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46
(13) It is difficult for a Sanitary Authority to become
acquainted of the existence of many work-places, and
Section 41 provides that every occupier shall, during
1896, serve a notice to the Factory Inspector, giving
particulars, and such notice shall be forwarded forthwith
to the Sanitary Authority of the district in which
the workshop is situate.
Although it is not ordered by the Act, it would be a
most important and valuable step if the Factory
Inspector would forward to each Authority a list of
out-workers resident within its jurisdiction.
Undoubtedly the most important provisions in Factory
Legislation are those which prescribe a limit to the overcrowding
hitherto so common in work-rooms, and those which enforce
efficient ventilation The natural aversion to fresh air in
their work-room, which appears to be in the experience of
all health officers a dominant trait with the workers, will be
difficult to overcome, unless it is insisted upon that provision
shall always be made for permanent ventilation. If all Factories
and Workshops could be efficiently ventilated at all times, and
at the same time kept at a reasonable temperature—facts which
I regard as physical impossibilities in some work-rooms, unless
they be reconstructed—then a large section of the community
would be spared a considerable amount of preventable illness,
would become more healthy and vigorous, and soon repay by
work more quickly and better performed, the outlay which would
have to be faced by the bulk of employers.