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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2024
Don't they want to be protected?
THE MAN. Call in the inspector! What sort of fool are you? They dread the inspector more than I do. EPIFANIA. Why? Don't they want to be protected? THE WOMAN. The inspector wouldn't protect them, ma’am: he’d only shut up the place and take away their job from them. If they thought you’d be so cruel as to report them they’d go down on their knees to you to spare them. THE MAN. You that know such a lot ought to know that a business like this can't afford any luxuries. It's a cheap labour business. As long as I get women to work for their natural wage, I can get along; but no luxuries, mind you. No trade union wages. No sanitary arrangements as you call them. No lime washings every six months. No separate rooms to eat in. No fencing in of dangerous machinery or the like of that: not that I care; for I have nothing but the old gas engine that wouldn't hurt a fly, though it brings me under the blasted Workshop Act as you spotted all right. I have no big machinery; but I have to undersell those that have it. If I put up my prices by a farthing they’d set their machinery going and drop me. You might as well ask me to pay trade union wages as do all that the inspector wants: I should be out of business in a week. EPIFANIA. And what is a woman's natural wage? THE MAN. Tuppence hapeny an hour for twelve hours a day.
(George Bernard Shaw, The Millionairess, Act III (London, 1934))Factory and workshop owners, factory law and abidance
The intrusion of factory inspectors onto the premises of businesses in Britain was often not welcomed. Even before the advent of women on the scene, there are examples of local authorities forming a protective shield around a businessman against representatives of the central administration.
On 1 May 1885, Thomas Clarke, miller of Earsham, physically attacked inspector Hudson in the yard of his mill and on the road. The local magistrates held that the assaults were justified and did not issue any fine for assault. The excuse was that the inspector had not shown his credentials. As the miller appeared after the inspection had commenced and immediately proceeded with the attack, the producing of certificates had proved fairly difficult.
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