Conditions of Employment and Factory Rules

Mardon, Son & Hall, Limited (Caxton Works), Bristol. Published May 1947. Wraps, 7 pp.; 17 cm; letterpress text with printed marginal keyword headings, a double-rule border and typographic corner ornaments to the front wrapper. In Very Good condition. Kraft-brown paper wraps printed in black, staple bound; front wrapper toned with some soiling and staining, printer's reference 633 at foot; interior leaves toned but clean, no tears, no writing.Internal staff rulebook issued to employees of Mardon, Son & Hall, the Bristol printing and packaging house that became a subsidiary of the Imperial Tobacco Company in 1902. Mardon's had pioneered the modern cigarette card in 1889, printing W.D. & H.O. Wills advertisements on the stiffener cards of cigarette packets, and went on to produce the bulk of Imperial Tobacco's cigarette and playing cards; by the 1930s the firm employed more than 5,000 people across some thirteen Bristol factories. Dated May 1947, this pamphlet records the firm's conditions of employment in the immediate post-war years under the Attlee government, a period of full employment and strong organised labour. Its thirty-four numbered rules cover hours, notice, absence, safety, and factory discipline, framed throughout by the print trade's chapel system: Rule 1 provides for working hours to be altered only in consultation with Mardon's Federated Chapel (the works union branch), and the closing rule ties interpretation of the rules to the arrangements between the British Federation of Master Printers (B.F.M.P.) and the Printing and Kindred Trades Federation (P. & K.T.F.). A scarce piece of Bristol industrial ephemera bridging the histories of commercial printing, the tobacco trade, and British trade unionism.…