In the main, prohibition of child-labour will have to be made binding by legislation. In its eventual extension to household industry, the Government will however have to be allowed facilities for gradually extending its methods of administration.
The task of superintending the enforcement of prohibition will in the main be assigned to the Industrial Inspectorate. The oldest hands in any business, the “Labour Chambers,” and voluntary labour-unions, will moreover be able to lend effectual assistance to the industrial inspector or to a general labour-board. The factory list of young workers may be used as an instrument of administration.
In Germany childhood is protected until the age of 12 years. The extension of prohibition of child-labour to the age of 14 years in factory and quasi-factory business, is, however, in Germany probably only a question of time. The Auer Motion in regard to this represents the views of many others besides the Social Democrats. Switzerland, as I have shown, has already conceded this demand, claimed on grounds of national health. The impending Imp. Ind. Code Amendment Bill places the limit at 13.
An internationally uniform advance towards this end by the equalisation of laws affecting the age of compulsory school attendance, would certainly be desirable.
The widest measure of protection of children is contained in the Austrian legislation, which decrees in the Act of 1885, that until the age of 12 years children shall be excluded from all regular industrial work, and until the age of 14 years, from factory work: “Before the completion of the 14th year, no children shall be employed for regular industrial work in industrial undertakings of the nature of factory business; young wage-workers between the completion of the 14th and the completion of the 16th year shall only be employed in light work, such as shall not be injurious to the health of such workers, and shall not prevent their physical development.”
The resolutions of the Berlin Conference recommended the prohibition of employment in factories of children below the age of compulsory school attendance.
Resolution III. 4 requires: “That children shall previously have satisfied the requirements of the regulations on elementary education.”
Exclusion of child-labour extends beyond the general inferior limit of age, in individual cases where the employment of children is made conditional on evidence of their health, as in England. And here the medical certificate of health comes in as a special instrument of administration in Labour Protection.
In certain kinds of business, prohibition of child-labour extends beyond the general inferior limit of age. England has led the way in such prohibition, excluding by law the employment of children below the age of 11 years in the workrooms of certain branches of industry, e.g. wherever the polishing of metal is carried on; of children below the age of 14 years, in places where dipping of matches and dry polishing of metal is carried on; of girls below the age of 16 years, in brick and tile-kilns, and salt works (salt-pits, etc.); of children below the age of 14 years, and girls below the age of 18 years, in the melting and cooling rooms in glass factories; of persons below the age of 18 years in places where mirrors are coated with quicksilver, or where white-lead is used.