Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours' system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the "cruel and incredible" extension of the working day are naturally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system in its "normal" form.
Messrs, Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent. are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in night sets thus express themselves: "The boys do not suffer from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86° to 90°.… At the forges and in the rolling-mills the hands work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the work are day work, i.e., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge the hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work in the night, without any alternation of day and night work. We do not find any difference in the health of those who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and probably people can sleep better if they have the same period of rest than if it is changed.… About 20 of the boys under the age of 18 work in the night sets.… We could not well do without lads under 18 working by night. The objection would be in the increase in the cost of production.… Skilled hands and the heads in every department are difficult to get, but of the lads we could get any number.… But from the small proportion of boys that we employ the subject (i.e., of restrictions on night work) is of little importance or interest to us."[1]
Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co., steel and iron works, employing about 3000 men and boys, part
- ↑ Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 79, p. xvi.
hours' relays." Children under 13, young persons under 18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and girls very often work overtime, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 36 hours of uninterrupted toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 13 who work the whole month 14 hours a day, "without any regular relief or cessation beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half-an-hour each for meals." In some mills, where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terrible extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most monotonous of the various processes." ("Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV., 1866," p. xxxviii. and xxxix.)
