Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1897
This review evaluates two studies by Émile Waxweiler concerning Sunday rest and protective labour legislation in Switzerland. Schullern’s central judgment is that Swiss experience offers unusually valuable evidence: Sunday-rest provisions had operated long enough to be tested, while opponents had ample opportunity to expose harmful effects. The review therefore treats legislation through its practical consequences, public acceptance, and capacity for further development.
The first study arose from a mission commissioned by the Belgian minister for industry and labour, Nyssens. Schullern praises its detailed account of the laws, their foundations, effects, and reception. The federal factory law of 1877 anchors his discussion. Its successive modifications matter because they embody practical experience; continuing demands for improvement suggest that reform had become an accepted institutional framework, rather than an experiment awaiting reversal.
The second study supplies the historical dimension:
Die zweite Broschüre stellt die historische Entwicklung der die Einschränkung der Arbeitsdauer auch für Erwachsene, der Kinderarbeit u. s. w. betreffenden schweizerischen Gesetze dar und geht dabei von den Verhältnissen im Canton Glarus (1872) aus, der in dieser Richtung an der Spitze der Civilisation gestanden und das Muster für das Bundesgesetz vom Jahre 1877 gegeben hat.
English translation: The second pamphlet presents the historical development of the Swiss laws concerning the limitation of the duration of labour, for adults as well, concerning child labour, etc., and takes as its point of departure the conditions in the Canton of Glarus (1872), which in this respect stood at the head of civilization and provided the model for the federal law of the year 1877.
Schullern emphasizes the movement from cantonal initiative to federal legislation. Glarus supplies the model, while employers’ and workers’ adaptation to the resulting law opens the question of extending protection beyond factories. Acceptance does not imply uniform enthusiasm: the review explicitly recognizes responses ranging from eagerness to resignation.
Während 1891 für die ganze Eidgenossenschaft der Begriff „Fabrik“ erweitert wurde, um einem grösseren Kreise von Arbeitern die Vortheile des Gesetzes zuzuwenden, giengen einzelne Cantone daran, energisch den Arbeiterschutz auch in den nicht als fabriksmässig anerkannten Gewerben zur Geltung zu bringen, zuerst der Canton Basel-Stadt (1884).
English translation: While in 1891 the concept "factory" was broadened for the whole Confederation in order to extend the advantages of the law to a larger circle of workers, individual cantons set about energetically bringing labour protection into force also in those trades not recognized as factory-like, first of all the Canton of Basel-Stadt (1884).
This passage identifies two routes toward wider protection: broadening the legal category of the factory and legislating for trades outside it. The review’s significance lies in this compact account of reform as cumulative learning across federal and cantonal institutions. Schullern closes by praising Waxweiler’s concise exposition as instructive and stimulating; his endorsement rests chiefly on the studies’ ability to make an established but still expanding system of labour protection intelligible.
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