Under this Act factories are divided into textile and non-textile factories. “Workshops are divided into workshops generally, i.e. those in which protected persons of all kinds are employed (children, young persons, and women), with the further subdivisions of specified and non-specified establishments; into workshops in which only women, but no children or young persons are employed; and lastly, domestic workrooms in which a dwelling-room serves as the place of work, in which no motive power is required, and in which members of the family exclusively are employed.”
Domestic work-rooms in which only women are employed do not come under the Act, nor yet factories, such as those for the breaking of flax, which employ only female labour. Bakeries are included among regulated workshops, i.e. workshops inspected under the Factory Acts, even when no women or young persons are employed. The Factory, as understood by the English law, is distinguished by most of the characteristics of the German acceptation of the term, without however admitting of the distinction of class d (business carried on in an enclosed space), whereby protection is also afforded to what we have termed quasi-factory labour (see [p. 36]); but on the other hand a special point is made of the distinction of class e, viz. use of power machinery. Thus the English idea in defining the factory is to insist, not upon the number of persons employed, but upon the proviso that they are persons within the scope of the protective laws.
Workshop Labour.
In the von Berlepsch Bill this is dealt with side by side with factory labour. It is sometimes placed on the same footing under the various categories of quasi-factory labour (classes 3 and 4), sometimes it lies outside the limits of factory protection, in cases where the Bundesrath does not exercise his privilege of granting extension of protection, and in cases where the workshop in question is worked entirely by members of one family.
It would be tautology to include in the definition of the workshop all the characteristics of the factory named in classes a to i. There may be cases in which the workshop practically includes most of the characteristics of the factory, but it is only necessary that it should include the following: business carried on outside the dwelling-rooms (b); preparation and manufacture of commodities (c); carried on in enclosed places (d). With the other classes it is not concerned. According to the English Factory Acts protected workshop labour is not necessarily carried on in enclosed places.
In treating of German workshop labour for the purposes of the von Berlepsch Bill, and for future legislation of the same kind, we have to classify it as follows:
Workshop labour carried on with the help of power-machinery, but not otherwise answering to the conditions of the factory.
Workshop labour carried on without power-machinery, by hand or by hand-worked machines.
Labour in workshops where all three kinds are required, i.e. power-machinery, hand-work, and hand-worked machines (e.g. modern costume-making in which power sewing-machines are employed.)
The old handicraft labour carried on in special workrooms, either within or outside the dwelling of the worker.
The characteristic peculiar to the three first divisions of workshops, and that which distinguishes them from the factory, although they in some respects resemble it, is that they give employment to but a very small number of workmen outside the limits of the family which maintains them.
The British Factory Acts include under the head of workshops those businesses in which no motive power is used, but in which protected persons (women, children, and young persons) are employed. Workshops of this kind are treated with varying degrees of stringency, according to whether they employ protected persons of all kinds, or only women (no children or young persons), and according to whether they are carried on in domestic workshops (dwelling-rooms) or otherwise.