e
statute book. Its principle provisions were as follows: The limit of
prohibited labor was raised from nine to ten years, children in the
terms of the statute being those between ten and fourteen, and "young
persons" those between fourteen and eighteen years of age. For all
such the day's work must begin either at six or seven, and close at
the same hour respectively in the evening, two hours being allowed for
meal-times. All Saturdays and eight other days in the year must be
half-holidays, while the whole of Christmas Day and Good Friday, or
two alternative days, must be allowed as holidays. Children could work
for only one-half of each day or on the whole of alternate days, and
must attend school on the days or parts of days on which they did not
work. There were minute provisions governing sanitary conditions,
safety from machinery and in dangerous occupations, meal-times,
medical certificates of fitness for employment, and reports of
accidents. Finally there were the necessary body of provisions for
administration, enforcement, penalties, and exceptions.

Since 1878 there have been a number of extensions of the principle of
factory legislation, the most important of which are the following. In
1891 and 1895, amending acts were passed bringing laundries and docks
within the provisions of the law, making further rules against
overcrowding and other unsanitary conditions, increasing the age of
prohibited labor to eleven years, and making a beginning of the
regulation of "outworkers" or those engaged by "sweaters." "Sweating"
is manufacturing carried on by contractors or subcontractors on a
small scale, who usually have the work done in their own homes or in
single hired rooms by members of their families, or by poorly paid
employees who by one chance or another are not in a free and
independent relation to them. Many abuses exist in these "sweatshops."
The law so far is scarcely more than tentative, but in these
successive acts provisions have been made by which all manufacturers
or contractors must keep lists of outworkers engaged by them, and
submit these to the factory inspectors for supervision.

In 1892 a "Shop-hours Act" was passed prohibiting the employment of
any person under eighteen years of age more than seventy-four hours in
any week in any retail or wholesale store, shop, eating-house, market,
warehouse, or other similar establishment; and in 1893 the "Railway
Regulation Act" gave power to the Board of