A factory is defined as any room where two or more persons are employed in connection with a handicraft or in preparing or manufacturing goods for trade or sale. It includes bakehouses, buildings in which machinery is used for preparing articles for trade or for packing goods for export, and all places in which Asiatics are employed, even if only one of them is at work. The occupier is deemed to be one of the workers. No workroom is too small to come within the definition, and there are no bodies of employees engaged in factory work who do not come under the regulations.
A limit is placed on the overtime that may be worked. No man, woman, girl or boy can be employed on overtime in a factory for more than four hours at a stretch without having at least half-an-hour for rest and refreshment. Payment for overtime is fixed at a quarter more than the ordinary rate. There are strict regulations to prevent women, girls, and boys being subjected to wet or dampness or to the steam from hot water. They are not allowed to remain in workrooms at all during meal-time, except by special permission of the inspectors, and where more than four are employed a dining-room must be supplied. Girls and boys under fourteen years of age cannot be employed in factories unless permission is obtained. No girl under fifteen years of age can be employed at type-setting in a printing office; neither girls nor boys under sixteen can be employed in a room where there is any grinding in the metal trade or where matches are dipped; no girl under sixteen can be employed where salt or bricks or tiles are being made or finished; if she is under eighteen, she cannot be employed in connection with the melting or annealing of glass; and neither girls nor boys under eighteen can be employed in a room where mirrors are silvered by the mercurial process, or where white lead is made. Besides that, no girls or boys under sixteen can be employed in a factory in any capacity unless the proprietor obtains a certificate of the young person’s fitness. This certificate is given by the inspector, who has to see that the youth is fit for the employment and has passed the fourth standard.
