(b) The number of establishments covered by the laws and regulations, classified by industries and indicating the number of workers employed (men, women, young persons, children);

(c) The number of visits of inspection made for each class of establishment with an indication of the number of workers employed in the establishments inspected (the number of workers being taken to be the number employed at the time of the first visit of the year), and the number of establishments inspected more than once during the year;

(d) The number and nature of breaches of the laws and regulations brought before the competent authorities and the number and nature of the convictions by the competent authority.

(e) The number, nature and the cause of accidents and occupational diseases notified, tabulated according to class of establishment.

The sixth session of the International Labor Conference was held at Geneva, June 16 to July 5, 1924. A draft convention and a recommendation concerning equality of treatment for national and foreign workers as regards workmen's compensation for accidents were provisionally adopted, final action to be taken at the 1925 Conference. A similar course was followed on a draft convention concerning the weekly suspension of work for twenty-four hours in glassmanufacturing processes where tank furnaces are used and on a draft convention on night work in bakeries. The Conference, however, adopted a draft recommendation on facilities for the utilization of workers' spare time, supplementing the convention adopted at the Washington Conference on the eight-hour day, which aimed to secure for workers an adequate period of spare time. This recommendation. covered a wide field, dealing with the preservation of spare time-spare time and social hygiene, housing policy, institutions for the utilization of spare time, and free use of institutions and coordination of local action. A resolution of the Conference invited the International Labor Office to

publish regularly studies of the action taken and results obtained in different countries in the application of measures directed toward the proper use of workers' spare time.

At the seventh session, convened at Geneva, May 19 to June 10, 1925, conventions and recommendations were adopted on four subjects, one of them having reference to hours of work and another being the clause of the Labor Section favoring equality of treatment for foreign workers. The draft convention forbidding night work in bakeries for a period of seven hours, which had been held over from the Conference of the previous year, was adopted, but the proposed draft convention providing for weekly suspension of work in glass-manufacturing processes where tank furnaces are used, passed provisionally in 1924, failed of adoption.

The Conference also accepted the draft convention and the recommendation concerning equality of treatment for national and foreign workers as regards workmen's compensation, which had been provisionally adopted at the preceding session. The convention provided that each State should grant to the nationals of any other State ratifying the convention the same treatment with regard to workmen's compensation as it granted its own nationals, without any condition as to residence. It permitted special agreements to provide that compensation for accidents occurring to workers while temporarily or intermittently employed in the territory of one member on behalf of an undertaking situated in the territory of another member should be governed by the laws and regulations of the latter member. Members who ratified the convention and who did not possess a system of workmen's compensation agreed to institute such a system within three years from the date of their ratification. The recommendation on the subject dealt with procedure necessary to facilitate the application of the convention. Such privileges as exemptions from taxes granted by any

member for purposes connected with workmen's compensation should be extended to the nationals of other members who should have ratified the convention and countries with no systems of workmen's compensation should afford facilities to alien workers to enable them to benefit by the laws on workmen's compensation in their own countries.

A draft convention and two recommendations on workmen's compensation were passed, setting forth the minimum scale of compensation and service to be accorded injured workers and concerning jurisdiction in disputes, suggesting they should be dealt with by a special court or board of arbitration on which employers and workers should have equal representation and that when ordinary courts of law dealt with such disputes they should be required, at the request of either party, to hear employers' and workmen's representatives. The subject of workmen's compensation for occupational diseases was also treated in a convention and recommendation.

These conventions and recommendations interpreting the labor clauses have been summarized at the beginning of each of the chapters dealing with the nine methods and principles.

CANADIAN RATIFICATIONS

In regard to Canada's fulfilment of her obligations under the Labor Section of the Treaty it must be remembered that as a federal country she has peculiar difficulties in this regard. On this point the Treaty of Peace stated in Article 405, paragraph nine, that:

In the case of a federal State, the power of which to enter into conventions on labour matters is subject to limitations, it shall be in the discretion of that Government to treat a draft convention to which such limitations apply as a recommendation only, and the provisions of this article with respect to recommendations shall apply in such case.

And in the same article it was stated that "in the case of a recommendation, the members will inform the secretarygeneral of the action taken."

It must be remembered also that the United States, Canada's chief competitor and accordingly the country whose action in labor legislation gives her most concern, is not a member of the International Labor Organization.

When the text of these draft conventions and recommendations of the Washington Conference was communicated through the League of Nations to the Government of Canada a question arose as to the division of responsibility between the Dominion and the provinces in these matters, a subject which is considered in the following chapter. It was finally decided,1 on report of the Minister of Justice, that the Federal Government's obligation would be fully carried out if the different conventions and recommendations were brought to the attention of the competent authority, Dominion or provincial, in each case. Accordingly the Dominion Government's procedure on receiving these proposals has been to secure an opinion from the Minister of Justice as to the competent authority to deal with them and to transmit those held within provincial competence to the lieutenant-governors of the provinces.

In September, 1922, the Dominion Government called the provincial governments to a conference "to consider the problem of unemployment as well as aspects of other industrial and social questions which have been the subject of action at the International Labour Conference." The conference commended the draft conventions and recommendations to the sympathetic attention of the competent authorities and suggested that at the request of a majority of the provinces the Dominion Government should "call a confer

1 Cf. infra, p. 57.

ence for the consideration of any aspects of the matters when this may be deemed necessary." Pursuant to this resolution another federal-provincial conference was held in September, 1923. This conference adopted a number of recommendations on various proposals of the International Labor Organization, and the next year the legislatures of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia endorsed certain of the decisions.

On the conventions and recommendations of the last four Conferences Canada has taken no formal action. Attention has been given only to certain of the decisions of the first three meetings of the International Labor Organization. At the Washington Conference six conventions and six recommendations were adopted, the first limiting the hours of work in industrial undertakings to eight in the day and forty-eight in the week.

British Columbia passed a series of measures at the first session of the legislature in 1921 to give effect to the Washington conventions, among them the Hours of Work Act (c. 22) which, subject to certain exceptions, limited the hours of persons employed in industrial undertakings to eight in the day and forty-eight in the week, but these acts were not to come into force until the enactment of similar legislation. in the other provinces. A bill introduced during the second session proposed to make this act operative in 1922 but it was not passed. In 1923 (c. 22) an Hours of Work Act, effective January 1, 1925, established a working day of eight hours and a week of forty-eight hours in the industries of the province except the agricultural, horticultural and dairying industries. Persons employed in supervisory or confidential capacities were excepted. The law meets the requirements of the convention.

The Legislature of Ontario passed the following resolution on the subject: