Factory and Shop Legislation

Southland Times, Issue 13366, 16 November 1895, Page 2

Factory and Shop Legislation

United Press Association.— By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. ) Melbourne, Nov. 15. A Factories and Shops Act Amendment Bill has been committed. New clauses have been inserted providing that n> one employed in any factory or workshop shall receive less than 2s 6d a week ; preventing sales of meat on Sunday ; providing for a weekly half-holiday to every shop assistant, and bringing waitresses in restaurants,coffee palaces, and fish shops under the operation of the bill. [ln moving the second reading of the bill Mr Peacock, after pointing out wherein legislation had failed to produce the reforms hoped for, proceeded to explain the leading provisions in the amending bill. The main scope of the measure was to give help and protection to women and children, who had to work in factories and shops, and who were powerless to defend themselves; to put down the terrible and growing evil of “sweating” and to regulate the competition of Chinese operatives in the furniture trade, which trade had practically been ruined by Chinese cheap labour, and was now in such a deplorable state that only some 64 Europeans were employed in it, as against 246 Chinese. Moreover the competition amongst the Chinese themselves had reached such a point that the Mongolians were now “ sweating ” one another. To remedy the state of the furniture tradSl the bill proposed that no Chinaman be permitted to sleep in his workroom, not to commence work before 7.30 a.m., nor to continue work after 5 p.m. on week days and 2 p.m. on Saturdays A study of Mr Peacock’s bill (says the Age) raises some surprise that its author should find it necessary to excuse it from the. imputation of being “drastic.” So far from over-zeal being its fault, it will appear to many people that itis amenable to the charge of not being sufficiently thorough. The member for Hawthorn disbelieves, as he told the House, in any effectual legislative remedy being found against industrial tyranny. He thinks that we should leave the delectable sweater to the ameliorating influences of an awakened conscience. The grinding employer, he feels assured, does not grind the faces of the [poor from any selfish motive. He is merely thoughtless, and what we have to do is to arouse his altruistic feelings, which are only dormant. This is the usual claptrap of the defender of the foul practices which Mr Peacock described to a breathless Chamber. The Chief Secretary has been travelling incog, amongst the sweaters and the sweated. He told the

House of helpless women working from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.—for seventeen weary hours in the twenty-four—for 9a, a week, or a penny an hour. These poor creatures can at best drag out a few unutterably dreary years, and then die premature deaths from exhaustion ; and all that some sweater may jingle his unjustly-got guineas, and revel in affluence and luxury. Then we have the spectacle of a member of Parliament standing up and telling a Legislative Chamber that the intermediary who did to death these hapless toilers was at heart a really good and ' virtuous being, and that he sinned, not from selfishness, but from carelessness. All he needs, says Mr R. M. Smith, is not repressive legislation, which is useless, but a few gentle jogs to arouse his better nature. It is scarcely possible to treat seriously stuff of this kind.' All the thousand facts of dai'y life, revealed in numberless reports of Commissions here and in England, prove incontestably that it is the grinding competition of unrestricted trade which cuts into wages and through them into human life. So far from being an inadvertence, it has been demonstrated a thousand times, and admitted by the most philosophical minds, that this illegitimate pursuit of the traders’ ideal is responsible for a demoralisation of society in the mass and of man in the individual. But even Mr R. M. Smith was forced to own that there was a good deal in Mr Peacock’s Bill that he could assent to. For instance, Mr Peacock, who saw with his own eyes the misery and destitution for which he invites the House to legislate, told hon. members it was the custom among employers to appeal to the Chief Secretary to save them from exposure when detected in sweating,and for the future he proposed that these gentry should be compelled to keep a record for open inspection of all work given out. By this means the middlemen would be brought under the law, for they would also have to keep a record. The effect of this provision would be to make it known into whose pockets the sweated money went, and this result, Mr R. M. Smith admitted, was worth obtaining at any cost. Another new and most important proposal was to secure a minimum rate of pay for articles of apparel whether made inside or outside the factories.