The Factory and Shop Acts of the British Dominions. Compiled
by Miss Violet B. Markham. With General View of the English Law by Mrs. J. H. Tennant. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 2s. 6d. net.)—The "English Law" is a very complicated business indeed; but Mrs. Tennant has given us as intelligible a conspectus as could have been expected. Employers of labour, and those who are in any way called upon to protect its interests, cannot do better than study it. Part II. gives a similar summary for New Zealand and Australia in seven sections, dealing with New Zealand, the five provinces of the Commonwealth, and Tasmania. Then comes Canada in six sections. The Cape has no factory law, but there are regulations for the closing of shops, which is done by local option. Two-thirds of the shopkeepers in any district may close the shops of the whole, December, and any week in which there is a public holiday, being excepted. The details of Colonial legislation are often interesting. No minimum- wage provision exists in any Canadian legislation. In New Zealand, where this kind of legislation is more developed than it is elsewhere, no one under twenty must be paid less than 5s. per week for the first year, and this wage must be increased by 3s. weekly every year. A boy of fifteen gets 5s. in his sixteenth year and 17s. in his twentieth. When he is twenty he has a minimum of 17s. for the first year and 20s. afterwards. Half-holidays and whole holidays are to be paid for in the case of women and males under. eighteen. Overtime must be paid for at the rate of one- fourth as much again as the ordinary rate. In Western Australia no person of Chinese or Asiatic race may be engaged in a factory unless employed before November 1st, 1903, and all goods made by such workmen must be labelled "Made by Asiatic Labour."
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