The factory inspectors had but slight criticisms to make of illegal overtime and violations of orders. “There is little cause for complaint as to the proper observance of the conditions of the orders,” except in the Midlands. A few cases of serious irregularity were found elsewhere, but were “striking exceptions to the general rule.... The most general cause of complaint is that occupiers have taken upon themselves to work overtime without authority, and have continued it without applying for a renewal of their orders. There has been neglect, too, in affixing notices specifying the hours of work.”[166]
But it is probable that during at least part of 1915 the optimism of the factory inspectors regarding the shortening of hours and elimination of illegal overtime was not completely justified. Under powers granted by the Defence of the Realm Act an order of June 6, 1915,[167] extended the right of the Secretary of State to modify the labor laws in a way which investigators state “proved very difficult to handle properly.”[168] The modifications could be made, not only in government factories and on government contracts, but in “any factory ... in which the Secretary of State is satisfied that by reason of the loss of men or transference to government service, or of other circumstances arising out of the present war exemption is necessary to secure the carrying on of work ... required in the national interest.”
Complaints of excessive hours and violation of overtime orders multiplied. Officials of the Ministry of Munitions admitted, during a visit to the United States in the autumn of 1917, that for four to six months after the shortage of munitions was discovered in the spring of 1915, many women worked nearly a hundred hours a week. A case was cited in the House of Commons of a factory where girls were working regularly ten and a half hours a day seven days a week, and had worked ninety-five hours a week “many times” since the beginning of the war. Another much quoted case was that of a firm holding an exemption allowing moderate overtime which worked one girl thirty hours at a stretch and another twenty-five and a half hours. The second girl, who was under eighteen, then met with an accident which brought the situation to the attention of the factory inspectors. A prosecution was started, but at the first trial the case was dismissed on the grounds of a national necessity. At a second trial the counsel for the defense called the prosecution “a piece of fatuous folly, only justified by supreme ignorance,” and said that the Home Office, instead of prosecuting “ought to have struck a special medal” for the girls. “Now is not the time to talk about factory acts.”[169] The employer was finally put on probation.
However, in the latter part of 1915, and principally as a result of the unsatisfactory conditions there took place the first of a new series of developments which were to bring back women’s hours almost to prewar standards and to improve greatly the scientific basis for the restriction of working hours.
To the Ministry of Munitions is mainly due the new committees which were largely responsible for the change. A special agent for the Federal Trade Commission states that—
Toward the end of 1915 it became certain that some action would have to be taken by the ministry to deal with the question of excessive hours, more particularly those worked by women and boys. The department’s attention was drawn to the fact that the maximum number of weekly hours allowed under the provisions of the general order made under the factory acts was continually being exceeded and that without the support of the ministry the home office found it increasingly difficult to insure that no persons should work excessive hours.[170]
The action took the form of the appointment of an interdepartmental committee on hours of labor which included representatives of the Home Office, the Admiralty, various supply departments and the Welfare Section of the Ministry of Munitions. The committee considered “claims from employers either for permission to work on Sunday, or for exceptionally long hours during the week, and its inquiries have resulted not only in a reduction of Sunday work, but in a more favorable redistribution of hours generally.”[171] In October, 1915, it secured the discontinuance of practically all Sunday work in munition factories on the northeast coast.
In September, 1915, the better known Health of Munition Workers Committee was appointed by the Minister of Munitions with the concurrence of the Home Secretary “to consider and advise on questions of industrial fatigue, hours of labor and other matters affecting the personal health and physical efficiency of workers in munition factories and workshops.” By November the Ministry had referred to this committee the question of Sunday work and of the substitution of the three shift for the two shift system.
Even before its recommendations were received the Ministry took steps to discourage Sunday work and the employment of women at night. A circular was sent to all controlled establishments urging that all workers should be granted a weekly rest period—preferably Sunday—both for their own good and in the interests of production. The circular said, in part:
The aim should be to work not more than twelve shifts per fortnight or twenty-four where double shifts are worked.... Where three eight hour shifts are worked, not less than two should be omitted on Sunday. It is, in the opinion of the Minister, preferable to work a moderate amount of overtime during the week, allowing a break on Sunday, rather than work continuously from day to day. It is still more strongly his view that where overtime is worked in the week, Sunday labor is not desirable.