§ 62. Mr. BRIDGEMANasked the President of the Board of Trade if ho will state the various industries to which the Trade Boards Act now applies, and how many persons are now employed in those trades, respectively; and how many were employed before they came under the provisions of the Trade Boards Act?
Mr. ROBERTSONThe trades to which the Trade Boards Act now applies are certain branches of tailoring, paper box making, machine-made lace finishing, chain making, sugar confectionery and food preserving, shirt making, the making of hollow-ware and of tin boxes and canisters, and linen and cotton embroidery. There are no statistics relating to the precise branches of trade which are within the scope of the Trade Boards Act; and it is possible to make only very rough estimates of the numbers employed, which are believed to be somewhere about 350,000 in all. Information is not available to enable a comparison to be made between the numbers employed before 1908 and after the application of the Trade Boards Act, but it seems probable that the numbers employed have in general been maintained, and that in some cases they have increased.