101
Exclusion of Young Children.

UNREGULATED FACTORIES.

We have already shown in an earlier part of this chapter how
the first Indian Factories Act started with the regulation of child labour
and how each succeeding Act for several decades improved upon those
regulations, not only by raising the age at which children might work in
a factory, but also by reducing their maximum working hours and by
postponing the age at which they should be regarded as adults, Where
the regulation is concerned of child labour in factories employing 50 per-
sons and upwards but employing no power machinery, we are confronted
with a position comparable with that of the power-driven factories half
a century ago. In such places there has hitherto been no regulation
as to either the starting age or the maximum hours of labour, and a
considerable volume of employment exists throughout the country of
children of tender years for excessive hours, Unfortunately, as we have
shown, there is in many cases, though not in all, an easy avenue of
escape from such regulation, particularly ina country where compulsory
education is still the exception rather than the rule, Realising,
therefore, the necessity of educating both employers and parents to
a higher standard of consideration for child welfare, and for the passing
only of such legislation as is capable of enforcement, we recommend
that the starting age for children in such places shall in the first instance
be 10 years,
Hours of Children.

We recommend that, for the present, protection in the matter
of hours be confined to children between 10 and 14 years of age.
Fourteen years is not an ideal limit, but here again it is well
to proceed gradually. Generally speaking, the hours of adult workers
in places of this kind are not excessive, and their regulation would
involve an extension of administration at a cost which would be
difficult to justify at this stage. It is also necessary to realise that,
whereas in power-driven factories the pace of work is determined by
the machine, in many of the places of the kind now under contempla-
tion the paceis comparatively dilatory and discipline often not strict. In
regulating the hours of children, it is desirable to have a provision that is
easily intelligible and that lends itself to as little evasion as possible. In
bhis last connection, as has been already stated, the most serious risk is that
children may be employed in two factories on the same day, as occurred
im a number of the larger factories when children’s hours were substan-
tially reduced. We recommend, therefore, that for the present the law
should enact that the hours of children employed in these factories
should fall within the limits to he specified by the provincial Governments.
These limits, which should be the same for all factories in one district
but might vary from district to district or from season to season
as need arose, should be such that in no case should the working
hours of a child exceed seven or fall outside a period of nine hours in
the day, with a rest interval of at least an hour. These limitations
should, of course, be embodied in the Act. Thus, a provincial Govern-
ment could prescribe that in a particular district children should not