London
Under the powers conferred on local authorities by the Employment of Children Act 1903, the London County Council framed in February, 1905, a set of by-laws, the provisions of which seemed quite innocuous. Nevertheless a considerable outcry was raised by persons whom they would affect, and thereupon the Secretary of State withheld his confirmation and authorized Mr. Chester Jones to hold an inquiry at which complaints could be heard as well as arguments in favor of the by-laws. This inquiry was held in June and July of 1905, and schoolmasters, attendance officers, police inspectors, news agents and others testified. Mr. Jones held that it was his duty "to endeavour to discover where the line should be drawn, and that it was not open to argument either that child labour should entirely be prohibited or that it should be unregulated."[165]
In his report Mr. Jones took up each by-law separately and discussed it, recommending that it be either confirmed or rejected in accordance with his findings. He also drafted a set of by-laws and submitted them with the recommendation that they be adopted instead of the ones originally passed by the London County Council. Referring to these, he says: "An important respect in which my suggested by-laws differ from the County Council by-laws is in differentiating between employment in connection with street stalls and other forms of street trading. It seemed to be the general opinion [of witnesses] that the former employment, being under the supervision of some adult person, probably the parent, is not so harmful in its effects on the morals of the child as the latter, and it must be remembered that the main objection to street trading was on the ground rather of its affecting the morality than the health and education of the children."[166] The regulations drafted by Mr. Jones were not even so drastic as those proposed by the London County Council, and in recommending milder restrictions Mr. Jones says: "A set of by-laws should not err upon the side of overstringency, nor should they be in advance of public opinion; the first, because taking a step more or less in the dark might cause hardships impossible to avoid, and the second, because any by-laws of this sort, being most difficult of enforcement, will certainly be evaded unless backed up by the weight of public opinion."[167]
The County Council, however, did not follow Mr. Jones's recommendations in their entirety, but adopted a more stringent set of by-laws which were put in force in October, 1906. In December, 1909, the County Council again amended the by-laws, and an inquiry relative to these changes was held by Mr. Stanley Owen Buckmaster in October, 1910. Mr. Buckmaster recommended a number of changes of minor importance which were adopted by the Council, and accordingly the new by-laws were adopted and took effect on June 3, 1911. This set of by-laws will be found in the Appendix, page [264]. The most significant feature which they present is the raising of the age limit for boys to fourteen years and for girls to sixteen years without exemption. The old by-laws prohibited street trading by children under sixteen years between the hours of 9 P.M. and 6 A.M., and this provision was retained in the new by-laws, applying, however, only to boys, inasmuch as girls under that age are prohibited from trading in the streets at any time. These London by-laws on street trading are identical with the provisions of the most advanced American child labor laws on factory employment, and consequently they blaze the way for the application of these provisions in the United States to street trading as well as to employment in factories, mills and mines.