The House reassembled on Wednesday (the Derby Day) to discuss
Mr. Robson's Half-Timers Bill in Committee. This very important measure, which raises the age at which children can be partially exempted from school attendance from eleven to twelve, owing to the obstinate obstruction of a small knot of Lancashire Members, has not become law, though the operative clause was passed after the Closure had been moved and carried by 263 votes to 26. The figures of the divisions were most instructive. Mr. Whiteley, the ringleader of the obstructionists, could only get ten Members to support his first amendment postponing the operation of the Bill for five years, and only eighteen to support the substitution of eleven years and six months for twelve years. An important proviso was adopted on the motion of Mr. Robson, enabling the local authority for any district to fix thirteen years as the minimum age for exemption from school attendance in the case of children to be employed in agriculture, and providing that such children over eleven and under thirteen years of age who had passed the standard prescribed for partial exemption from school attendance by the by-laws of the local authority should not be required to attend school more than two hundred and fifty times in a year. We sincerely trust that in view of the overwhelming majorities—hardly ever less than 10 to 1—by which the House has condemned the opposition to the Bill, the Government will not refuse the special facilities necessary to secure its insertion in the Statute-book before the end of the Session. We have nothing but praise for the union of persistence and conciliation shown by the M.ember for South Shields in the conduct of a measure which will deserve to be known to future generations as Robson's Bill.
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