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as could be expected under present conditions.
The Board felt it could propose, however, that children should not be employed in factories and workshops after 6 p.m. except when special permission had been obtained from the Board, for such employment must be injurious to the health of young children who would certainly be better in bed than working by artificial light in stuffy rooms. As the returns obtained by the committee on working conditions showed that most factories stopped work at 6 p.m., the prohibition of children working after this hour would not interfere to any appreciable extent in "the better managed factories and workshops”.
Mr. Bowley admitted that the fixing of the age limit at fourteen was a compromise. In England a ten hour day was the maximum for women and children of any age. For Hong Kong he would have wished an age limit much higher than fourteen, but the Chinese members of the committee had not agreed and “for the sake of unanimity I accepted the age proposed by them". The Chinese also urged the lowering of the English statutory age of fourteen for children engaged in dangerous occupations to the age of thirteen. They claimed that Chinese children developed more rapidly than European children.
There would be another difference between the factory legislation in Britain and in Hong Kong: both had a limit of ten hours, but in Britain there was to be no work on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, thus there was a work week of fifty-five hours, while in Hong Kong, where there were only two holidays every lunar month, the weekly average would be sixty-five hours.
All in all, Mr. Bowley regarded the recommendation before the meeting as reasonable and moderate and should “commend itself to every fair-minded person”.
Mr. Alabaster, the Chairman of the Board, put in a cautionary note. He conceded that everyone would be in sympathy with the proposed regulations, but how were they to be administered? The burden of the Sanitary Department would be greatly increased. One problem for the Inspectors would be to determine the age of Chinese children and it would be difficult for them to state what would be injurious to a child. The