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Section 9 of the Trade Boards Act is on the same lines, though it is not in its terms confined to buying or to home work, and runs as follows: “Any shop-keeper, dealer, or trader, who by way of trade makes any arrangement, express or implied, with any worker, in pursuance of which the worker performs any work for which a minimum rate of wages has been fixed under this Act shall be deemed for the purposes of this Act to be the employer of the worker, and the net remuneration obtainable by the worker in respect of the work after allowing for his necessary expenditure in connection with the work shall be deemed to be wages.'

(B) CLASSIFICATIONS BY KIND OF LABOUR or
INCOME LIMIT

The Employers and Workmen Act, 1875, the Employers' Liability Act, 1880, and the Truck Acts, 1831-1896, are restricted to persons engaged in manual labour,' with but one exception. That is contained in Section 1 of the Truck Act, 1896, which deals with fines imposed on workmen and deducted from their wages. This section applies to the case of a shop-assistant in like manner as it applies to the case of a workman. The term shop-assistant is not itself defined.

The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, after including persons working under a contract of service, whether by way of manual labour, clerical work, or otherwise, proceeds to make an exception of any person employed otherwise than by way of manual labour whose remuneration exceeds £250 a year.' The figure £250 a year' seems to be a rough guess at the dividing line between those who would be in a position to take out accident policies for themselves and those who would not.

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The National Insurance Act, 1911, Part I., after including employment under any contract of service, proceeds to make various exceptions (which are fully set out at p. 270), and in particular to except 'employment otherwise than by way of manual labour, and at a rate of remuneration exceeding in value £160 a year.' This was obviously a selection of the

income limit, which divided income-tax payers from those totally exempt from income-tax.

The National Insurance Act, Part II., is restricted to persons employed wholly or mainly by way of manual labour.

The Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, does not mention manual labour in express terms, but is restricted to manual workers by the requirement that the worker shall work 'in a manufacturing process or handicraft, or in cleaning any part of the factory or workshop . . . or in cleaning or oiling any part of the machinery, or in any kind of work whatsoever incidental to . . . the manufacturing process or handicraft. . . .

The phrases used in the Trade Boards Act, 1909, such as 'all persons employed in the trade,' have given rise to a good deal of discussion, but as the Act contains no further definition of these phrases, each trade board has had to fashion a working definition in order to make as clear as possible the scope of its determinations. The latest determination of the Tailoring Trade Board is in these terms: 'The above rates shall apply to all . . . workers who are employed during the whole or any part of their time in any branch of the . . Trade, . . . but they shall not apply to any persons engaged merely as clerks, messengers, persons engaged in work ordinarily carried on in the stockroom or warehouse, saleswomen, travellers, packers, parcellers, persons engaged in cleaning premises, or to any other persons whose work stands in a relationship to the trade similar to that of the foregoing excluded classes.'

(C) CLASSIFICATION BY TRADES

The Trade Boards Act, 1909, is restricted to scheduled trades in which the prevailing rate of wages is exceptionally low. The first trades scheduled were selected by Parliament, and are now selected by the Board of Trade, subject to confirmation by Parliament. For a full list, reference should be made to Chapter VII.

The National Insurance Act, 1911, Part II. (unemployment insurance), is also restricted to certain scheduled

trades. The trades selected by Parliament were some of those in which seasonal or cyclical periods of depression and unemployment were most pronounced. For a full list, reference should be made to Chapter XIX.

The reader will meet with several examples of legislation for single trades.

CHAPTER II

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL LAW

THE bulk of modern industrial law is statutory, and dates from about the year 1867. It is somewhat difficult for a person whose recollection does not go back beyond that year to realise how extremely insignificant industrial law was in the early Victorian period. The first edition of Smith's Law of Master and Servant appeared in 1852, and is mostly devoted to an exposition of the principles of the Common Law. The fourth edition of Stephen's Commentaries, published in 1858, contains a short chapter in the second volume on Master and Servant, the contents of which are substantially the same as the chapter penned by Blackstone himself nearly a century earlier. It contains no reference to any intervening legislation. It is true that in the third volume there is a new chapter on the laws relating to the sanatory condition of the people,' and in a footnote it is explained that "in addition to the statutes of which some account is above given, there are the following more or less immediately connected with the subject of the sanatory condition of the people," and there then follows a list of various Acts or classes of Acts, including a group of Acts. concerned with labour in factories, and an Act for the inspection of coal mines. The year 1867 has been selected as the beginning of the period of modern industrial law, because in that year three events happened, all of which had a direct and important bearing on the future of industrial legislation. First, artisans in boroughs were given the franchise, and in future had some voice in legislating for their own class;

again by Lord Elcho's Act imprisonment for breach of the contract of service by an individual workman was with one exception abolished, and the inferior status of a workman as a contracting party was practically put an end to; and, lastly, a Royal Commission was appointed, which resulted in the passing of the Trade Union Act, 1871.

As a great part of this book will be concerned with legislation since 1867, it may be helpful at this point to attempt a short sketch of industrial law prior to that year.

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Common Law Rules as to Master and Servant. The Common Law contribution to industrial law may be grouped under some simple headings. First, it had placed the relationship of master and servant on the ordinary footing of a common law agreement or contract, and contracts of hiring or contracts of service were merely special instances of the ordinary law of contract. General legislation, like Section 4 of the Statute of Frauds (which governed contracts not to be performed within a year), applied to contracts of service in exactly the same way as to other contracts. There was, however, an important exception, as remedies for breach of contracts of service were not on the same footing as for breaches of other contracts, masters and servants not having been left to their ordinary remedies in the Civil Courts. An Act of 1747 had given the Justices special powers of dealing with disputes between master and servant and master and apprentice, and these powers, after an extension in 1766, were further extended in 1823. There was indeed no objection to using the machinery of the Justices for the settlement of small disputes, and as there were very few courts specially available for these disputes, the selection of the Justices as a handy, cheap, and speedy tribunal is to be commended. The blot on this legislation was that it discriminated between master and servant. If the workman had a grievance he could summon his master, and the Justices could award him his wages or release him from his contract of service. On the other hand, if the master's grievance was that the servant had not commenced to work, or having entered into service had absented himself from work before

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