Governor of Hongkong of a Commission of Inquiry into the Industrial Employment of Children, reported by Reuter, is one step further, it is to be hoped, in the regulation of the employment of children of tender years. As things stand at present in the Crown Colony children may be engaged in factories for precisely as many hours as their employers choose to keep them, and at any sort of work, They may be, and very often are, exposed, through the processes in which they are engaged, to danger to life, health or limb, while it has been a common matter to see children struggling up the slopes of the Peak under Joads manifestly above their strength. It was in May, 1919, that the Sanitary Board, by a unanimous resolution, called upon the Government to prohibit the employment of children under the age of 14 years in factories or workshops for more than 10 hours per diem, but this was thrown out by the Legislative Council. Questions were asked in Parliament, the Governor was instructed to send a report home and apparently the Commission is the result. Whatever may be the outcome of this body's deliberations it is a matter for congratulation that even such eminently domestic problems as that in point can be brought to the notice of Parliament and action eventually obtained. And as long as this is so there need never be any great fear of colonial administration becoming too bureaucratic.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.