These two chief factors in the "sweating" problem, sub-contract and irregular home-work, are far more prevalent in female industries than in male.
Sec.4.Hours of Labour in Women's Trades .-- The Factory Act is supposed to protect women engaged in industrial work from excessive hours of labour, by setting a limit of twelve hours to the working day, including an interval of two hours for meals.
But passing over the fact that a dispensation is granted, enabling women to be employed for fourteen hours during certain times, there is the far more important consideration that most employments of women wholly escape the operation of the Factory Act.

In part this is due to the difficulty of enforcing the Act in the case of sweating workshops, many of which are unknown to inspectors, while others habitually break the law and escape the penalty.

Again, the Act does not and cannot be made to apply to a large class of small domestic workshops.

When the dwelling-room is also the work-room, it is impossible to enforce by any machinery of law, close limitation of hours of labour.

Something may be done to extend the arm of the law over small workshops; but the worst form of out-work, that voluntarily undertaken by women in their own homes, cannot be thus put down.