The Daily News WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12. SAFEGUARDING AGAINST "SWEATING."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 199, 12 August 1908, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12. SAFEGUARDING AGAINST "SWEATING."

Notwithstanding; tlio amount of discussion that lias always centred round our labor legislation and the nniliifarioas provision* of the Factories Act and its amendments, a great man)' employers J labor are still notoriously incompletely versed in the regulations governing the business. A case in point occurred at Inglewood 011 .Monday, when the. Moa Farmers' Union was lined the 1 nominal amount of 10s, with 7s costs, for a breach of the Act covering "sweating" in factories, in that they exposed for sale thirty-six shirts, which had been manufactured in an unregistered factory, without attaching a label, in the prescribed form, stating the fact. From the facts adduced it appeared that the company contracted with a local seamstress to make shirts at an agreed price per dozen, and it was not contended that the price was not a fair one. The breach of the law consisted in the fact that, as the place where the shirts'were made was not registered as a factory, the company had not ajlixed to the garments a label stating clearly by whom they were made. There is nothing to Which exception can be taken ill this particular provision of the Act, which is obviously designed as much for the protection of the ultimate purchaser of the goods as for the maker. While there was lioUlu slightest suggestion of any "sweating' in the present ease, it is quite possibU tlhat, wore proper safeguards and super vision not provided for, circumstance' would arise wherein "sweated" work ini»kt l>e done outside a factoiy, if "not through direct contract, then possibly by sub-contracts. It is equally possible, especially _ in the poorer quarters of the cities, that apparel might be made amidst surroundings, to put it mildly, not in the interests of the public healtn. The recent "sweated industries" exhibii from London which "toured" the Do minion at the close of the ( JirisLehurc! Exhibition, all'orded an awful example o the evils of unrestricted private eon tract, with its infinitely greater evil 0 sub-contracting and its rcsullaut v lifc destroying sweating. New Zealand 1 happily almost free from this most pel nicious inlluence, which, however, was not' unknown in connection with our textile industries in the cities, and especially in Dnnedin, before the days of the Arbitration Act. "Sweated" labor is an abhorrence to every right-thinking New Zealander, and whatever objection might bo taken to the Arbitration Act in its more recent developments, 110 one has been heard to claim that we should revert to a state of industrial freedom of contract such as made possible the conditions once existing amongst tailoresses and child workers in this .young "•country!. Obviously, some method of supervision is necessary in cases where work is done in other than registered factories, which arc directly under the eye of the officers of the Labor Department. It would be manifestly unfair that any linn should be given an opportunity of underselling another—an observer of the Factories Act-through cheaper production by private and utf disciplined contwet. The provision s. theretore, it lust and reasonable on s neither restrictive nor harassing. The nominal penalty imposed at lnglewo'.d should serve the purpose lor which it was intended-of directing the attention of merchants and shopkeepers to the clause. It is not the purpose of the law that private persons should be under any disablitiy in "taking in" work from a factory or shop-keeper, all that is necessary by way Of permission being the registration, at a cost of one shilling, ot the "factory" where the work is done. Registration overcomes also what might be "considered a disability by.some business houses, in specially labelling .1ticles with the name afid address of the maker, ami accordingly all that is necessary on the part of the -Moa l'annci* Union and others in the same position is that they should see to it that the houses of makers of articles of clothing for then, are registered, or, in the al el- - that the necessary specified al.el is attached to every article made outside a registered factory. No doubt the majority of breaches of the Factories Acl, especially in country towns, are the Jesuit of ignoraffi'e of the law, a» it admit tedlv was in the case of the .Moa 1 aimer's' Vnion, but attention having now been directed to the requirements, tho-e similarly situated should lose 110 time 111 protecting themselves by taking the necessary precautions.