaft Dr. G. Rubland has a paper full of informa- tion from original sources on ' The Eight Hours Day of Labour and Labour Protection Legislation in Australia.' What strikes us is that in these working-class colonies, where certainly no undue alarm is entertained of state interference, so little has been done in the way of labour legislation as compared with the countries of the old world. New South Wales, Queensland Western Australia, and South Australia have no Factory or Workshop Act of any kind, and Western Australia has neither Trades Union Act nor Employers' Liability Act. A Trades Union Act was passed in South Australia in 1876, in New South Wales in 1881, and in Queensland in 1886; and an Employers' Liability Act in South Australia in 1884, in New South Wales in 1886, and in Queensland in 1888. Tasmania has no Employers' Liability Act, but Victoria passed one in 1886, and ew Zealand in 1882. New Zealand has had a Trades Union Act since 1878, Victoria since 1884, and Tasmania since 1887. These Acts follow the lines of the English Acts on the same subjects. Victoria was the first of the South Sea Colonies to move in factory legislation by its Act of 1874, though Dr. Ruhland only mentions the subsequent Acts of 1885 and 1887; then New Zealand followed with its Employment of Females and Others Act in 1881, and Tasmania with a similar Act in 1884. This Tasmanian Act is a ten hours Act, which is curious, because we know from Just's official Handbook of Tasmania for 1883 that eight hours was already the custom in some of the factories of that colony. The New Zealand Act fixes the limit of working age at twelve years, and the Victorian Act at thirteen, and both fix eight hours as the limit of the working day for women and young persons (in New Zealand persons under eighteen, and in Victoria under sixteen). In New Zealand and Tasmania the enforcement of the Act is intrusted to the local police, but in Victoria to a body of factory inspectors as in this country. A factory in the sense of the Victorian Act is any workroom in which six or more persons are employed, if they are not all of one family, or in which steam or other motor power is used for at least three months in the year. The minister may, with the consent of the workpeople, grant dispensations for lengthening the legal hours, except in the case of newspaper printing offices. A peculiar feature of the Act is that the prohibited age is extended for certain dangerous occupations in white lead and quicksilver work, for example, to eighteen for both sexes, in glass-works to fourteen for boys and eighteen for girls, in salt-works and brickfields to sixteen for git!s, in some cutlery operations to fourteen, and in others to sixteen for all. Three articles of the Act provide for the closing of shops at 7 p.m., except on Saturdays and the day before a holiday, when they may remain open till 10, but they expressly exclude