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from year to year, free from all usual tenant's rates and taxes,
and tithe commutation rentcharge (if any), and deducting therefrom
the probable average annual cost of the repairs, insurance,
and other expenses (if any) necessary to maintain the same in a
state to command such rent."
R. E. SPRAGUE ORAM,
H.M. Chief Inspector of Factories.
Home Office,
January 10, 1896.
The following are the main provisions of the Act to which
attention may well be drawn.
Its provisions may be grouped, with sufficient comprehensiveness
for the purpose of the present summary, under two
heads—first, amendments and extensions of existing machinery,
and, secondly, new machinery. Under the former head a variety
of provisions have to be noticed. "Overcrowding" is now
defined to mean the provision of less than two hundred and fifty
cubic feet of space for each person employed, or four hundred
feet during any period of overtime. The Secretary of State may,
however, by order, modify this proportion for any period during
which artificial light other than electric light is being employed.
He may also, by order, increase the above-mentioned proportion
as regards any particular manufacturing process or handicraft.
Again, the prohibition of "children" from cleaning machinery
in motion is now extended to "young persons," i. e., persons
above fourteen, but under eighteen years of age. The overtime
employment of young persons in non-textile factories and workshops
is prohibited, while that of women is reduced from five to
three days in any one week, and from forty-eight to thirty days
in any one year. The overtime employment of women under
the "perishable articles" Clauses of the Factory and Workshops
Act, 1878, is cut down from ninety-six to sixty days a
year. No "young person" is to be employed under the "letterpress
printing works" provision in the Act of 1878 for more