71
in 1890 it was 47.5 per cent, and in 1900 53.5 per cent. It is difficult to see what clearer proof could be demanded of the beneficial results of the Massachusetts short-hour laws of 1874 (sixty hours a week) and 1892 (fifty-eight hours). (Page 55.)
In all those departments of the factory in which wages are paid by piece-work — and these constitute probably not less than four-fifths of the whole, the proportion to fixed daily wages being daily on the increase — it has been found that the quantity produced in ten and one-half hours falls little short of that formerly obtained from twelve hours. In some cases it is said to be equal. This is accounted for partly by the increased stimulus given to ingenuity to make the machines more perfect and capable of increased speed, but it arises far more from the workpeople by improved health, by absence of that weariness and exhaustion which the long hours occasioned, and by their increased cheerfulness and activity, being enabled to work more steadily and diligently arid to economize time, intervals of rest while at their work being now less necessary. (Page 50.)
Report of the United States Industrial Commission, 1900. Vol. VII.
It is also claimed that a shorter day would not lessen production even in hand work. Perhaps you would be interested in the experiment of a gentleman who had an establishment in Fitchburg where were made the balls used in bicycle bearings. When he first took charge of the establishment they were running ten hours a day, with the exception of Saturday, when they ran eight, making fifty-eight hours a week. Women were employed in inspecting the balls. They do this by touch, which becomes very perfect in time and sensitive to the least imperfection; the balls are dropped into boxes, the perfect balls into one box and the imperfect ones into others, graded according to the imperfection. In the afternoon the work done by one woman in the morning is inspected by another, and thus there is a double inspection. He became persuaded that there was a certain strain in this work on the eyes, the fingers, and the attention, and finally he made up his mind that shorter hours would be better for the women and would not lessen the amount of work done — it would be better for their health and quite as well for the business. Accordingly he directed the women's department to be run but nine hours a day. At first the women were very much distressed. As they were paid by the number of thousands of balls inspected, they thought it would permit them to earn less money: but they soon found that they did just as many balls in the nine hours as they had heretofore done
in the ten: and they had besides ten minutes' vacation in the middle of the morning session and in the afternoon. Later, the time was shortened to eight hours and a half. There was not so much objection as at first, because they began to see what the object was, and they soon found they did just as much in eight and a half as in nine. At last accounts the time had been shortened to eight hours, and it was believed it could be cut down to seven and one-half. (Page 63.)
Report of the United States Industrial Commission, 1900.
What I wanted to show was that the trend of intelligent business management is to the conclusion that when a person who is doing the work has less strain upon him, he will get out more work up to a certain limit, in less time; and where the work is done by the piece it is done with less dawdling and more diligence, nor is it so hard to work with that severe attention for less time as it is to work longer hours with less attention. (Page 64.)
Report of the New York Department of Factory Inspection, 1901.
It was feared by employers that to reduce the hours of labor was to reduce the quantity of products, and that in the competition for markets the longer hours would have a decided advantage over the shorter hours; but it has been demonstrated that the lessening of the hours of labor does not, within certain limits, result in a decrease, but rather in an increase of products instead.
Another phase of the subject has also come to the front gradually in the course of this agitation for a shorter work-day. It is that quality of product may he improved by a shorter day, and by this improvement in quality of the product has come to be considered the improvement of the quality of the laborer himself. ( Page 562.)
Factory People and their Employers. By E. I,. Shuey. New York, 1900.
Among the most desirable things is the matter of shorter hours for women. The experience of a number of leading manufacturers has indicated that equal results may be obtained in many forms of manufacture in the shorter hours. Fels & Co. of Philadelphia gradually reduced the time of their women from ten to eight hours, girls working five days in the week. At the same time wages have been practically increased. The Levy Bros. Co. (England) has 
had a similar experience. The National Cash Register Co. in the same manner reduced its hours for women from ten to eight. (Page 113.)
Report of the New York Bureau of Labor, 1901.
Prof. F. A. Walker thus sums up this general conclusion: “It is the general belief of intelligent and disinterested men that every successive reduction of the hours of labor from fifteen hours to the limit, say ten or eleven hours in ordinary mercantile pursuits, affected not a proportional loss of product, not a loss at all, but a positive gain, especially if not only the present productive power of the body of laborers is considered, but also the keeping up of the full supply of labor in full numbers and unimpaired strength front generation to generation.” (Page 562.)
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 1901.
The direct and constant result of enforcing standard conditions of employment is, ... to raise the capacity of the workers. The prevention of excessive or irregular hours of work, the requirement of healthy conditions, and the insistence on decency in the factory or workshop — the direct results of factory legislation — represent exactly what is required to extricate the mass of working women from the slough of inefficiency in which they are unfortunately sunk. Hence, so far from regulation being any detriment to the persons regulated, it is, as all experience proves, a positive good. (Page 209.)
Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1902.
There was a general consensus of opinion that shorter hours and better sanitation enforced by legislation had been amongst the causes tending to increase the efficiency of women workers. (Page 287.)
Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans l'Industrie. Prof. Etienne Bauer. Jena, 1903.
Before the enactment of the German Imperial Law of 1891 restricting the hours of labor of women there, overtime work was
already, in the industries concerned, occasional and irregular. The very great majority of the establishments affected were working regularly eleven hours a day or less as early as 1892.
Not one fact indicates that industry suffered under the restriction. The output, which, in a few establishments, diminished at first, soon regained its normal dimensions, thanks to the greater energy evinced by the employees. (Page 12.)
Bulletin of the French Labor Office, 1903.
There are establishments in which it may be affirmed, according to the statement of a district inspector of Nantes, that the production per hour increases as the number of hours per day decreases. These are the industries in which the personal qualities of the worker are an important factor in production. (Page 807.)

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1903—1904.
Manufacturers maintain that by enforcing shorter hours they are unable to compete with those factories which are not hampered in this way. In order to test the truth or falsity of this claim, the Salford Iron Works of Manchester, England, voluntarily reduced the number of hours required for a day's work to eight. After giving the system a fair trial, the management declared that the character of work performed and wages paid remained about the same; that although a depression in trade took place about the same time this experiment was being made, and competition was exceedingly fierce, the output was greater and the receipts larger than under the old system. The Salford Iron Works continue the eight-hour system to the present day, and other allied industries and the arsenal works and dock-yards are following example. (Page 140.)
The Relation of Labor to the Laws of To-day. By Lujo Brentano. New York.
Why then does an increase in wages and a decrease in the time of work in general lead to a greater capability for work? Because higher wages and a shorter day's work make it possible for laborers to increase and satisfy their physical and spiritual needs; because better food, more careful fostering, greater and more moral recreation increase the power to work, and because they
increase the pleasure in labor. ... In other words, an increase in wages and a decrease in the time of work lead to a greater performance, because they elevate the standard of living of the laborer, a higher standard of living necessarily spurs to greater intensity of labor, and at the same time makes the same possible. (Pages 233, 234.)
Getting a Living. By G. L. Bolen.
Repeated shortening of the factory day has come because it was found that strength was saved, intelligence promoted, and that product and wages were both increased. (Pages 423, 424.)
(2) Long Hours Result in Inferior Quality of Product
Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1871.
The operatives vary in perfectness and productiveness as the day progresses; and if there should be a reduction to ten hours there would not be a loss of one-eleventh of the product. ... I think it will be found that much of the cloth made during the eleventh hour is of poorer quality than the rest, and that the necessity of looking it over the next day and fixing it all right lessens the product of that next day. ... I certainly believe that the productive capacity of a set of work-people may be lessened by increasing the hours of their daily work. The question is not legitimately one of arithmetic, nor can it be settled by argument about one-eleventh less or one-tenth more. It is a question to be settled by actual results on long-continued trial. (Page 498 ff.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1893.
Arguments against overtime (i..e., two hours more than the daily ten and one-half) :
1. That the work done during overtime is not equal, in amount or quality, to that done during the regular time.
Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, M. D. London, 1902.
It is admitted that in iron-works and factories, where the hours of labor have been unusually long, say ten and eleven hours, the 
work done in the latter part of the day is not so good as that done in the forenoon.
Women in the Printing Trades. Edited by J. R. MacDonai.d.
London, 1904.
From this it is evident that protection is viewed favorably by many employers, on the specific ground that it prevents systematic overtime. On the whole they are of the opinion that after overtime the next day's work suffers. (Page 82.)
B. used to work from 8 a. m. to 8 p. m. regularly, including Saturdays. . . . She disliked overtime, was tired out at the end of a day's work, and thought the other women were too, and she had often noticed how badly the work was done after eight or nine hours at it. Later on, as a forewoman, she noticed that the girls after overtime always loafed about the next day and did not work well. (Page 84.)
Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when overtime is worked the piece workers do not make more, as a rule, for they get so tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day.
This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who have to put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any particular system of getting work done. (Page 87.)
Hours and Wages in Relation to Production. Luigi Brentano.
By degrees the employers themselves admitted that the last two hours, formerly considered indispensable, used generally to produce work far inferior to that of the preceding hours, and that owing to the greater industry of the employees, who no longer idled through the first hours of the day, the regular unbroken labor of the new working day was much more advantageous to the employees than the longer working day, with its alternations of overwork and indolence. So it came about, as a result of the curtailment of the working day, production did not diminish, but actually increased. (Page 29.)
In the report of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce of 1890 we find, on page 47, a corset factory reports: “Five years ago
we returned to a ten-hour working day (with a half-hour pause in the morning and another in the afternoon) we find that our workwomen can get through very much more with regular work for ten or even nine hours, than when the working day is longer.” (Page 86.)
B. Effect on Regularity of Employment
Wherever the employment of women has been prohibited for more than ten hours in one day, a more equal distribution of work throughout the year has followed. The supposed need of dangerously long and irregular hours in the season-trades are shown to be unnecessary. In place of alternating periods of intense overwork with periods of idleness, employers have found it possible to avoid such irregularities by foresight and management.
Report of Conference of Members of Women’s Trade Unions on the Factory and Workshops Act, 1875. Vol. XXIX.
The permission granted to season trades for the extension of the hours to fourteen per day, during certain periods of the year, should be withdrawn, with the view of equalizing the work throughout the year. . . .
Bookbinders complained that the trade was most, unnecessarily considered by the law a season-trade. . . . The existence of the modification made employers careless of due economy in time. (Page 193.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1892.
I am convinced that there is no necessity for this overtime; the season-trade work or the press orders would be executed just the same if overtime were illegal, as it is in the textile and many of the non-textile trades; the work would only be spread over a longer period or mean the employment of more hands. Much of the good done by the Factory Act is undone by allowing delicate women and girls to work from 8 a.m. to 10 P.m. for two months of the year. (Page 89.)

Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1892.
I believe that much of the apparent necessity for working overtime is simply the result of want of forethought and organization on the part of employers and their managers. . . . How little actual demand there is for overtime on the part of protected hands, I think the return from this district will show. Out of nearly nine thousand occupiers of factories and workshops, only about two hundred apparently avail themselves of the permission to work overtime; but then these two hundred have between them made overtime on two thousand occasions during the year. (Page 88.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1900.
One of the most unsatisfactory results of the present system or lack of system of working hours in laundries is the unfortunate moral effect on the women and girls of this irregularity. The difficulty of securing steady regular work from employees and of ensuring punctual attendance is complained of on all sides, and the more intelligent employers are beginning to see that this is the natural result of the irregularity in working hours. . . . Workers who on one or two days in the week are dismissed to idleness or to other occupations, while on the remaining days they are expected to work for abnormally long hours, are not rendered methodical, industrious, or dependable workers by such an unsatisfactory training. The self-control and good habits engendered by a regular and definite period of moderate daily employment, which affords an excellent training for the young worker in all organized industries, is sadly lacking, and, instead, one finds periods of violent overwork alternating with hours of exhaustion. The result is the establishment of a kind of “vicious circle”; bad habits among workers make compliance by their employers with any regulation as to hours very difficult. (Page 385.)
Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1902.
By forcing the employers to make their trade as regular as possible, the overtime clauses have operated toward increased efficiency. (Page 287.)

Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1903.
A very important, perhaps from the economic point of view the most important, effect of legislation has been to spread the period of work more uniformly through the week, month, and year than had been the case before regulation. (Page 5.)
Restriction is met by adaptation of manufacture or rearrangement of numbers employed and time at which work is done, women being still employed at the work.
. . . Thus, it will be seen that the loss of overtime is not necessarily a loss of work, but a redistribution (and an economical one, too) of the times at which work is done, and does not therefore mean a loss in income, but a steadying and regulation of income. (Page 13.)
C. Adaptation of Customers to Shorter Hours
Experience shows how the demands of customers yield to the requirements of a fixed working day. When customers are obliged to place orders sufficiently in advance to enable them to be filled without necessitating overtime work, compliance with this habit becomes automatic.
Factory and Workshops Acts Commission, 1875. British Sessional Papers, 1876. Vol. XXIX.
A very large number of the orders of customers (to printers, milliners, dressmakers, etc.), which it has been usual to keep back to the last minute and then throw upon the already fully-burdened workers, not merely can be quite as easily given so as to have plenty of time for their completion, but also will be so given, and are in fact so given, when and so often as the customer is made to recognize that he otherwise runs the risk of not having his orders completed in time to suit his own convenience. . . .
We trust in time that the use of overtime in trades of this class may be restricted down to the vanishing point. (Page 41.)
Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1903.
The tendency to put off giving orders to the last moment is easily checked when the customer can be met with a universal legal prohibition. (Page 7.)

History of Factory Legislation. Hutchins and Harrison. 1903.
Tremenheere then took the opinion of certain of the merchants on this point, and found them much more favorable to the extension of the Factory Act. ... A limitation of hours might, it was admitted, occasionally produce inconvenience, but this would by degrees adjust itself. Merchants would have to think of their orders a little beforehand. . . . One bleacher very candidly admitted that knowing the bleacher would undertake to bleach and finish one thousand pieces of cloth in five days he often, in cases of sudden orders, gave him only five days to do it in; but that, if the hours of the boys and women working were restricted so he would know the work could not be accomplished in that time, he should have to make his arrangements beforehand to give seven or ten days, or to send part of the order to another bleacher. It was pointed out that if a bleacher lost part of an order on one occasion it would be made up to him on another, and that very possibly the bleachers would enlarge their works and keep more hands ready. If legislation were alike for all, the outlay would do the trade no harm. Tremenheere arrived at the conclusion that a limitation of women's and boys' hours would cause the masters to enlarge their works and improve their machinery rather than chance losing an order. ... In 1857 . . . the mere anticipation of some such measure had caused additions to be made both to buildings and machinery which would considerably augment the firms' power of getting speedily through an increased quantity. (Page 134.)
D. Incentive to Improvements in Manufacture
The regulation of the working day has acted as a stimulus to improvement in processes of manufacture. Invention of new machinery and perfection of old methods have followed the introduction of shorter hours.
Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1903-1904.
Wherever a uniform standard of wages, hours of labor, and wholesome sanitary conditions have been uniformly enforced, the result has been that laborers have been stimulated to render
greater services to their employers, and, in turn, employers strive to excel in improved machinery and devices for the protection of employees, sanitation, and methods of production in general. (Page 138.)
That the enforcing of a certain standard in regard to hours of labor, wages, and sanitary conditions compels employers to continually seek more improved machinery and methods of production is as true in practice as in theory. (Page 140.)
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb.
London, 1901.
But the exemption from regulation is also responsible for corresponding deficiencies in the technical administration of the industry. The very fact that the employers are legally free to make their operatives work without limit, and to crowd any number of them into one room, makes them disinclined to put thought and capital into improving the arrangements.
. . . We might indefinitely prolong the list of examples of the effect of the Factory Acts in improving the processes of manufacture. (Page 58.)
Woman in Industry. .R. Gonnard. Paris, 1905.
The inspector of labor of Lyons says:
“It has come about that this decrease of the legal maximum limit of hours of labor (ten hours a day), which went into effect the 28th of March, 1902, obliging the employer to pay a higher wage for overtime hours, has urged the manufacturers to replace their former equipment by machines of great producing power. In short, for the manufacturers in question, the regulation has become a powerful stimulus, which has driven them to do away with methods of manufacture already somewhat superannuated." (Page 78.)
History of Factory Legislation. Hutchins and Harrison. 1908.
If it could be shown that this regulated industry, far from suffering in competition with others, went ahead, improved its machinery, and developed a higher standard of comfort than its rivals, then, although the improvement might not be due to the legislation, there would be, at all events, a strong presumption
that good and not harm had been done. And this is what has taken place. . . . The improvement in the regulated industry was clear and conspicuous. (Page 121.)
E. Effect on Scope of Women's Employment
The establishment of a legal limit to the hours of woman's labor does not result in contracting the sphere of her work.
Foreign Work and English Wages. By Thomas Brassey, 1st Baron Brassey. London, 1879.
The argument that the tendency of the Factory Acts is to place an artificial restriction on the employment of women, and thus to depreciate the market value of this labor, is refuted on every hand by practical experience in the textile manufactories. Here the restrictions upon women’s work are the most stringent, and yet the tendency for a long series of years has been the opposite — the proportion of women employed has steadily increased. The same observation applies to many of the trades and occupations carried on in London. As for the rate of wages paid, there is not an employer in the metropolis who will hesitate to acknowledge that there has been during the last ten or fifteen years a very substantial and important advance in the remuneration given to women for their work. (Pages 338, 339.)
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 1901.
But, it may be objected, that although Factory Legislation would improve the women, it annoys the employer, and makes him inclined to get rid of women altogether and employ men. As a matter of fact, this course, though often threatened beforehand, is not in practice followed. Where women can be employed, their labor is so much cheaper than that of men that there is no chance of their being displaced. The work of men and women tending automatically to differentiate itself into separate branches, it follows that there is very little direct competition between individual men and women. (Page 209.)
The Night-work of Women in Industry. Prof. E. Bauer. Jena, 1903.
All the official Swiss figures indicate that the establishment of the normal, legal working day has never, or rarely, narrowed the field of women's industrial activity. The restriction has exercised upon the distribution of the classes of people who compose the working world no notable influence.
The results show how unfounded were the fears cherished both as to the loss for the working women of a part of their wage, and the advantages which arise from the regulation of the working day are, on the other hand, considerable for the whole body of the workers. (Page 38.)
History of Factory Legislation. Hutchins and Harrison. 1903.
It is surely extremely significant that whilst the attack on the regulation of women's labor has been fruitless in better organized industries — that is, in those which can make their wishes felt — it has taken effect precisely in those industries which are unorganized and collectively inarticulate. By the admission of the opposition itself, the women whose trades have been under State control for thirty, forty, or fifty years are now so strong, so efficient, so well organized that even those who most strongly disapprove of State control do not wish to withdraw it from them. Yet we are to believe that to those who are still working long hours, in unsanitary conditions, State control would mean lowered wages, perhaps ruin! (Page 193.)
Women's Work and Wages. By Edward Cadbury. London, 1906.
This witness (Mr. Johnson, Sub-inspector of Factories) did not think that the limitation of hours of women would lead to the substitution of men for women, nor to any reduction of women's wages. He did not consider that there were many trades where men could be substituted for women, because of the nature of the work. This was an intelligent and true forecast of what has actually happened. (Page 36.)
It is often stated by those who oppose regulation of women's work by legislation that the effect of such legislation is to displace women in favor of men. Our inquiry seems to prove, however, that this idea is erroneous, and that in the large majority of cases . . .

it is other questions altogether that determine the division of labor between men and women. A great deal of light has been thrown on the question of women's work and wages generally by the elucidation of the fact that as a rule men and women do different work, and the relation between men and women workers is, on the whole, that of two non-competing groups. It is quite true that that marginal division between the two groups is constantly shifting, but in the particular trades where this is the case the questions considered are the difference in wages between the two groups, their aptitude and physical fitness for certain work, and the fact that women expect to leave work when married. (Page 89.)
V. UNIFORMITY OF RESTRICTION
The arguments in favor of allowing overtime in seasonal trade or in cases of supposed emergency have gradually yielded to the dictates of experience which show that uniformity of restriction is essential to carrying out the purposes of the act.
A. Allowance of Overtime Dangerous to Health
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1873.
To my mind it seems very fallacious reasoning to attempt to justify overtime amongst females ... on the ground that, taking the year through, the hours of work average less than sixty weekly. A girl is not a whit less likely to be injured physically and morally by working fourteen hours a day in May and June because she has not to work more than seven hours in September and October. (Page 43.)
In regard to milliners and dressmakers, I strongly deprecate the granting of  “fourteen-hour permissions,” which only unsettle the trade, and are quite unnecessary. Such hours are very injurious to the girls employed. (Page 134.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1898.
Sixty hours’ actual work in a normal week may be considered as a reasonable amount by the average laundry girl, but when one day in the week is a whole holiday, prescribed by the Factory Act, and she is still required to work sixty hours in the remaining five days, she apparently seems to feel that she is not being fairly dealt by, and that the law is taking away with one hand what it gave with the other. Several complaints have been received of sixty hours’ employment in a laundry on the five consecutive days following a statutory holiday, as of something illegal, and a visit 
paid in response to one of these on a Saturday following a Monday Bank (holiday) found manageress, women, and girls tired out and murmuring that a holiday which had to be made up for as they had made it up was no holiday. (Page 107.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1901.
It is often said that the rigidly fixed hours for work and meals in factories tend to make of the worker a machine, taking no actual personal interest in her work, while actually the effect is to help her, if the work does not occupy too great a part of the day, to be a person of some vigor interested in the work, but not entirely to the exclusion of other things, for which she can count on regular periods of leisure. (Page 178.)
B. Uniformity Essential for Purposes of Enforcement
In order to establish enforceable restrictions upon working hours of women, the law must fix a maximum working day. Without a fixed limit of hours, beyond which employment is prohibited, regulation is practically nullified. Exemptions of special trades from the restriction of hours not only subject the workers in such industries to injurious overwork, but go far to destroy the whole intent of the law.
The difficulties of inspection become insuperable.
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb.
London, 1901.
To accede to the demand for greater elasticity is to suppose a higher code of morals on the part both of employers and of employed than experience justifies, and it would also render necessary a far more elaborate and irritating system of inspection than at present exists. The efficiency of modern factory industry depends very greatly upon automatic working — upon its standardization of conditions; and the existing factory law with its inelastic provisions is, in reality, a great aid in maintaining those conditions of efficiency. (Page 93.)

Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1873.
From the point of view of one empowered to carry out the law, I consider these modifications in favor of “season trades” as most unfortunate. They immensely increase the difficulties of inspection, and it introduces an element of uncertainty and dissatisfaction into the relations between inspector and inspected, which cannot but be productive of ill results. For a law to be thoroughly respected and obeyed, there should be no apparent partiality or contradiction in its provisions, and if it is to work with ease and efficiency these cannot be too completely simplified. (Page 134.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1873.
The difficulty of acquiring evidence, too, of this overwork is very great, for the danger of loss of employment on the disclosure of facts is so deterrent of exact information by the oppressed workers that they will not appear before the magistrates to support the Sub-Inspector in his attempt to protect them, however urgently or indignantly that protection has been claimed. (Page 44
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1898.
Nothing has been more striking than the difficulties surrounding the law affecting laundries. The immensely long hours, the absence of any conditions as to mealtimes other than that there shall be at least half an hour in every five hours’ spell, and the extraordinary manner in which over-time is at present worked, combine to make the inspection of laundries more difficult and more ineffectual than in anv trade I have had under my notice. (Page 107.)

Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1900.
The existence of an exemption in the fish-curing trade has rendered the administration difficult and uncertain in result. It is noteworthy that in this trade, in which over-time is permissible to women on sixty occasions in the year, I have never found over-time notices in use in any workshop. The occupiers do not find them
necessary. Starting with an exemption for one process, that of “gutting, salting, and packing,” the industry would seem to have shaken itself gradually free from control, until now we find fish that have been in salt for several weeks dealt with as perishable articles. Given plenty of time and unsuitable surroundings, every article of food is to some extent perishable, and when a herring has been kept in salt for some weeks there is no reason for working on it at night except the reason that the day will bring other work, and in this seems to lie the cause of much of the late and irregular hours of the fish-curing trade. ...
One of the evils to which this want of regulation leads is the practice of employing the same person in the same day in processes controlled by the Acts, and in those outside their control.
...In another case in which acurer had afactory and also akippering shop in the same town, the workers went from one to the other, always sure of their full day's work in the factory, followed very often by five or six hours’ work in the other shop. (Page 383.)

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 1901.
The fact that exceptions lead always to illegalities — that a permission to work till ten at night leads constantly to work till one or two in the morning — appears frequently. (Page 153.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1903.
After six years’ experience of the effect of the present regulations, it is impossible not to feel greatly depressed by the result; the elasticity of the law has tended to encourage rather than check these unsettled hours. (Page 174.)
Labor Laws for Women in Germany. Dr. Alice Salomon. Published by the Women's Industrial Council. London, 1907.
Unfortunately, however, the law provides for a number of exceptions to the above rules respecting the hours of labour, exceptions which render adequate control difficult and greatly weaken the effect of the law. (Page 5.)
^ V v * t )« v H	J	í	Í.	t	* 1 * ? ¡i<-r ¡ w C
89
C. Uniformity Essential to Justice to Employers
To grant exceptions from the restriction of hours to certain industries places a premium upon irregularity and the evasion of law. When restrictions are uniform, the law operates without favor and without injury to individuals. Few employers are able to grant their employees reductions of hours, even if they are convinced of its advantages, when their competitors are under no such obligation. Justice to the employer as well as to the employee therefore requires that the law set a fixed limit of hours for working women and a limit fixed for all alike.
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1878.
In regard to “season trades” modification, the employers in favor of the modifications, argue, that it would be, firstly, a hardship upon them should they be unable to fulfil a large order unexpectedly coming in; that it would be calculated to drive their trade from them to others, either employing more workers or not at that time so busy.
To this I answer . . . that the hardship to themselves that the employers here complain of is only one which they would share in common with every other trader and manufacturer in the country, which are happily prevented by legislative enactment from gratifying their cupidity or caprice at the expense of others; and that the establishment of a uniform system of hours of labor would place all upon a more equal footing in the very matter complained of than in point of fact they are on now.
There can be no doubt that much uncertainty and dissatisfaction exists amongst trades generally at the granting unusual privileges to certain selected ones, and that this is a serious obstruction to the performance of the duties of inspection. (Page 134.)
Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1881.
As a further result, we have found that a large majority of the manufacturers would prefer ten hours to any greater num-

ber, “if only all would agree to it.” Repeatedly has it occurred, when our agents have made known their errand, that almost the first words of the manufacturer would be, “It (ten hours) would be better for manufacturer and operative, if it could only be made universal”; and these words, always spoken so spontaneously as to show that they were the expression of a settled conviction, may be fairly taken to express the united wisdom of the manufacturers of textile fabrics in New York and New England. (Page 458.)
As one reason for this it was constantly said, that, if all worked but ten hours, then it would be the same for all, and so everybody would have just as fair a chance for success under ten as now under more hours. (Page 459.)
Report of the British Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1900.
A lack of loyal adherence to reasonable hours of employment by many laundry occupiers increases the difficulty for those who make the attempt in real earnestness. Many employers gladly welcome further regulation as a means of organizing and controlling their workers. “What is the use of my making the effort to so organize my work that the laundry shall close at 8 p. m. like other reasonable work-places do,” said a disheartened employer; “all the neighboring laundries are open until nine, ten, or even eleven o'clock, and my women find it suits their irregular habits to go and work in these places after they leave my premises; they are then too tired out to arrive at my laundry till 9.30 or 10 next morning. If we all had to keep the same rules and close at the same time, the law would work fairly; as it is I must just scramble on with the others in the stupid expensive old way.” (Page 385.)
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb.
London, 1901.
Now and again an employer complains of some hard experience, and forgets that a departure from rigid rule would destroy the certainty which he feels that the law is treating him exactly as it is his competitors. Such a feeling of security is essential to business enterprise. (Page 93.)