lar home-work, are far more
prevalent in female industries than in male.

Sec. 4. Hours of Labour in Women's Trades.--The Factory Act is supposed to
protect women engaged in industrial work from excessive hours of labour,
by setting a limit of twelve hours to the working day, including an
interval of two hours for meals.

But passing over the fact that a dispensation is granted, enabling women
to be employed for fourteen hours during certain times, there is the far
more important consideration that most employments of women wholly
escape the operation of the Factory Act. In part this is due to the
difficulty of enforcing the Act in the case of sweating workshops, many
of which are unknown to inspectors, while others habitually break the
law and escape the penalty. Again, the Act does not and cannot be made
to apply to a large class of small domestic workshops. When the
dwelling-room is also the work-room, it is impossible to enforce by any
machinery of law, close limitation of hours of labour. Something may be
done to extend the arm of the law over small workshops; but the worst
form of out-work, that voluntarily undertaken by women in their own
homes, cannot be thus put down. Nothing short of a total prohibition of
outwork imposed on employers would be effectual here. Lastly, there are
many large employments not subject to the Factory Act, where the
economic power of the employer over weak employees is grossly abused.
One of the worst instances is that of the large laundries, where women
work enormously long hours during the season, and are often engaged for
fifteen or sixteen hours on Fridays and Saturdays. The whole class of
shop-assistants are worked excessive hours. Twelve and fourteen hours
are a common shop day, and frequently the figure rises to sixteen hours.
Restaurants and public-houses are perhaps the greatest offenders. The
case of shop-assistants is most aggravated, for these excessive hours of
labour are wholly waste time; a reduction of 25 or even of 50 per cent
in the shopping-day, reasonably adjusted to the requirements of classes
and localities, would cause no diminution in the quantity of sales
effected, nor would it cause any appreciable inconvenience to the
consuming public.

Sec. 5. Sanitary Conditions.--Seeing that a larger proportion of women
workers are occupied in the small workshops or in their own overcrowded
homes, it is obvious that the fourth count of the "sweating" charge,
that of uns