Part 7

The special measures from 1878 to 1889 gave valuable precedents for further developments of special hygiene in factory life, but the next advance in the Factory and Workshop Act 1891, following the House of Lords Committee on the sweating system and the Berlin International Labour Conference, extended over much wider ground. Its principal objects were: (a) to render administration of the law relating to workshops more efficient, particularly as regards sanitation; with this end in view it made the primary controlling authority for sanitary matters in workshops the local sanitary authority (now the district council), acting by their officers, and giving them the powers of the less numerous body of factory inspectors, while at the same time the provisions of the Public Health Acts replaced in workshops the very similar sanitary provisions of the Factory Acts; (b) to provide for greater security against accidents and more efficient fencing of machinery in factories; (c) to extend the method of regulation of unhealthy or dangerous occupations by application of special rules and requirements to any incident of employment (other than in a domestic workshop) certified by the secretary of state to be dangerous or injurious to health or dangerous to life or limb; (d) to raise the age of employment of children and restrict the employment of women immediately after childbirth; (e) to require particulars of rate of wages to be given with work to piece-workers in certain branches of the textile industries; (f) to amend the act of 1878 in various subsidiary ways, with the view of improving the administration of its principles, e.g. by increasing the means of checking the amount of overtime worked, empowering inspectors to enter workplaces used as dwellings without a justice's warrant, and the imposition of minimum penalties in certain cases. On this act followed four years of greatly accelerated administrative activity. No fewer than sixteen trades were scheduled by the secretary of state as dangerous to health. The manner of preparing and establishing suitable rules was greatly modified by the act of 1901 and will be dealt with in that connexion.

The Factory and Workshop Act 1895 followed thus on a period of exercise of new powers of administrative regulation (the period being also that during which the Royal Commission on Labour made its wide survey of industrial conditions), and after two successive annual reports of the chief inspector of factories had embodied reports and recommendations from the women inspectors, who in 1893 were first added to the inspectorate. Again, the chief features of an even wider legislative effort than that of 1891 were the increased stringency and definiteness of the measures for securing hygienic and safe conditions of work. Some of these measures, however, involved new principles, as in the provision for the prohibition of the use of a dangerous machine or structure by the order of a magistrate's court, and the power to include in the special rules drawn up in pursuance of section 8 of the act of 1891, the prohibition of the employment of any class of persons, or the limitation of the period of employment of any class of persons in any process scheduled by order of the secretary of state. These last two powers have both been exercised, and with the exercise of the latter passed away, without opposition, the absolute freedom of the employer of the adult male labourer to carry on his manufacture without legislative limitation of the hours of labour. Second only in significance to these new developments was the addition, for the first time since 1867, of new classes of workplaces not covered by the general definitions in section 93 of the Consolidating Act of 1878, viz.: (a) laundries (with special conditions as to hours, &c.); (b) docks, wharves, quays, warehouses and premises on which machinery worked by power is temporarily used for the purpose of the construction of a building or any structural work in connexion with the building (for the purpose only of obtaining security against accidents). Other entirely new provisions in the act of 1895, later strengthened by the act of 1901, were the requirement of a reasonable temperature in workrooms, the requirement of lavatories for the use of persons employed in any department where poisonous substances are used, the obligation on occupiers and medical practitioners to report cases of industrial poisoning; and the penalties imposed on an employer wilfully allowing wearing apparel to be made, cleaned or repaired in a dwelling-house where an inmate is suffering from infectious disease. Another provision empowered the secretary of state to specify classes of outwork and areas with a view to the regulation of the sanitary condition of premises in which outworkers are employed. Owing to the conditions attached to its exercise, no case was found in which this power could come into operation, and the act of 1901 deals with the matter on new lines. The requirement of annual returns from occupiers of persons employed, and the competency of the person charged with infringing the act to give evidence in his defence, were important new provisions, as was also the adoption of the powers to direct a formal investigation of any accident on the lines laid down in section 45 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887. Other sections, relating to sanitation and safety, were developments of previous regulations, e.g. the fixing of a standard of overcrowding, provision of sanitary accommodation separate for each sex where the standard of the Public Health Act Amendment Act of 1890 had not been adopted by the competent local sanitary authority, power to order a fan or other mechanical means to carry off injurious gas, vapour or other impurity (the previous power covering only dust). The fencing of machinery and definition of accidents were made more precise, young persons were prohibited from cleaning dangerous machinery, and additional safeguards against risk of injury by fire or panic were introduced. On the question of employment the foremost amendments lay in the almost complete prohibition of overtime for young persons, and the restriction of the power of an employer to employ protected persons outside his factory or workshop on the same day that he had employed them in the factory or workshop. Under the head of particulars of work and wages to piece-workers an important new power, highly valued by the workers, was given to apply the principle with the necessary modifications by order of the secretary of state to industries other than textile and to outworkers as well as to those employed inside factories and workshops.

The act of 1901.

In 1899 an indirect modification of the limitation to employment of children was effected by the Elementary Education Amendment Act, which, by raising from eleven to twelve the minimum age at which a child may, by the by-laws of a local authority, obtain total or partial exemption from the obligation to attend school, made it unlawful for an occupier to take into employment any child under twelve in such a manner as to prevent full-time attendance at school. The age of employment became generally thereby the same as it has been for employment at a mine above ground since 1887. The act of 1901 made the prohibition of employment of a child under twelve in a factory or workshop direct and absolute. Under the divisions of sanitation, safety, fitness for employment, special regulation of dangerous trades, special control of bakehouses, exceptional treatment of creameries, new methods of dealing with home work and outworkers, important additions were made to the general law by the act of 1901, as also in regulations for strengthened administrative control. New general sanitary provisions were those prescribing: (a) ventilation _per se_ for every workroom, and empowering the secretary of state to fix a standard of sufficient ventilation; (b) drainage of wet floors; (c) the power of the secretary of state to define in certain cases what shall constitute sufficient and suitable sanitary accommodation. New safety provisions were those relating to--(a) Examination and report on steam boilers; (b) prohibition of employment of a child in cleaning below machinery in motion; (c) power of the district council to make by-laws for escape in case of fire. The most important administrative alterations were: (a) a justice engaged in the same trade as, or being officer of an association of persons engaged in the same trade as, a person charged with an offence may not act at the hearing and determination of the charge; (b) ordinary supervision of sanitary conditions under which outwork is carried on was transferred to the district council, power being reserved to the Home Office to intervene in case of neglect or default by any district council.

Acts of 1903, 1906, 1907.

The Employment of Children Act 1903, while primarily providing for industries outside the scope of the Factory Act, incidentally secured that children employed as half-timers should not also be employed in other occupations. The Notice of Accidents Act 1906 amended the whole system of notification of accidents, simultaneously in mines, quarries, factories and workshops, and will be set out in following paragraphs. The Factory and Workshop Act of 1907 amended the law in respect of laundries by generally applying the provisions of 1901 to trade laundries while granting them choice of new exceptional periods, and by extending the provisions of the act (with certain powers to the Home Office by Orders laid before parliament to allow variations) to institution laundries carried on for charitable or reformatory purposes. The Employment of Women Act 1907 repealed an exemption in the act of 1901 (and earlier acts) relating to employment of women in flax scutch mills, thus bringing this employment under the ordinary provisions as to period of employment.

The following paragraphs aim at presenting an idea of the scope of the modified and amended law, as a whole, adding where clearly necessary reference to the effect of acts, which ceased to apply after the 31st of December 1901:--

Definitions.

The workplaces to which the act applies are, first, "factories" and "workshops"; secondly, laundries, docks, wharves, &c., enumerated above as introduced and regulated partially only by the act of 1895 and subsequent acts. Apart from this secondary list, and having regard to workplaces which remain undefined by the law, the act may broadly be said to apply to premises, rooms or places in which manual labour, with or without the aid of mechanical power, is exercised for gain in or incidental to the making, altering, repairing, ornamenting, washing, cleaning or finishing or adapting for sale of any article or part of any article. If steam, water or other mechanical power is used in aid of the manufacturing process, the workplace is a factory; if not, it is a workshop. There is, however, a list of eighteen classes of works (brought under the factory law for reasons of safety, &c., before workshops generally were regulated) which are defined as factories whether power is used in them or not. Factories are, again, subdivided into textile and non-textile: they are textile if the machinery is employed in preparing, manufacturing or finishing cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, tow, China grass, cocoanut fibre or other like material either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material, or any fabric made thereof; all other factories are non-textile. The distinction turns on the historical origin of factory regulation and the regulations in textile factories remain in some respects slightly more stringent than in the non-textile factories and workshops, though the general provisions are almost the same. Three special classes of workshops have for certain purposes to be distinguished from ordinary workshops, which include tenement workshops: (a) Domestic workshops, i.e. any private house, room or place, which, though used as a dwelling, is by reason of the work carried on there a workshop, and in which the only persons employed are members of the same family, dwelling there alone--in these women's hours are unrestricted; (b) Women's workshops, in which neither children nor young persons are employed--in these a more elastic arrangement of hours is permissible than in ordinary workshops; (c) Workshops in which men only are employed--these come under the same general regulations in regard to sanitation as other workshops, also under the provisions of the Factory Act as regards security, and, if certified by the secretary of state, may be brought under special regulations. They are otherwise outside the scope of the act of 1901.

The person to whom the regulations apply in the above-defined workplaces are _children_, i.e. persons between the ages of twelve and fourteen, _young persons_, i.e. boys or girls between the ages of fourteen (or if an educational certificate has been obtained, thirteen) and eighteen years of age, and _women_, i.e. females above the age of eighteen; these are all "protected" persons to whom the general provisions of the act, inclusive of the regulation of hours and times of employment, apply. To adult men generally those provisions broadly only apply which are aimed at securing sanitation and safety in the conduct of the manufacturing process.

The person generally responsible for observance of the provisions of the law, whether these relate to health, safety, limitation of the hours of labour or other matters, is the _occupier_ (a term undefined in the act) of the factory, workshop or laundry. There are, however, limits to his responsibility: (a) generally, where the occupier has used due diligence to enforce the execution of the act, and can show that another person, whether agent, servant, workman or other person, is the real offender; (b) specially in a factory the sections relating to employment of protected persons, where the owner or hirer of a machine or implement driven by mechanical power is some person other than the occupier of the factory, the owner or hirer, so far as respects any offence against the act committed in relation to a person who is employed in connexion with the machine or implement, and is in the employment or pay of the owner or hirer, shall be deemed to be the occupier of the factory; (c) for the one purpose of reporting accidents, the actual employer of the person injured in any factory or workshop is bound under penalty immediately to report the same to the occupier; (d) so far as relates to sanitary conditions, fencing of machinery, affixing of notices in _tenement_ factories, the _owner_ (as defined by the Public Health Act 1875), generally speaking, takes the place of the occupier.

Employment in a factory or workshop includes work whether for wages or not: (a) in a manufacturing process or handicraft, (b) in cleaning any place used for the same, (c) in cleaning or oiling any part of the machinery, (d) any work whatsoever incidental to the process or handicraft, or connected with the article made. Persons found in any part of the factory or workshop, where machinery is used or manufacture carried on, except at meal-times, or when machinery is stopped, are deemed to be employed until the contrary is proved. The act, however, does not apply to employment for the sole purpose of repairing the premises or machinery, nor to the process of preserving and curing fish immediately upon its arrival in the fishing boats in order to prevent the fish from being destroyed or spoiled, nor to the process of cleaning and preparing fruit so far as is necessary to prevent it from spoiling during the months of June, July, August and September. Certain light handicrafts carried on by a family only in a private house or room at irregular intervals are also outside the scope of the act.

Sanitation.

The foremost provisions are those relating to the sanitary condition of the workplaces and the general security of every class of worker. Every factory must be kept in a cleanly condition, free from noxious effluvia, ventilated in such a manner as to render harmless, so far as practicable, gases, vapours, dust or other impurities generated in the manufacture; must be provided with sufficient and suitable sanitary conveniences separate for the sexes; must not be overcrowded (not less than 250 cubic ft. during the day, 400 during overtime, for each worker). In these matters the law of public health takes in workshops the place of the Factory Act, the requirements being substantially the same. Although, however, primarily the officers of the district council enforce the sanitary provisions in workshops, the government factory inspectors may give notice of any defect in them to the district council in whose district they are situate; and if proceedings are not taken within one month by the latter, the factory inspector may act in default and recover expenses from the district council. This power does not extend to domestic workshops which are under the law relating to public health so far as general sanitation is concerned. General powers are reserved to the secretary of state, where he is satisfied that the Factory Act or law relating to public health as regards workplaces has not been carried out by any district council, to authorize a factory inspector during a period named in his order to act instead of the district council. Other general sanitary provisions administered by the government inspectors are the requirement in factories and workshops of washing conveniences where poisonous substances are used; adequate measures for securing and maintaining a reasonable temperature of such a kind as will not interfere with the purity of the air in each room in which any person is employed; maintenance of sufficient means of ventilation in every room in a factory or workshop (in conformity with such standard as may be prescribed by order of the secretary of state); provision of a fan to carry off injurious dust, gas or other impurity, and prevent their inhalation in any factory or workshop; drainage of floors where wet processes are carried on. For laundries and bakehouses there are further sanitary regulations; e.g. in laundries all stoves for heating irons shall be sufficiently separated from any ironing-room or ironing-table, and the floors shall be "drained in such a manner as will allow the water to flow off freely"; and in bakehouses a cistern supplying water to a bakehouse must be quite separate from that supplying water to a water-closet, and the latter may not communicate directly with the bakehouse. Use of underground bakehouses (i.e. a baking room with floor more than 3 ft. below the ground adjoining) is prohibited, except where already used at the passing of the act; further, in these cases, after 1st January 1904, a certificate as to suitability in light, ventilation, &c., must be obtained from the district council. In other trades certified by the secretary of state further sanitary regulations may be made to increase security for health by special rules to be presently touched on. The secretary of state may also make sanitary requirements a condition of granting such exceptions to the general law as he is empowered to grant. In factories, as distinct from workshops, a periodical lime washing (or washing with hot water and soap where paint and varnish have been used) of all inside walls and ceilings once at least in every fourteen months is generally required (in bakehouses once in six months). As regards sufficiency and suitability of sanitary accommodation, the standards determined by order of the secretary of state shall be observed in the districts to which it is made applicable. An order was made called the Sanitary Accommodation Order, on the 4th of February 1903, the definitions and standards in which have also been widely adopted by local sanitary authorities in districts where the Order itself has no legal force, the local authority having parallel power under the Public Health Act of 1890.

Security and accidents.