Part 10

_Shop Hours._--In four brief acts, 1892 to 1899, still in force, the first very limited steps were taken towards the positive regulation of the employment of shop assistants. In the act of 1904 certain additional optional powers were given to any local authority making a "closing order" fixing the hour (not earlier than 7 P.M. or on one day in the week 1 P.M.) at which shops shall cease to serve customers throughout the area of the authority or any specified part thereof as regards all shops or as regards any specified class of shops. Before such an order can be made (1) a prima facie case for it must appear to the local authority; (2) the local authority must inquire and agree; (3) the order must be drafted and sent for confirmation or otherwise to the central authority, that is, the secretary of state for the Home Department; (4) the order must be laid before both Houses of Parliament. The Home Office has given every encouragement to the making of such orders, but their number in England is very small, and the act is practically inoperative in London and many large towns where the need is greatest. As the secretary of state pointed out in the House of Commons on the 1st of May 1907, the local authorities have not taken enough initiative, but at the same time there is a great difficulty for them in obtaining the required two-thirds majority, among occupiers of the shops to be affected, in favour of the order, and at the same time shop assistants have no power to set the law in motion. In England 364 local authorities have taken no steps, but in Scotland rather better results have been obtained. The House resolved, on the date named, that more drastic legislation is required. As regards shops, therefore, in place of such general codes as apply to factories, laundries, mines--only three kinds of protective requirement are binding on employers of shop assistants: (1) Limitation of the weekly total of hours of work of persons under eighteen years of age to seventy-four inclusive of meal-times; (2) prohibition of the employment of such persons in a shop on the same day that they have, to the knowledge of the employer, been employed in any factory or workshop for a longer period than would, in both classes of employment together, amount to the number of hours permitted to such persons in a factory or workshop; (3) provision for the supply of seats by the employer, in all rooms of a shop or other premises where goods are retailed to the public, for the use of female assistants employed in retailing the goods--the seats to be in the proportion of not fewer than one to every three female assistants. The first two requirements are contained in the act of 1892, which also prescribed that a notice, referring to the provisions of the act, and stating the number of hours in the week during which a young person may be lawfully employed in the shop, shall be kept exhibited by the employer; the third requirement was first provided by the act of 1899. The intervening acts of 1893 and 1895 are merely supplementary to the act of 1892; the former providing for the salaries and expenses of the inspectors which the council of any county or borough (and in the City of London the Common Council) were empowered by the act of 1892 to appoint; the latter providing a penalty of 40s. for failure of an employer to keep exhibited the notice of the provisions of the acts, which in the absence of a penalty it had been impossible to enforce. The penalty for employment contrary to the acts is a fine not exceeding £1 for each person so employed, and for failure to comply with the requirements as to seats, a fine not exceeding £3 for a first offence, and for any subsequent offence a fine of not less than £1 and not exceeding £5.

Meaning of "shop."

A wide interpretation is given by the act of 1892 to the class of workplace to which the limitation of hours applies. "Shop" means retail and wholesale shops, markets, stalls and warehouses in which assistants are employed for hire, and includes licensed public-houses and refreshment houses of any kind. The person responsible for the observance of the acts is the "employer" of the "young persons" (i.e. persons under the age of eighteen years), whose hours are limited, and of the "female assistants" for whom seats must be provided. Neither the term "employer" nor "shop assistant" (used in the title of the act of 1899) is defined; but other terms have the meaning assigned to them in the Factory and Workshop Act 1878. The "employer" has, in case of any contravention alleged, the same power as the "occupier" in the Factory Acts to exempt himself from fine on proof of due diligence and of the fact that some other person is the actual offender. The provisions of the act of 1892 do not apply to members of the same family living in a house of which the shop forms part, or to members of the employer's family, or to any one wholly employed as a domestic servant.

In London, where the County Council has appointed men and women inspectors to apply the acts of 1892 to 1899, there were, in 1900, 73,929 premises, and in 1905, 84,269, under inspection. In the latter year there were 22,035 employing persons under 18 years of age. In 1900 the number of young persons under the acts were: indoors, 10,239 boys and 4428 girls; outdoors, 35,019 boys, 206 girls. In 1905 the ratio between boys and girls had decidedly altered: indoors, 6602 boys, 4668 girls; outdoors, 22,654 boys, 308 girls. The number of irregularities reported in 1900 were 9204 and the prosecutions were 117; in 1905 the irregularities were 6966 and the prosecutions numbered 34. As regards the act of 1899, in only 1088 of the 14,844 shops affected in London was there found in 1900 to be failure to provide seats for the women employed in retailing goods. The chief officer of the Public Control Department reported that with very few exceptions the law was complied with at the end of the first year of its application.

As regards cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, water-supply and sanitary condition generally, shops have been since 1878 (by 41 Vict. c. 16, s. 101) subject to the provisions of the Public Health Act 1875, which apply to all buildings, except factories under the Factory Acts, in which any persons, whatever their number be, are employed. Thus, broadly, the same sanitary provisions apply in shops as in workshops, but in the former these are enforced solely by the officers of the local authority, without reservation of any power, as in workshops for the Home Office inspectorate, to act in default of the local authority.

Shop assistants, so far as they are engaged in manual, not merely clerical labour, come under the provisions of the Truck Acts 1831 to 1887, and in all circumstances they fall within the sections directed against unfair and unreasonable fines in the Truck Act of 1896; but, unlike employés in factories, workshops, laundries and mines, they are left to apply these provisions so far as they can themselves, since neither Home Office inspectors nor officers of the local authority have any specially assigned powers to administer the Truck Acts in shops.

The Truck Act 1887.

Persons benefited by Truck Acts.

_Truck._--Setting aside the special Hosiery Manufacture (Wages) Act 1874, aimed at a particular abuse appearing chiefly in the hosiery industry--the practice of making excessive charges on wages for machinery and frame rents--only two acts, those of 1887 and 1896, have been added to the general law against truck since the act of 1831, which repealed all prior Truck Acts and which remains the principal act. Further amendments of the law have been widely and strenuously demanded, and are hoped for as the result of the long inquiry by a departmental committee appointed early in 1906. The Truck Act Amendment Act 1887, amended and extended the act without adding any distinctly new principle; the Truck Act of 1896 was directed towards providing remedies for matters shown by decisions under the earlier Truck Acts to be outside the scope of the principles and provisions of those acts. Under the earlier acts the main objects were: (1) to make the wages of workmen, i.e. the reward of labour, payable only in current coin of the realm, and to prohibit whole or part payment of wages in food or drink or clothes or any other articles; (2) to forbid agreements, express or implied, between employer and workmen as to the manner or place in which, or articles on which, a workman shall expend his wages, or for the deduction from wages of the price of articles (other than materials to be used in the labour of the workmen) supplied by the employer. The act of 1887 added a further prohibition by making it illegal for an employer to charge interest on any advance of wages, "whenever by agreement, custom, or otherwise a workman is entitled to receive in anticipation of the regular period of the payment of his wages an advance as part or on account thereof." Further, it strengthened the section of the principal act which provided that no employer shall have any action against his workman for goods supplied at any shop belonging to the employer, or in which the employer is interested, by (a) securing any workman suing an employer for wages against any counter-claim in respect of goods supplied to the workman by any person under any order or direction of the employer, and (b) by expressly prohibiting an employer from dismissing any worker on account of any particular time, place or manner of expending his wages. Certain exemptions to the prohibition of payment otherwise than in coin were provided for in the act of 1831, if an agreement were made in writing and signed by the worker, viz. rent, victuals dressed and consumed under the employer's roof, medicine, fuel, provender for beasts of burden used in the trade, materials and tools for use by miners, advances for friendly societies or savings banks; in the case of fuel, provender and tools there was also a proviso that the charge should not exceed the real and true value. The act of 1887 amended these provisions by requiring a correct annual audit in the case of deductions for medicine or tools, by permitting part payment of servants in husbandry in food, drink (not intoxicants) or other allowances, and by prohibiting any deductions for sharpening or repairing workmen's tools except by agreement not forming part of the condition of hiring. Two important administrative amendments were made by the act of 1887: (1) a section similar to that in the Factory and Mines Acts was added, empowering the employer to exempt himself from penalty for contravention of the acts on proof that any other person was the actual offender and of his own due diligence in enforcing the execution of the acts; (2) the duty of enforcing the acts in factories, workshops, and mines was imposed upon the inspectors of the Factory and Mines Departments, respectively, of the Home Office, and to their task they were empowered to bring all the authorities and powers which they possessed in virtue of the acts under which they are appointed; these inspectors thus prosecute defaulting employers and recover penalties under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, but they do not undertake civil proceedings for improper deductions or payments, proceedings for which would lie with workmen under the Employers and Workmen Act 1875. The persons to whom the benefits of the act applied were added to by the act of 1887, which repealed the complicated list of trades contained in the principal act and substituted the simpler definition of the Employers and Workmen Act, 1875. Thus the acts 1831 to 1887, and also the act of 1896, apply to all workers (men, women and children) engaged in manual labour, except domestic servants; they apply not only in mines, factories and workshops, but, to quote the published Home Office Memorandum on the acts, "in all places where workpeople are engaged in manual labour under a contract with an employer, whether or no the employer be an owner or agent or a parent, or be himself a workman; and therefore a workman who employs and pays others under him must also observe the Truck Acts." The law thus in certain circumstances covers outworkers for a contractor or sub-contractor. A decision of the High Court at Dublin in 1900 (_Squire_ v. _Sweeney_) strengthened the inspectors in investigation of offences committed amongst outworkers by supporting the contention that inquiry and exercise of all the powers of an inspector could legally take place in parts of an employer's premises other than those in which the work is given out. It defined for Ireland, in a narrower sense than had hitherto been understood and acted upon by the Factory Department, the classes of outworkers protected, by deciding that only such as were under a contract personally to execute the work were covered. In 1905 the law in England was similarly declared in the decided case of _Squire_ v. _The Midland Lace Co._ The judges (Lord Alverstone, C.J.; and Kennedy and Ridley, J.J.) stated that they came to the conclusion with "reluctance," and said: "We venture to express the hope that some amendment of the law may be made so as to extend the protection of the Truck Act to a class of workpeople indistinguishable from those already within its provisions." The workers in question were lace-clippers taking out work to do in their homes, and in the words of the High Court decision "though they do sometimes employ assistants are evidently, as a class, wage-earning manual labourers and not contractors in the ordinary and popular sense." The principle relied on in the decision was that in the case of _Ingram_ v. _Barnes_.

Meaning of "wages."

The Truck Act 1896.

At the time of the passing of the act of 1887 it seems to have been generally believed that the obligation under the principal act to pay the "entire amount of wages earned" in coin rendered illegal any deductions from wages in respect of fines. Important decisions in 1888 and 1889 showed this belief to have been ill-founded. The essential point lies in the definition of the word "wages" as the "recompense, reward or remuneration of labour," which implies not necessarily any gross sum in question between employer and workmen where there is a contract to perform a certain piece of work, but that part of it, the real _net_ wage, which the workman was to get as his _recompense_ for the labour performed. As soon as it became clear that excessive deductions from wages as well as payments by workers for materials used in the work were not illegal, and that deductions or payments by way of compensation to employers or by way of discipline might legally (with the single exception of fines for lateness for women and children, regulated by the Employers and Workmen Act 1875) even exceed the degree of loss, hindrance or damage to the employer, it also came clearly into view that further legislation was desirable to extend the principles at the root of the Truck Acts. It was desirable, that is to say, to hinder more fully the unfair dealing that may be encouraged by half-defined customs in workplaces, on the part of the employer in making a contract, while at the same time leaving the principle of freedom of contract as far as possible untouched. The Truck Act of 1896 regulates the conditions under which deductions can be made by or payments made to the employer, out of the "sum contracted to be paid to the worker," i.e. out of any gross sum whatever agreed upon between employer and workman. It makes such deductions or payments illegal unless they are in pursuance of a contract; and it provides that deductions (or payments) for (a) fines, (b) bad work and damaged goods, (c) materials, machines, and any other thing provided by the employer in relation to the work shall be reasonable, and that particulars of the same in writing shall be given to the workman. In none of the cases mentioned is the employer to make any profit; neither by fines, for they may only be imposed in respect of acts or omissions which cause, or are likely to cause, loss or damage; nor by sale of materials, for the price may not exceed the cost to the employer; nor by deductions or payments for damage, for these may not exceed the actual or estimated loss to the employer. Fines and charges for damage must be "fair and reasonable having regard to all the circumstances of the case," and no contract could make legal a fine which a court held to be unfair to the workman in the sense of the act. The contract between the employer and workman must either be in writing signed by the workman, or its terms must be clearly stated in a notice constantly affixed in a place easily accessible to the workman to whom, if a party to the contract, a copy shall be given at the time of making the contract, and who shall be entitled, on request, to obtain from the employer a copy of the notice free of charge. On each occasion when a deduction or payment is made, full particulars in writing must be supplied to the workman. The employer is bound to keep a register of deductions or payments, and to enter therein particulars of any fine made under the contract, specifying the amount and nature of the act or omission in respect of which the fine was imposed. This register must be at all times open to inspectors of mines or factories, who are entitled to make a copy of the contract or any part of it. This act as a whole applies to all workmen included under the earlier Truck Acts; the sections relating to fines apply also to shop assistants. The latter, however, apparently are left to enforce the provisions of the law themselves, as no inspectorate is empowered to intervene on their behalf. In these and other cases a prosecution under the Truck Acts may be instituted by any person. Any workman or shop assistant may recover any sum deducted by or paid to his employer contrary to the act of 1896, provided that proceedings are commenced within six months, and that where he has acquiesced in the deduction or payment he shall only recover the excess over the amount which the court may find to have been fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. It is expressly declared in the act that nothing in it shall affect the provisions of the Coal Mines Acts with reference to payment by weight, or legalize any deductions, from payments made, in pursuance of those provisions. The powers and duties of inspectors are extended to cover the case of a laundry, and of any place where work is given out by the occupier of a factory or workshop or by a contractor or sub-contractor. Power is reserved for the secretary of state to exempt by order specified trades or branches of them in specified areas from the provisions of the act of 1896, if he is satisfied that they are unnecessary for the protection of the workmen. This power has been exercised only in respect of one highly organized industry, the Lancashire cotton industry. The effect of the exemption is not to prevent fines and deductions from being made, but the desire for it demonstrated that there are cases where leaders among workers have felt competent to make their own terms on their own lines without the specific conditions laid down in this act. The reports of the inspectors of factories have demonstrated that in other industries much work has had to be done under this act, and knowledge of a highly technical character to be gradually acquired, before opinions could be formed as to the reasonableness and fairness, or the contrary, of many forms of deduction. Owing partly to difficulties of legal interpretation involving the necessity of taking test cases into court, partly to the margin for differences of opinion as to what constitutes "reasonableness" in a deduction, the average number of convictions obtained on prosecutions is not so high as under the Factory Acts, though the average penalty imposed is higher. In 1904, 61 cases were taken into court resulting in 34 convictions with an average penalty of £1, 10s. In 1905, 38 cases resulting in 34 convictions were taken with an average penalty of £1, 3s. In 1906, 37 cases resulting in 25 convictions were taken with an average penalty of £1, 10s.

Reference should here be made to the Shop Clubs Act of 1902 as closely allied with some of the provisions of the Truck Acts by its provision that employers shall not make it a condition of employment that any workman shall become a member of a shop club unless it is registered under the Friendly Societies Act of 1896. As in the case of payment of wages in Public Houses Act, no special inspectorate has the duty of enforcing this act.

III. CONTINENTAL EUROPE

In comparing legislation affecting factories, mines, shops and truck in the chief industrial countries of the continent with that of Great Britain, it is essential to a just view that inquiry should be extended beyond the codes themselves to the general social order and system of law and administration in each country. Further, special comparison of the definitions and the sanctions of each industrial code must be recognized as necessary, for these vary in all. In so brief a summary as is appended here no more is possible than an outline indication of the main general requirements and prohibitions of the laws as regards: (1) hours and times of employment, (2) ordinary sanitation and special requirements for unhealthy and dangerous industries, (3) security against accidents, and (4) prevention of fraud and oppression in fulfilment of wage contracts. As regards the first of these subdivisions, in general in Europe the ordinary legal limit is rather wider than in Great Britain, being in several countries not less than 11 hours a day, and while in some, as in France, the normal limit is 10 hours daily, yet the administrative discretion in granting exceptions is rather more elastic. The weekly half-holiday is a peculiarly British institution. On the other hand, in several European countries, notably France, Austria, Switzerland and Russia, the legal maximum day applies to adult as well as youthful labour, and not only to specially protected classes of persons. As regards specialized sanitation for unhealthy factory industries, German regulations appear to be most nearly comparable with British. Mines' labour regulation in several countries, having an entirely different origin linked with ownership of mines, is only in few and most recent developments comparable with British Mines Regulation Acts. In regulation of shops, Germany, treating this matter as an integral part of her imperial industrial code, has advanced farther than has Great Britain. In truck legislation most European countries (with the exception of France) appear to have been influenced by the far earlier laws of Great Britain, although in some respects Belgium, with her rapid and recent industrial development, has made interesting original experiments. The rule of Sunday rest (see SUNDAY) has been extended in several countries, most recently in Belgium and Spain. In France this partially attempted rule has been so modified as to be practically a seventh day rest, not necessarily Sunday.