§ * THE SECRETARY OK STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,) Kent, St. Augustine'sIt is nearly a hundred years since legislation for the protection of children commenced. Since then a long series of Factory Acts has been passed, tin' age dealt with has been advanced from eight to twelve, and I he hours of labour for children have been limited. And. further than this, a system has been established under which the regular attendance at school is made compulsory, and there has been a provision for half-timers. But the effect of these provisions has been for the most part confined to industries in which children are employed at regular hours and in considerable numbers, and the Education Acts, by making education compulsory, and by prohibiting the labour of children during the hours at which the law requires them to be at school, has made the regular daily employment of children illegal. Up to now the employment of children outside school hours is wholly unregulated. In the year 1901 the late Home Secretary appointed a Committee to enquire into the question of the employment of children during school hours, and they reported that it was desirable to make an alteration in the laws relating to child labour and school attendance, and in the administration of those laws. The Bill that I am now introducing is based upon the recommendations of that Committee.
This measure proposes to give powers to County Councils and to Borough Councils to make bye laws for regulating the employment of children by prescribing the age below which, and the hours beyond which, employment would be illegal; by prescribing the hours between which it is illegal, and restricting the employment of children in certain specified occupations which may 1423 be shown either to be harmful to health or dangerous to their morals. Further, this Bill will prohibit the employment of children in certain specified occupations, such as the carrying of heavy weights and work of that sort, which is undoubtedly injurious to their health, and which is likely to be injurious to life and limb. The bye-laws, of course, will not affect children who are already protected under the Factory Acts and the Mines Acts, and will not apply to children over twelve years of age who, under the Half-Timers Act, are wholly exempted from the obligations to attend school. This measure further gives power to make bye-laws for the regulation of street trading by. children under the age of sixteen years, and it prohibits altogether such employment under the age of eleven years. The making of bye-laws is entirely at the option of the Councils, but when they are made they have to receive the sanction of the Secretary of State before they come into operation, and if there be any idea that the scheme does not represent the general view of the locality of course an individual enquiry can be made in that district.
I do not think in introducing a Bill of this sort, which I venture to hope has the general approbation of the whole House, it is necessary to deal very much longer with it. I believe the Bill if it is passed will do a great deal to counteract the dangers to which these children are now exposed, both in regard to their health and morals, and I trust the House will not only allow me to introduce the Bill, but that they will receive it as kindly and with as sincere a promise of success as was promised to a similar Bill last session.
§ MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON (Dundee)I do not propose to discuss this question now. I congratulate the light hon. Gentleman on having introduced the Bill and only desire to ask for some information as to the territorial limits of it. I rather gathered from the right hon. Gentleman's remarks that it was a purely English Bill. What I want to know is, is it intended to extend its operations to Scotland?
§ * MR. AKERS DOUGLASLast year there was a feeling in Scotland against the Bill, but that has passed away and the Bill will now be made to extend to Scotland.
§ MR. EDMUND ROBERTSONI am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman; that is all I wanted to know.
§ * MR. TENNANT (Berwickshire)All those hon. and right hon. Members who remember a remarkable speech of the right hon. Member for the Cambridge University upon this subject must congratulate the Secretary of State for Home Affairs upon what he has just said. There are just one or two questions I should like to ask. The right hon. Gentleman said his Bill gave the local authorities power to act in these matters. Does that mean that there is a compulsory power to compel local authorities to carry out the provisions of this Bill? If so I am very glad to hear it, as I was to hear that my native country is not to be debarred from the blessings of this Bill, and I should like to ask whether one of the most significant clauses in the Report of the Committee is given effect to in it. The Clause I refer to is that in which the Committee states that some of the worst evils found in child labour had been found in those small exempted laundries which do not come within the purview of the Factory Act. Some of them are the most evil dens it is possible to conceive, but they were exempted on the ground that only the woman and her children worked there. But the children work intolerably long hours, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman has taken that into account in the measure he now introduces.
§ SIR JOHN GORST (Cambridge University)I hope the House will allow me to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for bringing in this Bill at this date, and to express the hope that during the present session it will pass into law. In introducing legislation of this sort I rather regretted that the right hon. Gentleman did not give honour where honour was due. This question was brought to public attention by a lady who, unhappily, is now no more—Mrs. Hogg—who took a vast amount of 1425 trouble and made inquiries in schools and other places, and laid very definite information before the Secretary of State of that day, and it is due to her that the Home Secretary and the Board of Education took the matter up and passed the legislation they have. I am sure the whole of us regret that Mrs. Hogg did not live to see the result of her labours. I am sure my right hon. friend may take it that every side of the House will give the greatest service to help him in this matter, but I should like to point out that this Bill only touches the fringe of a great question. At an enormous expense the country provides instruction in our public schools for all the children of the country, but. unhappily, a very great number of those children come to school in a state totally unfit to profit by that instruction: indeed they come to school in such a state that it is absolute cruelty to compel them to engage in intellectual labour, and, in consequence, many of the masters allow these children to sleep at their desks, or, at any rate, do not allow them to take part in the studies. I hope in this Bill the right hon. Gentleman will try and take a broad view. and will afford such protection as will insure that a child shall come to school in a fit state to receive instruction.
§ * DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)also congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on this measure. He had worked with Mrs. Hogg in this matter, and lately he had found thousands of cases of little children who, having clone twenty-seven-and-a-half hours in school, every week were still putting in anything between thirty and sixty hours of hard and severe labour, working right up to midnight in many cases; children of tender age who were compelled to deliver milk up to school time, who ran errands during the whole of the dinner hour, and who sold newspapers or vended flowers up to midnight. He would be happy to help the Government in any effort to put a stop to such a condition.
He had, in his own experience, known of boys dragged up at three in the morning to go to the flower market at Covent Garden, who got back to the East End of London at nine o'clock, who 1426 then went to school and fell asleep on their desks; who ran errands during the whole of their dinner hour; who having slept again all through afternoon school, had sold flowers or newspapers right up to ten o'clock at night. Another boy at Marylebone, now unhappily dead, occupied the whole of his leisure time measuring corpses as assistant to an undertaker. Anything more shocking could scarcely be imagined. The whole thing had filled him with shame and indignation. The Government must, of course, mix up the desirable with the possible. We could not move fast in this matter, but, on the contrary, very slowly. He did not know whether this Bill had not got its eye rather on the possible than on the desirable, but small as it was, the Bill was before the House, and he hoped the Second Reading would be taken as soon as possible, and having got that, the Bill might go to a Grand Committee, where a few suggestions could be made to the Home Secretary which might strengthen it. These he would suggest later.
§ MR. MIDDLEMORE (Birmingham N.)I should like to join in the chorus of congratulations that has risen from both sides of the House, on the prospects of a Bill so much needed, and which, when we see it we shall, I think, admit will do much good. I myself have met children going to their work at 3 and 3.30 in the morning, and, as has been pointed out, they go to school exhausted and spiritless and unable to work. I do not think it is fully realised how much the physical standard of the country is deteriorating by the miserable conditions in which these children are brought up. And if things are allowed to go on in this way, we may become a degenerate nation. Let me illustrate my meaning. It was my duty some time ago to be in attendance at a Charity; a boy called to see me, he looked about fourteen years old, was very slouching in his gait and aggressive in his demeanour. I tapped him smartly under the chin and said, "Hold up your head like a man," when he replied "What are you hitting me for, I am a man and I am married." That was a striking instance of degeneracy. The man ought to have been several inches taller, several inches broader, and 1427 he ought not to have been married. I hope this Bill will give to the child some of its rights, and, among others, the right to enjoy some of its life.
§ MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)The House of Commons has listened to a chorus of congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman on the little measure he has introduced. I agree with those congratulations, but wish to supplement them with a word of advice. I would venture to suggest that in certain quarters outside the House this Bill may be received with a good deal of opposition, and I appeal to the Home Secretary to see that between this and the passing of the Bill into law it is not whittled away, and, what is more, I would urge him to strengthen it.
As to the merits of the Bill, take the proposal to interfere with street trading. The Bill is to give local authorities power to regulate street trading up to the age of sixteen, and to prohibit it in the ease of children under eleven. So far so good. But I can assure the light hon. Gentleman that a great number of tobacconists, milk men, and newsagents will try to reduce the age for prohibition irons eleven to seven or nine, while many will say, "Why interfere with street trading up to sixteen years of age?" The opposition to this excellent proposal will come from people who have more weight in these matters than they ought to have, viz., the newspaper proprietors, who are interested in taking the vitals out of this Bill. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to budge from sixteen, and if he wants a reason why it should be raised to eighteen, or even twenty, let him go to some of the newspaper offices, within fifty yards of Fleet Street, when the editions of the evening papers are coming out. He will there see from 50 to 200 boys fighting literally like beasts for their parcels of papers and behaving in a disgraceful and scandalous manner. I am not blaming the boys—the stress of competition is so keen, and the conditions under which they have to earn their bread are so demoralising and degrading. Let him have a chat with the City policeman, who, with a cane, is kept outside and sometimes inside these offices, as to the way in which these lads are treated 1428 in order to provide some "Yellow Press" proprietors with West-end mansions and high dividends, and he will find reasons why the age should be higher than sixteen.
As to the parents, I would warn the right hon. Gentleman against the "poor lone widow." She will doubtless be invoked on the Grand Committee. Fancy pictures will be drawn of the lady who does a little charing, alternating with some of the duties of Mrs. Gamp, who has two or three children, one selling flowers at Victoria Station, another selling newspapers at Charing Cross, and another who has to be up with the milk at four o'clock in the morning or selling newspapers until twelve o'clock at night. Let the right hon. Gentleman "beware of widders," and take no notice of the lady who too frequently lives out of the labours of the children in order to get more gin than is good for her health and to keep later hours than are desirable.
Above all, let the right hon. Gentleman remember what the physique, morals, and language of these boysare. I read the other day with surprise and pain an excellent article by General Morris, Governor of Woolwich Garrison, confirming the recruiting statistics from Lancashire and elsewhere, from which it appears that out of 11,000 recruits from 3,000 to 4,000 were rejected as unfit. What is the reason? It is that these boys in their early years live in overcrowded slums and rooms; their years of school life are not sufficient to teach them to live and behave properly; the temptation for them to be driven out by their fathers, who are often out of work, or by their mothers who are not as good mothers as they might be, is so strong that when the boys are over the school age they earn a little money by selling newspapers, holding horses, and so forth. I know nothing more demoralising to a man and to the unskilled labour market than casual labour, but its effect on boys and girls under sixteen is infinitely worse. Some of the newspapers will oppose it; some of the parents will obstruct it; and shopkeepers will say that it goes too far. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to stiffen his back on this matter, and, if possible, to bring the industrial schools and private houses in which cruel cases of over work are proved within the purview of the Bill. We 1429 have hundreds of men and women out of employment simply because their children are allowed to undersell them in the labour market; by which practice the children are demoralised, and the rate of wages for adult labour lowered.
SIR; GEORGE BARTLEY (Islington, N.)suggested that the Home Secretary should, if possible, bring the employment of children for begging purposes within the scope of the Bill. It was not really an employment, but it was one of the most demoralising uses to which children could be put, and it might escape attention unless special attention were drawn to it.
§ MR. SHACKLETON (Lancashire, Clitheroe)desired to join in the chorus of thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for bringing in this Bill, which he hoped would receive the unanimous support of the House. As to the selling of newspapers by children, he thought there would be less ground for complaint on that score if the Home Secretary would bring in another Bill prohibiting the publication of betting news.
§ MR. BROADHURST (Leicester)urged the right hon. Gentleman to be careful In his definition of "local authority." That would be an important point in the measure, because many small places employed children to as large an extent as the larger towns. He hoped, too, that it would be made compulsory on local authorities to put the Bill in operation, otherwise many bodies would be only too glad to avoid the trouble and. in some cases, the unpopularity of putting the Bill in force. The Bill would be held in quite sufficient restraint in its administration by the magistrates, so that there need be no fear of making it too strict.
"Bill to make better provision for regulating the employment of children, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Secretary Akers Douglas and Mr. Cochrane.