it was postponed to the following year. In 1878, the Bill was given a higher priority: it had its first reading as soon as Parliament convened in January; the Second Reading debate was held on 11 February and it entered Committee stage on 21 February; the Third Reading in the Commons was given at the end of March. Provisions of the Act The Factory and Workshop Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 16) replaced all the previous Acts (it listed sixteen acts repealed in their entirety) by a single Act of some hundred and seven clauses. The Chief Inspector of Factories described it as much less restrictive than the legislation it replaced: "The hard and fast line [drawn by the previous Acts] is now an undulating and elastic one, drawn to satisfy the absolute necessities and customs of different trades in different parts of the kingdom." The protected persons fell into three categories: 'Children' (aged 10–14, but a child of 13 who had met required levels of academic attainment and had a good school attendance record could be employed as a 'young person') 'Young persons' (aged 14–18, of either sex: as noted above 13-year-olds satisfying educational requirements could be employed as young persons) 'Women' (females aged over 18; it had been urged that women did not require protection, and their inclusion in factory legislation deterred their employment. The countering arguments (that married women required protection from husbands, and unless unmarried women were subject to the same protection, Parliament would be legislating to promote immorality; and that the restrictions were in the interests of public health, since they ensured some maternal attention for the children of working women) had generally prevailed.) The premises being regulated were now separated into five categories: Factories fell into two types; 'textile factories' – those within the scope of the 1874 Act 'non-textile factories' – workplaces carrying out a number of specified processes ((textile) print works, bleaching and dyeing works, earthenware works (excluding brickworks), lucifer match works, percussion cap works, cartridge works, paper staining works, fustian cutting works, blast furnaces, copper mills, iron mills, foundries, metal and india-rubber works, paper mills, glass works, tobacco factories, letterpress printing works, bookbinding works) and additionally any workplace in which mechanical power was used (replacing the former distinction between factory and workshop on the basis on the number of employees) Workshops were places in which the manufacture, repair or