A curious correspondence was published in the Birmingham Daily Post
of July 16, between some Birmingham brasafounders and the Home Office, on the question of some special relaxations of the Factory Acts' Extension Act, specially provided for in that Act, but which the Home Secretary alone is empowered by that Act to grant. The 30th and 31st of Victoria, c. 103, schedule 12, gave the Home Secretary power to extend in certain trades the limiting hours of work without extending the actual number -of hours of work, whenever " the customs and exigencies" of .certain trades rendered such an extension desirable. Messrs. Tonks, brassfounders, requested this relaxation for the lacquerers in their trade, asking that the limits of work should be 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., but expressing their intention to fix the regular hours of the lacquerers' work from nine till one and half-past two till half- past six. It is important to have lacquerers at work after the regu- lar workmen have gone away, in order to secure their work from the -action of the atmosphere. All the brasafounders and apparently the -lacquerers themselves concurred in the request, nor can we find out any reasonable objection to it. However, the odd part of the corres- pondence is that the Home Office would not urge any objection. Sir -James Fergusson said, in questionable English, that " as lacquerers -do not fall within any custom or exigency" (do they fall out of it, then, or where?), and as the general trades cease to work after ,6 p.m., their request could not be complied with, and no reason or ;shadow of a reason could be extorted. At last they were referred to the Inspector of the district, who referred them to their own -solicitor to construe the Act, and there the matter ended, with -exceedingly little either of reason or courtesy on the part of the Home Office and its subordinates. Could no Liberal member be -found to make Mr. Gathorne Hardy more articulate?
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