§ Mr. CROOKSI beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the Factory Acts in relation to hours of labour."
4.0.P.M.
The object of this Bill is to amend the Factory Acts in one particular. At the present moment under the law women and young persons who are tailoresses work from eight o'clock to eight o'clock including meal times, and until four o'clock on Saturday. The House will be alive at once to the fact of how tremendously long those hours are. I hope we have long got past the time when we shall be told that they have their own remedy with regard to those hours. There never can be an amendment of the wages or the shortening of hours without calling on the women and young persons to starve unless by Act of Parliament, and this Bill is to enable them to get shorter hours. This Bill will endeavour to reduce the hours from what are now known as ten and a-half hours down to nine. The Bill is limited to women and young persons engaged in the tailoring trade, and it provides also that notices of rates of wages shall be exhibited in a conspicuous place in the workshops. So far as the large employers are concerned they see the advantage of shortening the hours in many instances, and with them they run from eight o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening, and, except when they work overtime, they are expected to work eight and a-half hours. This House will readily understand that that is much too long for women to be compelled to 448 work in a monotonous kind of existence in stuffy rooms with little or no relief. The outworkers are still worse, and are worked to the utmost limits of the law. They compel those poor creatures to work from eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night to obtain a pittance, and when they cannot earn enough they may work a few hours longer. Those of us who are interested in trying to preserve the health of the race think that at least we might reduce those hours to a reasonable proportion. There are thousands of women who are appealing for this, and I hope the time will soon pass away when for the sake of obtaining better conditions people will be called upon to strike, and I trust that we may be able from time to time to amend laws under which women and young persons work so that they may have at least a decent existence.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Crooks, Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Gill, Mr. Hills, Mr. John Lyttelton, Mr. Parker, Mr. William Thorne, Mr. Glanville, and Mr. Charles Duncan. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday, 10th February, and to be printed. [Bill 352.]