Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/548

 526 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL drug stores, coffee houses, restaurants, fish and oyster shops, confection- ery, vegetable, tobacco, and book and newspaper shops, and any other class of shop in which, after a petition from a majority of the shop- keepers, the town council may please to fix other hours. The number of establishments under factory inspection in Victoria in 1889 was 2,522, with a total of 47,223 operatives, of whom 12,373 were females, but only five of these female operatives wrought in an establishment in which steam or any other sort of power was used a fact which shows in a telling way how completely what we in common speech call factories i.e. mills with machinery driven by steam or water have excluded themselves from the operation of the Act. The inspector's duty is to look after a throng of very small workrooms, the average number of employes in each being 27 in 1886, 25 in 1887, 23 in 1888, and only 19 in 1889, the progressive diminution being probably due to the inspector's increasing success in getting at the smallest class of workshop. The number of male operatives is in- creasing faster than the number of female operatives, which is usually thought a good sign. The figures are: Year. Male. Female. 1886 ... 28,479 ... 11,027 1887 ... 29,969 ... 11,114 1888 ... 31,648 ... 11,640 1889 ... 34,850 ... 12,373 Overtime is allowed by the chief factory inspector on the application of the employer with the express concurrence of the employes, but it is only allowed in certain industries and for certain busy seasons. 1887 out of 40 different industries in which females are employed only 14 petitioned for overtime, and out of 11,114 females employed only 3,811 wrought overtime. In the clothing establishments, of which there were 592 registered with 9,345 female operatives, only 107 with 3,116 female hands petitioned for overtime. Less than one-fifth of the establishments in this particular industry asked for overtime, but those that did so employed more than a third of [he female operatives, so that we find in Victoria a different result from what we find in this country there it is the large establishment rather than the small one that works most overtime. In all, 131 establishments wrought overtime that year, and they wrought between them 10,019 extra hours. They thus wrought on an average about ten weeks overtime each of 7 hours a week. In 1888 the permitted overtime came to about 8 hours a week for nearly ten weeks almost the same amount but then apparently it is very common in all kinds of establishments to work longer than the inspector has sanctioned, for he complains in his reports of the difficulty of obtaining evidence of these excessive hours, especially from the women. The wool-mills and rope-works have neYer adopted