The Association of Employers, though differing on almost every other subject from Messrs. Bridges and Holmes, suggest that women should be excluded from factories for three months after their confinement. Great evils have been found, by experience, to ensue from the too early return of the mothers to factory labour. Let us venture to hope that another Session of Parliament will not be allowed to pass by, without placing on the Statute Book a legal prohibition against a practice, which is universally condemned by those most competent to form an opinion.
Shorter hours of labour.
The demand for a reduction of the hours of labour, which has been so strongly and successfully urged by certain classes of our operatives, is not universally supported either at home or abroad.
The average length of a working day in Switzerland is twelve hours, exclusive of the time for meals. The general tendency is to a reduction of hours, and laws have been passed, limiting the length of the working day in some cantons to twelve hours. These changes are, however, almost entirely due to the efforts of local politicians. A proposal of this nature recently made in Zurich, and sanctioned by the Cantonal Legislature, was eventually thrown out by the popular vote.
At Rouen, Mr. Redgrave found no strong desire for a diminution of the hours of labour in the cotton factories. The operatives were chiefly solicitous for a rise of wages. On this subject the workpeople of all countries seem to entertain similar views. Messrs. Bridges and Holmes, in their report on the condition of operatives in English factories, say that the workpeople are by no means unanimous. Among the women especially, many are apathetic, and some are positively opposed to a limitation of the working hours.
In the United States, at Lowell, near Boston, I ascertained by personal inquiry on the spot, that the working hours were sixty per week, and that no indication had yet been given of a disposition among the operatives to reduce the hours.
Decline of pauperism.
Though there may be reason to regret that the working class have not reaped more substantial and universal benefits from the recent additions to their wages; we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that there has been some slight decrease in the amount of pauperism, and in the proportion of persons in receipt of relief to the whole population.
Emigration.
Meanwhile the tide of emigration has never ceased to flow. The proportion, too, of English and Scotch to Irish has, of late years, much increased. In 1872 the wide labour field of the United States absorbed 199,000 out of a total number of 252,000 emigrants from the United Kingdom. In the same period 33,000 sailed for the ports of British North America. The United States offer many advantages to the newly-arrived emigrants. The homestead law gives, for a merely nominal sum, the right to a homestead and 160 acres of land to every individual, who is actually a citizen of the United States, or has declared his intention of becoming such.