Opening
DANGEROUS TRADES
THE HISTORICAL, SOCIAL, AND LEGAL ASPECTS OF INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS AS AFFECTING HEALTH, BY A NUMBER OF EXPERTS
EDITED BY THOMAS OLIVER, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P.
MEDICAL EXPERT ON THE WHITE LEAD, DANGEROUS TRADES, POTTERY, AND LUCIFER MATCH COMMITTEES OF THE HOME OFFICE; PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM; PHYSICIAN TO THE ROYAL INFIRMARY, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1902
TO
THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM HENRY ASQUITH, K.C., M.P.
AND
THE RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT RIDLEY
TO WHOM, AS HOME SECRETARIES, THE EDITOR IS IN A VERY SPECIAL MANNER INDEBTED FOR THE MANY OPPORTUNITIES AFFORDED HIM OF ACQUIRING THAT PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE WHICH HAS ENABLED HIM TO BRING TOGETHER THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, THIS BOOK IS, WITH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT, DEDICATED
Preface
This is the first occasion on which, on the special lines indicated in this book, any adequate attempt has been made in this or any other country to deal with the conduct of trades and other occupations in respect to the dangers to life and health to which the workers are liable.
The subject is year by year engrossing more of the attention of the public, and this has been evinced in many ways, e.g., in the amount of space devoted by the Press to the subject of leadless-glaze in pottery, and to the manufacture of matches without phosphorus, etc.
The increasing interest displayed by the public in social affairs has led to a corresponding desire for accurate information as to the condition in which their fellow-men and women live and work. This volume is a response to a widely-expressed demand for a true and authoritative statement on this important subject--a subject which concerns thousands upon thousands of our fellow country-people.
The field covered by “Dangerous Trades and Occupation Diseases” is a very wide one, and, as there is no one person competent to deal adequately with the whole, it has been found desirable to engage the co-operation of experts on the various trades with which the volume treats.
In carrying out this scheme, an enormous amount of information which has hitherto been unrecorded or inaccessible has been brought into focus and made available for reference.
The language employed has been kept as free as possible from technicalities. It is confidently believed that this volume will be of considerable value, not only to medical men, whose practice brings them into contact with the working classes, to Certifying Factory Surgeons, Factory Inspectors, and employers of labour, but also to the educated public and to professional men interested in the hygienic side of industrial problems and in occupation diseases. It is hoped also that it will be of assistance to members of both Houses of Parliament.
Whilst congratulating myself on my good fortune in securing the assistance of many distinguished and able specialists, I take this opportunity of expressing my warmest thanks to Dr Whitelegge, Dr Morison Legge, Miss A. M. Anderson, and especially to Commander Hamilton Smith, R.N., of the Factory Department of the Home Office, for their help in various ways, and to all my contributors for their ready acquiescence and loyal support.
THOMAS OLIVER.
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, March 1902.
LIST OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter I
INTRODUCTION. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 1
Chapter II
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEGISLATION FOR INJURIOUS AND DANGEROUS INDUSTRIES IN ENGLAND. By Miss A. M. ANDERSON, _H.M. Principal Lady Inspector of Factories_, 24
Special Rules for Injurious Occupations--Appendix.
Chapter III
REGULATION OF INJURIOUS OR DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS IN FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS IN SOME OF THE CHIEF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. By Miss A. M. ANDERSON, 44
Chapter IV
PRINCIPLES OF PROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION FOR DANGEROUS TRADES. By H. J. TENNANT, M.P., _Chairman late Dangerous Trades Committee_, 63
Chapter V
INFANT MORTALITY AND FACTORY LABOUR. I.--By Mrs H. J. TENNANT. II.--By GEORGE REID, M.D., D.P.H., Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council, 73
Chapter VI
CHILD LABOUR. By Miss MARGARET M’MILLAN, _Member of School Board, Bradford_, 90
Chapter VII
HOME-WORK. By A. BALLANTYNE, 98
Chapter VIII
THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF WORK AND FATIGUE. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 104
Chapter IX
MORTALITY OF OCCUPATIONS. By JOHN TATHAM, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., General Register Office, Somerset House, London, 118
Chapter X
DUST-PRODUCING OCCUPATIONS. By JOHN TATHAM, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., General Register Office, Somerset House, London, 134
Potter, Earthenware, China Manufacture--Cutlers, Scissor-makers--File-cutters--Glassmakers--Copper-workers--Iron and Steel Workers--Zinc-workers--Lead-workers--Stone Quarriers--Brass-workers--Gunsmiths--Chimney Sweeps, Soot Merchants--Textile-workers--Wool, Worsted Manufacturers--Other Workers in Dusty Trades--Effects of Breathing Foul Air: Bookbinders, Printers; Musicians; Hatters; Hairdressers; Tailors; Drapers, Manchester Warehousemen; Shoemakers--The Mining Industry: Coal Miners; Ironstone-mining; Copper Miners; Tin Miners--Mortality of Unoccupied and Occupied Men.
Chapter XI
THE DISEASES OF SOLDIERS AT HOME AND ABROAD. By JOHN R. DODD, M.D., F.R.C.S., D.P.H., _Lieutenant-Colonel Royal Army Medical Corps_, 166
Chapter XII
HEALTH IN THE MARINE SERVICE. By WILLIAM COLLINGRIDGE, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.S., D.P.H. (Camb.), _Medical Officer of Health, City of London, formerly (1880–1901) Medical Officer of Health, Port of London_, 182
Diseases due to their Employment--Diseases caused by the Habits of Seamen--Diseases of Climate--Diseases due to Insanitary Conditions and Environment.
Chapter XIII
RAILWAYS. By HENRY H. CUNYNGHAME, C.B., _Assistant Under-Secretary, Home Department_, 190
Chapter XIV
SAFE-GUARDING OF MACHINERY. By H. S. RICHMOND, _H.M. Superintending Inspector of Factories_, 203
Prime Movers--Steam Engines--Gas and Oil Engines--Other Prime Movers--Electrical Generators--Mill-Gearing--Mill-Gearing Construction--Access to Shafting--Fencing of Low Shafting, etc.--Pulleys--Driving Belts--Shipping of Belts-- Belt Poles--Protection of Belts--Bevel Wheels--Means of Stopping Machinery--Machine Tools--Fencing of Dangerous Machinery--Set-screws--Toothed Wheels--Shaft or Spindle Ends--Loose Pulleys and Strap Forks--Plate Wheels--Hoists--Teagles--Cranes, Winches, etc.--Self-acting Mules--Looms--Circular Saws--Planing Machines--Power Process.
Chapter XV
AGRICULTURE, HORSES, CATTLE. By D’ARCY POWER, F.R.C.S., M.A. (Oxon.), _Senior Surgeon, Victoria Hospital for Children_;Assistant Surgeon, St Bartholomew’s Hospital; _Assistant Professor of Physiology, Royal Veterinary College, London_, 232
Agriculture: Labourers; Gardeners--Horses: Ostlers, Stablemen, and Cartmen--Cattle: Butchers, Slaughterers, and Tanners; Cowmen and Dairymaids; Shepherds; Pig-keepers.
Chapter XVI
ELECTRIC GENERATING WORKS. By HAMILTON P. SMITH, _Retired Commander R.N., and one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 250
Chapter XVII
DUST AS A CAUSE OF OCCUPATION DISEASE. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 267
General View of the Subject--Skin Diseases of Flax-workers--Diseases of Nails in Furriers--Lung Diseases due to Dust--Gastro-intestinal Lesions.
Chapter XVIII
DUST WOMEN. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 278
Chapter XIX
LEAD AND ITS COMPOUNDS. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 282
Lead Mining and the Health and Surroundings of the Miner--Lead-smelting--Red Lead, Lead Oxide, Litharge, Massicot, Minium--White Lead: Carbonate of Lead (Céruse, Fr.)--Lead Poisoning--Treatment: Preventive and Curative--Chromate of Lead: Dye Works--Calico Printing--Enamelling of Iron Plates and Hollow Ware--Electric Accumulator Works and Lead Poisoning--Motor Cars--Electric Tramways--Soldering, Typefounding, Printing, Typesetting, Linotyping--Precautions--Plumbing--House Painting--Coach Painting--Glass Polishing--File-cutting--Use of Lead in Potteries--Chromo-lithographic Works and Transfer-making--Tile-making and Manufacture of Porcelain Stoves--Washing of Lead-workers’ and Painters’ Clothes--Lead Foil Manufacture--Shoe-finishing and Staining by Lead Compounds--Lucifer Matches containing Lead--Buffing of Brass Cocks and Plumbism.
Chapter XX
ELECTRICAL TREATMENT IN CASES OF LEAD POISONING. By H. LEWIS JONES, M.D., _Medical Officer in charge of Electrical Department, St Bartholomew’s Hospital_, 373
The Elimination of the Metal--The Electrical Treatment of the Paralysis caused by Lead.
Chapter XXI
ARSENIC. By MALCOLM MORRIS, F.R.C.S., _Lecturer on Dermatology, St Mary’s Hospital, London_, 378
Symptoms--Treatment and Prophylaxis.
Chapter XXII
CHINA AND EARTHENWARE MANUFACTURE: POTTERS’ ROT. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 382
Symptoms--Prevention.
Chapter XXIII
BASIC SLAG. By JOHN HEDLEY, M.D., Middlesborough, 390
Chapter XXIV
GANISTER CRUSHING. By HAMILTON P. SMITH, _Retired Commander R.N., and one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 396
Report on Portions of Lung from a Ganister Miner--Microscopic Examination--Chemical Analysis.
Chapter XXV
MILLSTONE BUILDING: FRENCH BUHRSTONE. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 405
Chapter XXVI
STEEL GRINDING. By SINCLAIR WHITE, F.R.C.S., _Lecturer on Surgery, University College, Sheffield_, 408
Grinding--Glazing--Polishing--Lapping--Racing the Stone.
Chapter XXVII
PHOSPHORUS AND LUCIFER MATCHES. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 417
Phosphorus Necrosis--Prevention of Phosphorus Necrosis--Treatment of Phosphorus Necrosis.
Chapter XXVIII
DANGERS IN THE USE OF MERCURY AND ITS SALTS. By T. MORISON LEGGE, M.D., H.M. Medical Inspector of Factories, 434
Introduction--Historical--Mode in which Poisoning is brought about--Symptoms--Recovery from the Ore--Making of Thermometers--Incandescent Electric Lamps--Electrical Meters--Gold and Silver Extraction--Water-gilding--Silvering of Mirrors--Hatters Furriers’ Processes--Preparation of Mercurial Compounds--Preventive Measures--Rules to be observed in the Manufacture of Mercurial Preparations.
Chapter XXIX
THE LESIONS RESULTING FROM THE MANUFACTURE AND USES OF POTASSIUM AND SODIUM BICHROMATE. By T. MORISON LEGGE, M.D., H.M. Medical Inspector of Factories, 447
Nature of the Perforation--Ulceration of the Skin.
Chapter XXX
COPPER AND BRASS. By ROBERT M. SIMON, B.A., M.D. (Cantab.), F.R.C.P., Physician, General Hospital, Birmingham; and SEYMOUR H. KNYVETT, M.A. (Oxon.), _one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 455
Chapter XXXI
INDIARUBBER--DANGERS INCIDENTAL TO THE USE OF BISULPHIDE OF CARBON AND NAPHTHA. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 470
Chapter XXXII
THE EFFECTS OF DINITROBENZINE AND OTHER NITRO-SUBSTITUTION PRODUCTS OF THE AROMATIC SERIES ON THE WORKMEN EMPLOYED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES. By ROBERT PROSSER WHITE, M.D., _Surgeon, Roburite Explosives Company; Hon. Medical Officer, Royal Albert Edward Infirmary, Wigan_, 475
Poisonous Dose--Acute Poisoning--Subacute Poisoning--Chronic Poisoning--Muscular System--Nervous Symptoms--Eye Affections--Urinary Affection--Urine--Pathology: The Blood--Prognosis--Precautions.
Chapter XXXIII
DRY CLEANING BY MEANS OF BENZINE. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 491
Chapter XXXIV
USE OF INFLAMMABLE OR SPIRIT PAINTS. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 494
Chapter XXXV
ACETYLENE AND ITS DANGERS. By HAMILTON P. SMITH, _Retired Commander R.N., and one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 497
Chapter XXXVI
FLOUR MILLS. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 505
Chapter XXXVII
MINING. By HENRY LOUIS, M.A., A.R.S.M., F.I.C., F.G.S., _Professor of Mining, Durham College of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne_, 508
Chapter XXXVIII
THE AIR OF MINES. By JOHN HALDANE, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of New College, and Lecturer on Physiology, University of Oxford, 540
Black-damp--Carbonic Acid--Fire-damp--After-damp--Smoke--White-damp, Gob-stink, Fire-stink--Gases from Explosions.
Chapter XXXIX
QUARRIES. By JOHN BROWN, M.D., D.P.H., M.O.H., _Borough of Bacup_; and T. N. KELYNACK, M.D., M.R.C.P., _London, Assistant Physician to Mount Vernon Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, Hampstead and Northwood; late Pathologist and Medical Registrar, Manchester Royal Infirmary, etc._, 557
Introduction--Definitions--Varieties of Quarries--Methods of Working--Pathology--Etiology--Quarry Accidents--Diseases--Affections of the Respiratory Organs--Cardio-Vascular Disease--Cutaneous Lesions--Digestive Disturbances--Ear Affections--Eye Affections--Osteo-arthritis--Septic Infection--Tetanus--Legal Provisions--Prophylaxis and Treatment--Preventive Measures--Treatment of Accidents and Ailments occurring in Quarries.
Chapter XL
THE CHEMICAL TRADES. By A. P. LAURIE, M.A., _Principal, Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh_, 568
Introductory Remarks--The Le Blanc Process--Alkali Manufacture, other Methods--The Chemical Worker--Hours of Work in Alkali Manufacture--The Administration of the Alkali Act--Output Method of Paying Wages--Bichromate of Potash Manufacture--Coal Tar Products--Bisulphide of Carbon--Phosphorus--Health of Chemical Workers as shown by Statistics.
Chapter XLI
EXPLOSIONS AND EXPLOSIVES. By A. COOPER KEY (Major, late R.A.), H.M. Inspector of Explosives, 599
Introductory--Accidents in Manufacture and Use--Products of Combustion; Fumes--Explosives in Coal Mines.
Chapter XLII
ANTHRAX. By W. H. HAMER, M.D., F.R.C.P., _Assistant Medical Officer of Health, City of London_, 621
Hides and Horsehair--History of the Disease--Anthrax Statistics--Outbreaks Recorded during Recent Years--Anthrax Notification--Grouping of Anthrax Cases--Grouping of Cases considered in relation to Preventive Measures--Disinfection and Other Measures of Precaution.
Chapter XLIII
ANTHRAX: ITS RELATION TO THE WOOL INDUSTRY. By JOHN HENRY BELL, M.D., _Consulting Medical Officer, Bradford Royal Infirmary; Consulting Surgeon, Bradford Eye and Ear Hospital_, 634
Cutaneous Anthrax--Erysipelatous Anthrax: Symptoms; Diagnosis; Prognosis--Pulmonary Anthrax: Symptoms; Duration of Illness; Diagnosis; Prognosis; Incubation--Pathological Changes: External; Internal--Intestinal Anthrax--Distribution of the Bacilli--Preventive Measures--The Precautionary Regulations--Treatment.
Chapter XLIV
RAGS AND THEIR PRODUCTS IN RELATION TO HEALTH. By JOHN A. E. STUART, L.R.C.S. (Edin.), _Medical Officer of Health, Batley, Yorkshire_, 644
Rag-Sorting, Rag-Grinding, Shoddy, Mango, Flocks, Carbonising or Wool-Extracting--Effects of Rag-Sorting on Health--Carbonising--Recommendations.
Chapter XLV
BLANKET STOVING. By JOHN A. E. STUART, L.R.C.S. (Edin.), Medical Officer of Health, Batley, Yorkshire, 648
Chapter XLVI
JUTE. By HARRY J. WILSON, _one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 650
Chapter XLVII
LAUNDRY WORKERS. By LUCY A. E. DEANE, one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories, 663
Chapter XLVIII
FISH-CURING AND FRUIT-PRESERVING. By MARY M. PATERSON, one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories, 673
Chapter XLIX
WOMEN’S LABOUR IN TINPLATE WORKS. By ROSE E. SQUIRE, one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories, 681
Opening--Washing--Pickling--Tin-houses.
Chapter L
WOMEN’S LABOUR IN AERATED WATER WORKS. By ROSE E. SQUIRE, one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories, 687
Chapter LI
FLAX AND LINEN. By HENRY S. PURDON, M.D., _Certifying Factory Surgeon; Consulting Physician, Hospital for Skin Diseases, Belfast_, 691
Historical, Manufacturing, Hygienic, and Medical.
Chapter LII
MANUFACTURE OF COTTON. By JAS. WHEATLEY, M.D., B.Sc. (Lond.), Medical Officer of Health, Blackburn, 702
Chapter LIII
RABBIT DOWN. By ROSE E. SQUIRE, _one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 724
Chapter LIV
DISEASES DUE TO WORKING IN COMPRESSED AND STAGNANT AIR. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.A., F.R.C.P., 728
Caisson Disease: Treatment--Dangers Incidental to the Making of, and Working in, Tunnels--Underground Railways--Divers’ Paralysis.
Chapter LV
DISEASES DUE TO DIMINISHED ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE: PURE AND IMPURE GASES. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 749
Mountain Climbers--Military Balloonists.
Chapter LVI
EFFECTS OF CONCUSSION OF THE AIR. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 752
Boilermakers--Riveters--Shipwrights, etc.
Chapter LVII
IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRIES. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 756
Exposure to High Temperatures, and Severe Muscular Strain--Blacksmiths and Forgemen--Use of Converters in Steel Works--Nail and Chain Making.
Chapter LVIII
EYE DISEASES AND EYE ACCIDENTS IN RELATION TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS. By SIMEON SNELL, F.R.C.S. (Edin.), _Ophthalmic Surgeon, Royal Infirmary; and Professor of Ophthalmology, University College, Sheffield_, 761
Diseases due to Occupations involving prolonged use or excessive strain of the Eyes, such as Nystagmus in Miners and others--Diseases due to Occupations involving the use of certain Poisonous Substances, such as Dinitrobenzol, Bisulphide of Carbon, Tobacco, Lead, etc.--Diseases due to Occupations involving exposure to excessive Light or Heat, or both, such as Burnishers, Steel Melters, Electric Welders, etc.--Exposure to Electric Light--Injuries or Accidents amongst Grinders, Iron and Steel Workers, Masons, Coal Miners, Weavers, etc.--Bursting of Water Gauges on Boilers.
Chapter LIX
MISCELLANEOUS TRADES. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 788
Silicate of Cotton--Upholsterers’ Occupation--Joiners and Carpenters: Workers in Sequoia Wood--Manufacture of Celluloid--Tobacco and Cigar Manufacture--Engine-Drivers and Railway Employés--Drivers of Public Vehicles--Cooks--Confection Makers--Domestic Servants and Housemaids, etc.--Barmen and Dealers in Alcoholic Drinks--Sewing-Machine Workers--Label-licking--Glass Manufacture: Glass-Blowing--Glazed Ware Poisonous from other causes than Lead: Cyanide of Potassium--Coal-Heaving, Coal-Trimming, and Chimney-Sweeping--Manufacture and Use of Emery Wheels.
Chapter LX
OCCUPATION DISEASES DUE TO EXCESSIVELY REPEATED MUSCULAR ACTIONS. By THOMAS OLIVER, M.D., F.R.C.P., 815
Fatigue Neuroses: Scriveners’ Spasm, or Writers’ Palsy; Telegraphists’ Spasm, or Cramp; Pianoforte Players’ Cramp, etc.; Shoemakers’ Spasm--Boot and Shoe Making.
APPENDIX: SPECIAL RULES. By HAMILTON P. SMITH, _Retired Commander R.N., and one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories_, 827
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGS. PAGE
1. Strong’s “Standard Guard” for Engine Fly-wheels, 207
2. Safety Starting-gear for Gas and Oil Engines, 208
3. Coupling with Dangerous Projecting Bolt-heads, 209
4. Safety Coupling with Countersunk Bolt-heads, 209
5. Collar with Dangerous Projecting Set-screw, 209
6. Collar with Countersunk Set-screw, 209
7. A Safe Form of Set-screw, 215
8. For Use with Screwdriver, 215
9. Halstead’s Patent Unbreakable Square-hole Solid-ended Grub Screw, 215
10. Incomplete Guards for Spur Wheels, 216
11. Spur Wheels with Suitable Guards, 216
12. A Good Form of Guard to Cover Bevel Wheels 217
13. A Method of Covering Shaft Ends with a Sheet-metal Cap, 217
14. Knowles’ Improved Safety Hoist, 219
15. Morgan’s Patent Safety Catch, 221
16. Wadsworth’s Self-landing and Delivering Hoist, 222
17. Self-acting Mules. Shows Unsatisfactory Guard, 223
18. Shows a Guard which Completely Covers the Band round Pulley, 223
19. Self-acting Mules, 224
20. Hargreave’s Mule Carriage Wheel Guard, 225
21. Hargreave’s Mule Carriage Wheel Guard, 225
22. Safe-guards for Ends of Looms, 226
23. Shuttle Guard, 227
24. Elvatka Guard, 227
25. Longmore’s Guard, 228
26. Victor Guard, 228
27. Woodhouse and Mitchell’s Guard, 229
28. Campbell and Greenwood’s Guard, 229
29. Power Presses, 230
30. Treatment of Persons apparently Killed by Electricity, 264
31. Treatment of Persons apparently Killed by Electricity, 265
32. Mild Form of Dermatitis in Flax-spinner, 268
33. Medium Degree of Dermatitis in Flax-spinner, 268
34. Severe Form of Dermatitis in Flax-spinner, 268
35. Severe Form of Dermatitis in Flax-spinner, 268
36. Disease of Finger Nails in Hide-dressers, 270
37. Severe Type of Disease of Finger Nails in a Hide-dresser, 270
38. Human Lung in Health, 272
39. Lead Miner’s Lung, 272
40. Steel Grinder’s Lung, 272
41. Coal Miner’s Lung, 272
42. Cement, 274
43. Sandstone, 274
44. Granite, 274
45. Lead Dust from Printing Shop, and Type-casting, 274
46. Gilchrist-Thomas’ Slag, 276
47. Needle Grinding, 276
48. Mother-of-Pearl, 276
49. Sawdust, 276
50. Flax, 276
51. Hemp, 276
52. Jute, 276
53. Cotton, 276
54. Silk, 276
55. Horn, 276
56. Ivory, 276
57. Felt Manufacture, 276
58. Dust from Fur Brushing Machine, 276
59. Dust from Rag Cleaning, 276
60. Bone Meal, 276
61. Dust from Wheat Cleaning, 276
62. Ordinary Slag, 276
63. Basic Slag, 276
64. Ganister, 276
65. Dust from Fork Grinding on Dry Stone, 276
66. Powdered Flint, 276
67. Glaze Cleaned off Ware, 276
68. Lead Mine, 284
69. Other View of Lead Mine, 286
70. A “Blue” Bed in a White Lead Factory, 288
71. Female Carrying Basins Filled with Washed White Lead from Vat to Stoves, 288
72. Interior of Stove for Drying White Lead, 290
73. Section of Caisson Used in Rebuilding Redheugh Bridge, 729
74. The Simplon Tunnel Operations at Iselle, 738
75. Section of Simplon Tunnel, showing Difference in Levels between North and South Ends 739
76. Section of Simplon Tunnel, showing Cross Gallery by Means of which Air is Transmitted from Ventilating Passage to Head of Tunnel where the Men are Working, 739
77. Interior of Bath-house and Vestiary for the Miners at the Simplon Tunnel, Iselle, 740
78. Bottom Holing, 762
79. Bottom Holing. (To show Position of Head and Eyes), 762
80. Deputy Examining Roof, 764
81. Grinders. Edge-tool Grinding, 778
82. Men Engaged in Chipping, 780
83. Chipping against a Screen. Men Wearing Protectors, 780
84. Protectors, 782
85. Glass-blower when in Normal Condition, 806
86. A later Photograph of Glass-blower in Fig. 85, showing RelaxedCondition of Cheeks, 806
87. German Sweep’s Costume, 810
88. Belgian Sweep’s Costume, 810
89. Shoemakers’ Chest, 823
LIST OF AUTHORS
ANDERSON, ADELAIDE M. BALLANTYNE, A. BELL, JOHN HENRY, M.D. BROWN, JOHN, M.D., D.P.H. COLLINGRIDGE, WILLIAM, M.D., ETC. CUNYNGHAME, HENRY H., C.B. DEANE, LUCY A. E. DODD, JOHN R., M.D., ETC. HALDANE, JOHN, M.D., F.R.S. HAMER, W. H., M.D., F.R.C.P. HEDLEY, JOHN, M.D. JONES, H. LEWIS, M.D. KELYNACK, T. N., M.D., M.R.C.P. KEY, A. COOPER, Major, late R.A. KNYVETT, SEYMOUR H., M.A. (Oxon.) LAURIE, A. P., M.A. LEGGE, T. MORISON, M.D. LOUIS, HENRY, M.A., A.R.S.M., F.I.C., F.G.S. M’MILLAN, MARGARET. MORRIS, MALCOLM, F.R.C.S. OLIVER, THOMAS, M.D., F.R.C.P. PATERSON, MARY M. POWER, D’ARCY, F.R.C.S. PURDON, HENRY S., M.D. REID, GEORGE, M.D., D.P.H. RICHMOND, H. S., B.A. SIMON, ROBERT M., B.A., M.D. (Cantab.), F.R.C.P. SMITH, HAMILTON, P., Retired Commander R.N. SNELL, SIMEON, F.R.C.S. (Edin.). SQUIRE, ROSE E. STUART, JOHN A. E., L.R.C.S. (Edin.) TATHAM, JOHN, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P. TENNANT, H. J., M.P. TENNANT, Mrs H. J. WHEATLEY, JAMES, M.D., B.Sc. WHITE, ROBERT PROSSER, M.D. WHITE, SINCLAIR, F.R.C.S. WILSON, HARRY J.
DANGEROUS TRADES
I. INTRODUCTION
The commencement of the Twentieth Century finds us discussing problems and elaborating plans for the amelioration of the life of the people. The last few years have witnessed an unexampled awakening of the public to a sense of its responsibility in regard to conditions of labour and unhealthy trades. The question is not should men and women work, but how do particular trades affect individuals, physically and morally? Like human life itself, industrial occupation has been a passage from the simple to the complex, a process of evolution wherein each succeeding stage of industrial development has been attended by labour problems, social difficulties, and diseases particularly its own. An attempt has been made to include within this book special knowledge, and I have preferred that each contributor should express his or her own opinions unfettered by editorial requirements, since the object sought is not the promulgation of the views of a particular school, but enlightenment, so that the lot of our working classes may be improved, industrial hygiene promoted, and higher ideals if possible attained. Living in a democratic age, we hear much of the claims of the right to live, right to work, and the right of workers to a larger share of the produce of their labour. These are not the subjects dealt with in the following pages. There are certain side issues that deserve consideration, but which can only be mentioned here. Social advancement and commercial prosperity, while creating fresh desires, often increase the difficulty of satisfying natural wants. The growth of large towns and the concentration of people in the crowded homes of our great cities are limiting the amount of pure air necessary to the life of those collected there. Drinking water has to be brought from distant sources and at great expense. The removal of the waste or refuse of human activity is often as difficult a problem as the conveyance of the necessaries of life. It is not, however, with such problems as these we are concerned, but rather with the conditions under which labour is carried on and its effect upon the people. Manual labour and handicrafts exercised for the purpose of gain were in a measure formerly controlled by family interests, subsequently by guilds, and to-day they are largely regulated by trade unions. By trade unions an attempt has been made, not only to sell labour in the highest market, but to artificially restrict output by objecting to the use of machinery, by requiring that machines shall run at a speed lower than their full capacity, by demanding one day’s holiday during the working week, claiming in many instances a uniform wage alike for the skilled and the less skilled workman, and a reduction of the working hours without a corresponding reduction of wages. Such methods in the long run cannot but be disadvantageous to the workers themselves, for they discourage industrial energy and enterprise, without which the wage-fund must inevitably fall. Instead of mutual co-operation there is an unnecessary conflict between labour and capital. The demands of organised labour already mentioned have called forth a marshalling of the forces of capital. Industrial competition concerns the sale of labour as well as that of products. Some persons maintain that in the bargaining that goes on capital has the advantage over labour. Without expressing an opinion upon this point, it is apparent that only organised capital is capable of holding its own against organised labour.
The change from the domestic system of industry to the modern methods of production by machinery and steam power forms what is known as the Industrial Revolution, and marks an important epoch in the history of the world. Within the last one hundred and thirty years the changes produced in the social and intellectual condition of the people have been enormous. Ever since the Industrial Revolution in our own country there has been gradually coming a greater demand for knowledge on the part of those workpeople who may subsequently acquire the control of industries and direct the manufacture of machinery. There has been created, if not immediately, certainly by degrees, a need both for general education throughout the country and a special education for those who wish to become leaders. On the one hand it has been felt desirable to counteract the cramping effects of machinery and to diminish the dwarfing influences of the division of labour upon the intellect of the workpeople by giving them the benefits of a wider education. As knowledge has been gained by the artisan classes, their aspirations have naturally risen. With improved constitutional means for the redress of grievances there has been in many instances a gradual supplanting of methods that involve acts of violence and intimidation, which years ago disgraced our large industrial centres. Thus is it that while in the early decades of last century, shortly after the Industrial Revolution and before labour had become organised, factory legislation was promoted by the wealthier classes for the benefit of the workers, the latter at the present time, with their improved education and personal knowledge, can themselves bring to bear upon the legislature demands for reform that are deserving of careful consideration, especially when these are not extravagant and do not far exceed the limit of experience. Factory legislation, while it embodies the opinions of Members of Parliament who have studied labour problems theoretically, and of a few who have practical knowledge, is a State direction of our industries so far as relates to the safety, health, and moral condition of the people, and which embraces to-day, more than in any other epoch, the opinions of the workers themselves. The story of factory life in Britain, of the long hours of toil spent by children in the mills, and the physical suffering they endured, remains a blot upon the pages of British history. Britain was the pioneer of factory legislation--does she still lead the way? Her commercial supremacy, we are told, is questioned, and the position she has long held is being threatened by increasing competition. Despite this fact there is a disinclination on the part of British manufacturers to admit the necessity of learning anything from their Continental or American friends. Is our country, both as regards methods of production and factory legislation, abreast of the times and of other nations? Instead of manufacturers hugging themselves into a state of industrial lethargy which our insular position and national prejudices encourage, it would be well if they sent their sons and heads of departments abroad to see what other nations are doing.
Several things have prevented factory legislation being as far forward as it ought to be. In our country no Government, however strong, can hope to successfully introduce social legislation largely affecting personal interests until public opinion has been educated to the belief that the remedies proposed are really necessary. The facts likely to carry conviction can only be produced after years of careful study and investigation, consequently factory legislation has to some extent progressed slowly. It is, however, fair to say that when certain trades’ organisations or representative bodies combine to secure amendments to Bills which, in their opinion, appear necessary, there is a tendency on both sides of the Houses of Parliament to drop party considerations, and to give facilities for well-considered legislation likely to benefit the community. At this stage of our inquiry it may therefore be not inopportune to refer to the Factory Act recently passed (August 1901), the framing of Special Rules, and the means of securing their observance.
In matters industrial the Home Secretary is not endowed with authority equal to that enjoyed by similar officials on the Continent. The arbitrary powers granted by foreign Governments for the regulation of factories do not commend themselves to English politicians, and this was borne in mind by the framers of the clauses in the Factory Act of 1891 relating to Special Rules and requirements, when each and every occupier could demand that a matter of difference between himself and the Secretary of State should be referred to arbitration. This system may be said to have answered fairly well when dealing with small trades, but certainly not in regard to extensive industries, such, for instance, as the manufacture of pottery. In this particular trade litigation has gone on for many years, and the questions at issue, at the time of writing, are not yet settled. The methods now proposed should not only secure fair-play to the manufacturer and the worker, but should obviate loss of time and unnecessary labour. Under the Act of 1891 the Secretary of State could not be held responsible to the House of Commons, or to the country, for the final word rested with an irresponsible arbitrator. Under the more recent provisions the ultimate decision will rest, as it undoubtedly should, with Parliament. Having certified that in his opinion any manufacture, machinery, process, or description of manual labour used in factories or workshops is dangerous, the Secretary of State may (subject to the provisions of the Act) make such regulations as appear to him reasonable and practicable. He must publish the proposals, with information as to where copies of the suggested regulations can be obtained, and the time within which objections may be made by, or on behalf of, the persons affected. He is bound to consider their objections, and may, if he thinks fit, amend the draft regulations, but where he does not amend or withdraw these draft regulations, he is required to direct an inquiry by a competent person, to be held in public, and the chief inspector, any objector, or any other person affected, may appear either in person, by counsel, or solicitor or agent. The witnesses may be examined on oath. The proposed regulations may apply to all factories and workshops in which the manufacture, machinery, process, or description of labour certified to be dangerous is used, or to any specified class of factories or workshops. The regulations may provide for the exemption of any specified class of factories or workshops, either absolutely or subject to conditions. They may prohibit the employment, and modify or limit the period of employment, of all persons or any class of persons in any process certified to be dangerous. They may prohibit the use of any material or process, and modify or extend any special regulations for any class of factories and workshops contained in the Factory Acts. The regulations made under the new provisions shall not come into force until they have been laid for a period of six weeks before both Houses of Parliament. In the London Gazette must be published notice of the regulations made, and an announcement of the place where copies of these can be procured.
The right of arbitration conceded to manufacturers has been sometimes regarded as one of the means whereby the benefits of factory legislation have been diminished. No person considers it desirable for industrial liberty to be crippled by Acts of Parliament, or industrial progress checked by Home Office interference, and yet the dictates of humanity demand that no labour shall exceed the limits of endurance of the workers, and that all occupations shall be made as healthy as possible. The history of factory legislation is a record of attempts made to better the conditions of labour, improve the health of workers, and control the disposing power of employers over their workpeople. Those who blame State interference as the cause of the doubtful decline of our industrial supremacy, and who believe that it is checking enterprise, are not making a sufficiently serious attempt to grapple with the question by sifting all the facts carefully. It can be demonstrated that legislation has not paralysed but has improved trade as well as the conditions of labour.
At a meeting of the chemical industry in Glasgow, on 24th July 1901, Mr Joseph Wilson Swan remarked that “two causes are contributing to our loss as a nation in the chemical and metallurgical industries. One is the supplanting of old methods of manufacture by newer, e.g., the application of electricity. The electro-chemical and electro-metallurgical industries of the future are grouping themselves around large water-power stations,--90 per cent. of the power thus used being obtained on the Continent from waterfalls. We have no such available water-power in Britain, but we possess instead an abundance of cheap coal. The other cause is the lack of scientific training, and the indifference of our leaders of industry to the results of scientific research. They are contented with the methods of production of a bygone age. Their plant is old.” It is circumstances such as these that explain, for example, the decay of the chemical industry on Tyneside, and its transference to other localities at home and abroad. As regards the causes that are threatening our industrial supremacy, apart from the serious attempts made by countries possessing the raw materials to complete the finished products on the spot, thus hitting hard our textile and iron industries, I would emphasise the higher technical education of the men who are heads of departments in factories abroad compared with those in similar positions at home. They are on the Continent a superior class of men. I am not for a moment contending that the German or French workman is, as a workman, superior to the average British artisan similarly employed. In many respects I think our own is the more capable man; but the foreigner is better directed, owing to the fact that the managers’ assistants and principal foremen have been highly instructed; several of them have had a University training, and they thus possess a theoretical as well as a practical knowledge of the particular industry. Besides, it is well known that in Germany at least, large firms employ men well trained in chemistry and physics to do nothing but research work, with the view of not only finding out new products, but of improving them and cheapening their manufacture. Industrial methods, in a word, are more scientifically studied on the Continent than at home, so that while such labour troubles as strikes, and the higher wages paid to English workmen, are to some extent responsible for the loss of some of our manufactures and their transference to the Continent, the cheapening of methods of production has not been without its influence. As international competition becomes keener, and our manufacturers endeavour to produce more cheaply by increasing the speed of their machinery, there will be imposed upon the workpeople greater tension during the hours of labour. Will this circumstance, also the rising rents of houses and the consequent overcrowding in our large towns, improve the physique of future workers? A study of the prospects of the artisan classes is of necessity many-sided, since it must deal not only with the effect of work upon their health, but take into consideration the influence of their home life and surroundings. Our large industries, excluding mining, have scarcely existed long enough for us to realise to the full the physical changes they are inducing in the workpeople. Hitherto there has been no great difficulty in obtaining strongly-built men of good muscular development for hard manual labour. Many of these have been taken from rural districts. As these districts are becoming depopulated, they will cease to be the source of supply they have been in the past. It is not altogether idle to ask how far the second and third generations of the town-bred poorer working classes will possess the necessary physical powers for hard toil. Overcrowding and poverty are exercising a degenerating influence upon the rising generation; besides, industrial occupation as carried on in several of our large textile districts is preventing rather than encouraging development, especially when children are employed at too early an age. There is something in the air of such factories, it may be the excessive heat and moisture, or the animal products given off during perspiration and breathing, that interferes with the nutrition of the body and checks its growth.
Half-timers, fortunately, are becoming fewer and fewer. Experience has shown that they are not equal in physique to their classmates who are allowed to remain all day at school. When healthy country children have been taken into the factories of large towns, it has been found that their normal rate of growth has been checked, so that after two or three years’ work in the mills, they are observed to be of shorter stature than their former playmates left at home and allowed to rusticate. There is a limit to each person’s capability of doing work, and when this is passed, the results are harmful. We should not ask from any person more than his powers will enable him to accomplish. For mechanical as well as manual labour there is a determined number of hours beyond which the worker cannot proceed without physical suffering on his part, while industrially with each succeeding hour occupied there is a diminishing production. It is knowledge of this fact, apart from economic considerations, that is used as a lever by the working classes to obtain parliamentary sanction to limit still further the hours of labour. Our attention, for example, is directed to Australia, where, since 1856, the hours of toil have been reduced to eight per day with a satisfactory result. In the coal mines, as well as in the factories of Sydney, the week’s work is forty-four hours. The eight-hours’ day has also been instituted in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales. A few years ago an eight-hours’ day was conceded to the men employed in Woolwich Arsenal, and as this turned out to be satisfactory, the Admiralty, in July 1894, took a similar step. There are many writers who maintain that to a reasonable diminution in the number of hours devoted to work there corresponds a qualitative and quantitative increased production. There is a maximum beyond which production is not profitable. The produce of one particular period of the day cannot always be compared with that of another. While the reduction from twelve to ten hours’ labour may have been beneficial, and may even have improved production, it does not necessarily follow that a reduction from nine to eight would be followed by a corresponding result, and a reduction from eight to seven hours by one still better. On this and other points the facts detailed further on in this book by Mr A. P. Laurie, in his paper on Chemical Trades under the heading “Health of Chemical Workers, etc.,” will be found interesting. Too long hours are certainly a cause of accidents in factories. Experience alone can settle the question of the number of hours to be worked, and that number must clearly be not the same for every occupation. Common sense, too, must dictate the minimum limit of working hours. Men and women are conscious when their occupation exceeds their strength; but the demands of the machinery they tend are exacting, and so no difference is made between the strong and feeble workmen. A few years ago, Messrs Mather & Platt, iron manufacturers, Salford, reduced the number of hours worked in their factory from fifty-three to forty-eight per week without reducing the wages of the men, and this regulation is still, I believe, in force. Employers have frequently questioned the value of the work done by the men between 6 A.M. and 8 A.M. Mr Mather holds the opinion that the first two hours before breakfast are hardly worth the trouble and disarrangement which they cause alike to the employers and the workers. Not only are these two hours ineffective from a productive point of view, but their effect upon the physical and mental condition of the men is to diminish their vigour and spirits and their interest in what they are doing.
Coal mining is one of those industries from which an answer to this question of the effectiveness of work in the early morning hours might be expected, for the men work in two relays, a “fore” and “aft” shift, and they change every fortnight. When working in the fore shift the miners enter the pit about 3 A.M., and when in the aft at 10 A.M., each working in the North of England about six and a half hours. Mr Ralph Young, Secretary to the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association, informs me, in answer to questions addressed to him on this point, that the present method of working coal mines scarcely allows of a satisfactory reply being given as to whether more work is done during the fore or aft shift. There is a feeling among some of the miners themselves that they can do more work in the fore shift, i.e., between 3 A.M. and 10 A.M., but they attribute this circumstance not to the particular hour of the day in which work is carried on, but to the fact that the air in the coal mine is fresher and purer then than later on in the day. In other occupations it is equally difficult to get at the real facts of the case. To questions of a similar character addressed to twenty foremen and men working in a large iron and steel factory on Tyneside, I received the following answer--that more work is done in the hours 9 to 11 A.M. than 6 to 8 A.M., and that a man does more work after than before his breakfast. As regards the influence of day and night shift, they all agreed that less work was done on the night shift compared with the same number of hours of the day, but it is difficult to express this in terms of percentages. Some of the men stated that the amounts varied from 10 to 20 per cent. Against this, it is only right to mention that some of my Infirmary patients working in the same factory have told me that they believed after a time they did as much work on the night as on the day shift. It was entirely a matter of habit.
The Workmen’s Compensation Act, which was so strongly opposed by many employers on the supposed ground that it would ruin the industries of this country, has had apparently no effect in that direction. Although it has theoretically increased their financial liability, as a matter of fact many employers have been less out of pocket than formerly. The Act has cleared the industrial atmosphere, made employers more careful in their selection of workmen, more willing to safeguard machinery, and do all they reasonably can to prevent accidents. It pays them to do so.
Until July 1898, when the Workmen’s Compensation Act of the previous year came into force, in the case of all accidents coming under either the common law or the Employers’ Liability Act 1880, the basis of the action was negligence or wrongful act on the part of the defendant, or of some person for whom the defendant was responsible. Since 1898 it matters little how the accident was caused, the employer is held liable by the Act of 1897. Certain trades only are included under the Act, e.g., railways, factories, docks, laundries, mines, buildings 30 feet high, and any building in which machinery is driven by mechanical power. So far as compensation for injury is concerned, the workman must be incapacitated for more than two weeks as the result of the injury before he can receive any benefit under the Act. After a fortnight a weekly payment is secured to him of one half of his weekly wages during his period of incapacity, or for six months, after which the employer can claim to have his liability redeemed by paying a lump sum fixed by agreement or arbitration. In the case of death the employer is liable to the extent of three years’ wages, or 156 times the average weekly earnings of the deceased workman during his period of employment, the amount to be not less than £150 and not more than £300.
When the Workmen’s Compensation Bill was introduced it was strongly opposed, as already stated, on the grounds that it would injure trade and ruin many employers. So far, events have not justified this suspicion, but have shown that these fears were more or less groundless. In providing compensation for injured workmen, Britain was only doing what other nations on the Continent, especially Germany, had already accomplished. It was thought at the time that the operation of the Workmen’s Compensation Act would very materially affect the output and price of coal as well as the wages of the miners. There is no clear evidence that it has increased the price of coal. The cost of compensation paid in Northumberland and Durham does not exceed one halfpenny per ton, while the cost under the Act for the United Kingdom is under three farthings per ton. This is a small sum compared with the threepence we were informed would be added to the price of each ton of coal. One way in which the Act might indirectly increase the price of coal would be by restraining timid capitalists from investing money in coal mining through fear of being ruined by some great accident or explosion; but this is a remote probability, and a contingency that could be met by insurance. Nor can it be shown that the Workmen’s Compensation Act has had any effect upon the miner’s wages. Theoretically the wages of miners should fall pro rata with the benefits received under the Act, but as the benefits will not be more than 1½ per cent. of the wages, any readjustment would be small. It cannot be said that in coal mining the Act has had any noticeable effect one way or the other, so far as the number of accidents is concerned. For several years prior to 1898, owing to newer and more scientific methods, the number of accidents in coal mines had been diminishing. It would appear from the reports of Mr Hedley, H.M. Inspector of Mines for Northumberland, Cumberland, and North Durham, that during 1899 there were 84 lives lost, and in 1900 the number was 105, or a ratio of 1 death for every 784 persons employed, against 1 for every 924 in 1899; in 1898 the ratio was 1 in 1053, and for the five years 1893|97 the ratio was 1 in 895.[1]
Mr Ralph Young has abstracted from the annual reports of the Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Permanent Relief Fund the following facts, showing the number of fatal and non|fatal accidents, with the percentages of non|fatal accidents, spread over ten years in the North of England.
MINERS’ PERMANENT RELIEF FUND.
+------+-------------+------------------+--------------+--------------+ | | | | | Percentage of| | Year.| Membership. | Fatal Accidents. | Non-Fatal | Non-Fatal | | | | | Accidents. | Accidents. | +------+-------------+------------------+--------------+--------------+ | 1890 | 107,997 | 158 | 16,000 | 14.9 | | 1891 | 113,126 | 167 | 16,500 | | | 1892 | 114,326 | 149 | 13,000(a)| 12.24 | | 1893 | 115,361 | 177 | 16,400 | 14.21 | | 1894 | 121,133 | 166 | 17,000 | | | 1895 | 121,944 | 168 | 17,450 | 14.42 | | 1896 | 122,257 | 163 | 19,200 | 15.7 | | 1897 | 124,920 | 204 | 20,000 | 16.01 | | 1898 | 127,564 | 159 | 19,511 | 15.28 | | 1899 | 130,552 | 197 | 19,484 | 14.8 | | 1900 | 137,073 | 198 | 18,470 | 13.4 | +------+-------------+------------------+--------------+--------------+ (a) Durham Strike, 90,000 members idle for 13 weeks.
The Workmen’s Compensation Act came into force in 1898, but it cannot be said, looking at the foregoing figures, that it has had any material influence upon the number of accidents in coal mines, nor, as was anticipated, has it so far displaced many of the older miners by younger men. There is a remarkable constancy in the number of pit accidents. I have tried to ascertain whether there is any decade in a miner’s life during which accidents are more numerous than another, but statistics do not support the supposition. There is a personal and age element that must not be lost sight of, also one of fatigue. The older miners have experience and caution; the younger, if rash and less experienced, are more alert and can get out of danger quicker.
As bearing upon this part of our inquiry, the annual reports of the Chief Inspector of Factories give the following information:--
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | |ACCIDENTS REPORTED TO CERTIFYING SURGEONS, AND ALSO| | | TO INSPECTORS. | +-------------------+-----------------------+---------------------------+ | INDUSTRY. | Fatal. | Non-Fatal. | | +-----+-----+-----+-----+------+------+------+------+ | |1900.|1899.|1898.|1897.|1900. |1899. |1898. |1897. | +-------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+------+------+------+ | Textile Total, | 70 | 52 | 59 | 43 | 4,647| 4,332| 3,786| 3,565| | Non-Textile Total,| 975 | 819 | 668 | 615 |22,012|17,568|14,714|11,762| +-------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+------+------+------+ | Grand Total, |1045 | 871 | 727 | 658 |26,659|21,900|18,500|15,327| +-------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+------+------+------+
In reference to these figures Dr Whitelegge states that there has been an increase in the numbers of reported accidents since 1897, the year previous to the coming into effect of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Many considerations other than the Workmen’s Compensation Act have to be taken into account, e.g., the better reporting of accidents, activity of trade, and classification of industries. From these figures of the Chief Inspector of Factories no definite conclusion can be drawn as to the influence of the Act in preventing accidents. As a contrast it should be mentioned that in some large factories where an “Accident Compensation Fund” previously existed under the Employer’s Liability Act, to which employers and employed contributed in the ratio of 2 to 1, and out of which all accidents were compensated, statistics show a remarkable falling off in the number of reported accidents under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. In some works these are now only one-third of what they were. This reduction is probably explained not by any change in the methods of production, nor by better safe-guarding of machinery, but by the fact that while previously all accidents, however trivial, were reported and compensated, accidents under the Act of 1897 must be of such severity as to prevent the individual following his employment for two weeks before he is entitled to compensation.
Although difficult to prove by actual statistics, there is a feeling that the Act has on the whole been beneficial alike to employer and workmen. It is this circumstance that has induced some Members of Parliament to press for an extension of the Act so as to include a larger number of industries, and particularly those regarded as Dangerous Trades. One of the principal features of the Workmen’s Compensation Act is that it fixes the liability upon the employer, so that where an accident causes injury to health or the death of a working man the individual himself or his relatives receive compensation. If the circumstance solely of ill-health or of death caused through work, and not violence or the manner in which either of these has been induced, were made the principle that ought to underlie the operations of the Act of 1897, there would be found many persons who, taking effects alone into consideration, would recognise no difference between ill health the result of an accident in a factory, and ill health brought about by working at a particular trade known to be dangerous. Ought dangerous trades, therefore, to be brought within the scope of the Workmen’s Compensation Act? Many advocate their inclusion. The law recognises that trade shall be made as healthy as possible, and it takes steps to secure this, both by providing regulations and penalising those who transgress these regulations. Will it go further, and impose a burden upon the employer by making him compensate a workman injured in health when it can be shown that, even where all precautions have been taken, ill health has followed? Occupation ought to be the opportunity whereby an individual, in return for work done, should receive sufficient wages to enable him to live, and not, as it occasionally is when he is employed in a dangerous trade, the means whereby he becomes the subject of ill health at an early age, and is thrown as a burden upon the ratepayers for the remainder of his life. No high wages paid to men to undertake work in a dangerous trade, even if it were always the case that such were paid, can adequately compensate the affected workman for the loss of health caused by following a dangerous occupation. Many dangerous trades are far from being highly paid. The class of workpeople who are affected by these industries are usually very poor, their occupation is often interrupted, and they are not organised into Unions, so that they neither contribute to the funds of, nor do they receive benefits from, a Friendly Society. The Workmen’s Compensation Act makes accident the sole circumstance that enables an individual to receive compensation. As the Act stands at present it is clearly meant to distinguish between accident and disease. It is a disputable point, for example, how far a fatal disease like anthrax caught in a wool-combing factor is not as much an accident beyond the control and expectation of the individual workman as the fatal burns caused by the sudden ignition of some spirit paint in a shipyard. A similar line of argument might be made to apply to other trades. The man who gets his arm broken by a piece of machinery in motion or by a barrel falling off a trolley in a colour factory receives a weekly allowance from his employers; but another man who becomes paralysed in both hands as a consequence of having filled the barrels with white lead in the same factory does not receive any part of his wages at all when off ill. It is said that the Act only recognises the fact of external injuries, but it goes beyond this, for a workman may die as a consequence of shock without any sign of external injury and yet his relatives receive compensation. It is the fact of personal and not external injury that underlies the Act. Is phosphorus necrosis, which is a purely personal malady, an accident? The Act answers--No.
There is considerable difficulty in defining what is meant by industrial disease. It would be well if we could have some clearer conception of what is implied both by “industrial disease” and “dangerous trades,” for there is scarcely any trade or occupation that is not attended by some risk or another. It is admitted that certain occupations involve exceptional risks. Theory cannot determine what these trades are, but experience and inquiry can. As an illustration, I might mention that of 22 trades suggested as dangerous, and given by the Home Secretary to the Dangerous Trades Committee to investigate, careful inquiry showed they could not all be included in this category.
In the case of an accident there is usually the history of a violent cause in operation, and there is the fact of an injury received. Yet even with accidents there are certain contributing factors, e.g., the length of the working day, the previous ill health of the workman, and his state of debility anterior to the accident. Old age, too, aggravates the harmful effects of an accident. It is accessories such as these that have made legislation difficult and tied the hands of Governments. The subject is one to which at home Mr H. J. Tennant, M.P., Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., M.P., Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Bart., M.P., Mr John Burns, M.P., and other members of the House of Commons have given considerable study, and to which among others on the Continent, Mr Arthur Verhægen, member of the Belgian Superior Council of Labour, drew the attention of members at the Congrès International des Accidents du Travail in Brussels in 1897. Several writers have defined industrial disease. Dr Van der Borght says: “Industrial diseases are those maladies which arise as the result of the prolonged action of harmful influences in certain occupations, and which consequently and exclusively occur in persons working in these trades, or at least more frequently than in other persons in general.” Dr Glibert, Medical Inspector of Labour, Belgium, says: “Every disease recognised as particularly frequent in a profession ought to be considered as an industrial disease to the extent that it is clearly due to the risks in the trade.” By the term occupation or industrial disease we mean, briefly, disease the direct effects of a particular trade in which a person is engaged. In many instances there are also included maladies that are the result of pathological alterations of structure, indirectly induced by the occupation. Colic, for example, might be regarded as a direct effect of working in lead, and yet this is unaccompanied by structural alteration in the wall of the intestine; on the other hand, kidney disease in the file-cutter is very slowly developed, and although, as regards its production, there are other causes in operation than lead, still the kidney lesion is believed to be a remote or indirect consequence of plumbism. As artisans are liable to the ordinary ailments of humanity, it is necessary to carefully sift statements so as to eliminate all causes other than those related to the particular industry in question. To the production of occupation disease, several factors contribute. Even in the causation of such an indisputable malady as industrial lead poisoning, it is well to remember how important is the part played by individual idiosyncrasy, while in the badly ventilated state of one factory compared with another, the home life and surroundings of the workpeople, poverty, heredity, age, and sex are to be found conditions that favour its production, and are therefore not to be ignored. Usually it is a gradual deterioration of health that is produced. There is nothing of the nature of an acute illness in industrial disease comparable with an accident. The only occupation disease that approaches accident in the suddenness of its development is anthrax, and even here the prospects of recovery are influenced by the channel of invasion, the severity of the attack, the vital resistance and idiosyncrasy of the affected individual. Take another example: it is not always easy to draw a distinction between potters’ phthisis due to the inhalation of dust when at work, and a broncho-pneumonia which has become tuberculous, and yet potters’ consumption in the early stages may be as much the result of the trade at which the person has worked as is the paralysis of the file-cutter.
In order to make an employer liable for an occupation disease there would have to be a stated limit as to the length of time an individual had worked in a particular factory, and as in some of the dangerous trades the workpeople change frequently from factory to factory, it would be difficult to prove under which employer the malady was caught. Carelessness on the part of the employed, through ignorance or intention, would also have to be disproved. In the case of workpeople who spend practically the whole of their life in one factory, say a white lead works, and who at the end of twenty or thirty years’ service find themselves the victims of an incurable form of plumbism, humanity and good feeling alike should indicate to the employer his obligation to the affected workmen. Yet even here the question might be raised, did the workman fully attend to all the regulations when in the factory as regards personal cleanliness, and were his habits, when not working, those of a temperate man? Mr Verhægen gives illustrations of the difficulty of exactly defining occupation disease. A workman becomes the driver of a public vehicle, and in the course of time, having developed rheumatism, he is obliged to give up work. To the individual thus crippled by rheumatism, is the employer financially liable? One can scarcely think so, for the simple reason that while exposure to inclement weather may be a cause of rheumatism, certain persons are by heredity predisposed to it, and would develop the malady irrespective of what their calling in life might be. Besides, are delicate men and imprudent drivers to be placed on the same footing as robust and careful men? Verhægen recognises the inexactitude, and states that if we would but limit the term occupation disease to conditions of ill health due to poisoning caused by coming into contact with certain chemical and other agents used in such industries as lucifer match making, colour grinding, etc., the difficulty would be materially lessened. It would still not always be easy to assign to one particular factory, especially when it was known that the workman had moved from place to place, the blame for having caused ill health. Even in cases of “phossy jaw,” in which it is generally admitted that exposure to the fumes of yellow phosphorus is its cause, there is yet some doubt as to whether the necrosis of bone is entirely due to this circumstance, or partly to it and the operation of micro-organisms. Take, too, the diseases of Italian miners and of the colliers of Belgium, particularly ankylostomiasis. Dr Kuborn of Seraing, in discussing this question, maintains that the maladies special to mining have their origin very largely in the kind of life the men lead, their inattention to the rules of ordinary hygiene both in their home and person, excesses of various kinds, imperfect feeding and clothing, etc., causes to the influence of which want of education greatly contributes. In some industries there are inherent dangers, and yet with care these can be diminished if not removed. Ventilation of British coal pits, for example, has practically abolished pulmonary consumption in our miners. Experience shows that there is scarcely a dangerous trade from which, with extreme care and attention to regulations, the dangerous influences cannot be largely removed. There is no occupation so risky to life as the manufacture of the high explosives. I have had the opportunity of visiting the largest explosives works in the kingdom, and can bear testimony to the healthiness of the employment and its comparative safety owing to the careful training and discipline of the workers, scrupulous cleanliness and attention to the minutest details.
Occupation disease, it must be remembered, is not always easy of recognition. There is no difficulty in diagnosing a malady to be plumbism when there are double wrist drop and a history of exposure to the metal when at work; but where there is only complaint of abdominal pain and vomiting, the diagnosis cannot be always so clearly established, even in the presence of a well-marked blue line on the gums. Several cases have been recorded in the medical journals of acute abdominal pain occurring in painters, which had been regarded as lead colic; but when the patients died, the post-mortem examination showed that death was due to a small ulcer of the bowel or to inflammation limited to a particular portion of the intestine known as the appendix, which a surgical operation might have cured; while, on the other hand, workers exposed to lead and with similar symptoms have been operated upon by careful surgeons for appendicitis when the malady was lead colic. If this is the difficulty experienced by competent surgeons and careful medical observers, it shows us some of the pitfalls parliamentarians might easily drop into by including industrial diseases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Verhægen is of opinion that the matter would be more easily settled by accumulating a larger number of statistics of disease occurring in occupations; but this inquiry would have to be extended over a lengthened period, there would have to be some degree of uniformity in the conditions under which the people worked, there would also have to be taken into consideration the hygienic conditions of the factories, the situation of these buildings, the number of hours worked per day, and the influences that would follow a prolonged strike of the workpeople, such as poverty. To be exact, too, the workpeople would have to be medically examined before entering upon the particular industry, and re-examined months afterwards so as to ascertain what effects, if any, the trade had produced. Some of the difficulty would be got over by limiting the definition of industrial disease to maladies that are the direct consequence of occupation, and in which as a result there is a well-ascertained lesion of the organism. Verhægen, as already mentioned, illustrated his argument by alluding to the driver of a public vehicle who in good health to commence with, and notwithstanding his obedience to the laws of prudence yet becomes rheumatic, and to another man who, under similar conditions as regards health and carefulness, undertakes work in either a lucifer match or a white lead factory, and suffers from phossy jaw or wrist drop. The malady is in either of the latter instances regarded as a disease of occupation, in the former it is not, the explanation of the difference being that as regards the first illustration rheumatism is not confined to the occupation of coach driving; also while it is admitted that out-of-door occupations expose the individual to all kinds of weather and predispose to rheumatism, the same out-of-door life led by other people is in them an explanation of the good health they enjoy. In the case of the match and white lead maker, had it not been for exposure to the fume of phosphorus or the inhalation of lead dust the workman would not have become the victim of phossy jaw or of wrist drop.
Although many workpeople in the factory incur the same risk, yet all do not equally suffer. Some men are more susceptible than others. It would be regarded as an interference with the liberty of the subject if an attempt were made to prevent people going to work in a factory. It is known, for example, that engravers are more liable to lose their eyesight at an earlier age than men engaged in outdoor occupations. Should a man with feeble sight be allowed to undertake this kind of work? On commencing his industrial career, unless he voluntarily seeks the advice of an oculist, who is to say to him nay? There cannot be, although it is accomplished in certain dangerous trades without much opposition, a medical examination of all persons undertaking work. The dangers of particular occupations ought, however, to be pointed out to all applicants for work, after which these should state that they are prepared to accept certain risks. At present many workpeople incur risks without knowledge of the danger or of the means of preventing it. There are occupations that are not of themselves unhealthy, and yet owing to the strain which they impose upon the body, the weak spot of the organism, so to speak, is found out, and for this the occupation itself cannot altogether be held responsible. Take what is known as rupture or hernia, which occurs with greater frequency in persons whose work obliges them to be long upon their feet, and who are exposed to sudden strain, the lifting of heavy weights, etc. What is said of it applies equally to varicose veins in the legs. Both of these may be partly the result of the position assumed by the individual when at work or the strain he is exposed to, and yet it would scarcely be right to make the occupation responsible for an affection the result of an inherent weakness of the abdominal wall which allowed a portion of intestine to protrude, giving rise to rupture, or for an ill-nourished condition of the walls of the veins in the legs whereby the blood-vessels became distended and deformed. To secure compensation, the workman would have to establish that the hernia was solely the result of his work. Life is for all of us very much a game of chance, and we have to run ordinary risks. For a disease to be regarded as industrial, and capable, therefore, of being brought within the scope of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, it would have to be placed upon the same narrow limit as an accident. It would require to be shown that it was the sole result of the occupation, and that there had been produced a definite pathological lesion of the body. Adopting this view, the maladies that could be included in the category would be, among others, anthrax, poisoning by lead, mercury, phosphorus, and bisulphide of carbon; but with the exception of anthrax, in which the disease is often suddenly induced, and as rapidly runs to a fatal termination, there is not as a rule the same exactitude in the incidence of disease as is the case in accident. There might be little difficulty in including anthrax under the Act of 1897. The inclusion of some of the other dangerous trades would give rise to frequent litigation, but it would make employers more careful in the selection of their workpeople, and in the means adopted to prevent industrial poisoning. This latter fact is one of the objects aimed at by those who are in favour of an extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, not omitting, where it can be clearly proved, the financial liability of the employer to compensate the affected workman. In the case of a fatal accident occurring in a factory, a post-mortem examination shows perhaps the body to be healthy, and therefore the accident to have been the sole cause of death, or there are certain signs of disease present which may have caused or hastened the fatal termination. In the latter instance the law takes no cognisance of the previous disease. It takes for granted that but for the accident the individual would have gone on following his occupation. In industrial poisoning, would a similar legal opinion be entertained? In acute lead poisoning, when the post-mortem examination and chemical analysis of the internal organs conclusively prove that death was due to lead, it might be a comparatively easy thing to fix the liability upon an employer; but the presence of signs of previous disease in the body, which probably contributed to the fatal termination of the illness, would make it extremely difficult to assign to each of the two circumstances its proper share in causing death.
It is facts such as these that doubtless led to the rejection by Parliament in 1897 of the proposal to extend the scope of the Workmen’s Compensation Bill so as to include industrial diseases, and place them on the same footing as accidents occurring at work. There is, however, a common sense view of the matter which should not be overlooked, and it is this. Where a person suffers in health, or loses his or her life through neglect of the employers to comply with the legal requirements of the Factory Acts, surely the employer under these circumstances ought to pay full compensation. In the case of accidents the question of neglect does not arise under the Act of 1897. The injured person is compensated, and that is the difference between the Employers’ Liability and the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The question that calls for an answer then is rather this: Where an employer has followed out to the full all the regulations required by the Home Office, and it is shown that he has done all that common sense and humanity dictate, and yet industrial poisoning has occurred, is the employer under these circumstances to be considered liable? In France, where the match industry is a State monopoly, the Government admitted its liability by paying to the workmen who suffered from the effects of phosphorus a stated indemnity. Bryant & May’s firm has always recognised its liability by paying a weekly allowance to the workpeople off ill through phosphorus necrosis. Other firms in other trades probably do the same. It is for the public, therefore, to say whether humane deeds like these, which are purely voluntary in this country, should be made compulsory by an extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, or be simply dealt with through the medium of mutual trade insurance societies.[2]
Collectively, occupations may be likened to a huge organism. Industries are the functions that indicate the life and prosperity of a nation, and like the higher forms of life they have grown in process of time from simple beginnings to highly complicated combinations, the controlling and to some extent directing agent of which is parliamentary legislation, keeping pace with the inventiveness of man and human requirements. In many ways is the resemblance between the industrial and human organism demonstrated. No man can use unrestricted freedom with his own body. There is a physiological limit to which he must bow. An over-worked brain or group of muscles sooner or later tells its own tale, unbridled licence causes degeneration of the nervous system, and excess in wine or at table is checked by the diseases it produces. Perfection is what we ought to strive for, and this can only be obtained by submission to nature’s laws. So, too, in the industrial organism it is recognised that production should be kept within limits, reckless bargaining should be curtailed, that each man should put his very best into the work he is doing, and that there should be more sympathetic communication between employer and employed. Trades, like human beings, are influenced by their surroundings. They do not thrive well away from coal fields and centres of human activity. Competition or the struggle for existence is as keen in the world of industry as in that of biology, and there occurs the same weeding out in both. Thwarted by local conditions and hampered by scarcity of labour, overburdened by excessive taxation or ground rents, industries will languish in one place, while with fewer restrictions they will flourish in another. New trades are constantly developing, and new methods of manufacture keep replacing those that are old. Everything is tending towards improvement. Many circumstances are operating to direct the industrial evolution of to-day. Human wants and man’s inventiveness play their part so that those manufacturers alone of their commercial confrères are successful who, recognising the spirit of the age, make an attempt to meet its demands.
Admitting that factory legislation has for the last century been gradually bringing into line industrial undertakings of all kinds, and that the Government has by enforcing regulations exercised a disciplining influence upon masters and men, it is only recently that it has taken up a strong and decided attitude in regard to the effects of particular trades upon health. Public health as a science is still in its infancy; it owes its origin mainly to the rush of people into the large towns. Its theories and facts have been brought by municipalities to bear upon the conditions of life in our homes and persons. Modern factory legislation, so far as industrial hygiene is concerned, is an extension of the ordinary laws of health to those workers who in many instances cannot frame rules of guidance for themselves. Law restricts as well as regulates individual freedom. The Public Health Acts have interfered with the liberty of the subject by insisting upon closing unhealthy dwellings, the removal of refuse, the notification of infectious diseases, and the compulsory removal from the home of members of a family who are suffering from some infectious malady, and by doing so have secured a larger measure of health for the community. Factory legislation similarly aims at improving the health of the workers.
Every man tries to get as much out of life as possible. Ideally he ought to contribute his best to it. A workman, while obtaining for his labour the largest wages possible, ought to put into his labour the best of his thought and energy so as to improve the character of the work he is engaged in. While the immediate object of labour is to obtain the wherewithal to live, the character of the work performed is unconsciously shaping the destiny of labour and building up through individuals the national reputation. The end of work is progress, and just as human life is perfected through suffering and experience, so is the industrial.
There are many ways by which the hygiene of trades may be promoted. The notification of industrial diseases to the Chief Inspector of Factories has, although it has only been in existence a very few years, already placed the Home Office in possession of facts and statistics which enable the Factory Department at once to realise when a particular industry is becoming prejudicial to the health of workers, and how it may be met. The good effects of notification are observed in the trades in which lead, mercury, and phosphorus are used. The power granted to the Home Secretary, which enables him to schedule a trade as dangerous on sufficient information being given to him, is, so long as it is judiciously applied, a step in the right direction. It is desirable that accurate information should be obtained from all sources, from employers as well as employed, and from experts, chemical and medical. The formation of a consultative body or of an industrial council composed of the Home Secretary and members of the factory staff, employers, a few educated workmen, chemists, medical men, and electricians, for the purpose of discussing with the Home Secretary terms of Special Rules and prospective legislation has been recommended, and might be helpful. On the Continent such industrial councils exist, a description of which will be found in Miss Anderson’s paper on “Regulations of Injurious or Dangerous Occupations in Factories and Workshops in some of the Chief European Countries.” In Britain there might be some difficulty in including upon a permanent consultative body gentlemen capable of dealing with the numerous technical questions that constantly arise, but the difficulty would be no greater there than in France. Within the last few years the Home Secretary has, whether for direct advice or to serve upon committee, occasionally called in the assistance of recognised experts or authorities upon particular points under consideration. This system has worked well, and might with advantage be extended. Industrial hygiene, too, so far at any rate as dangerous trades are concerned, could be promoted by small International Committees meeting to improve the sanitation of labour rather than to discuss economic problems of production. By many it is believed that the cause of industrial hygiene would be furthered by the establishment of a Ministry of Labour. It seems an anomalous circumstance that a country like ours, whose reputation has been built upon commerce, should be without a department specially devoted to labour and labour problems. The Home Office has the necessary machinery and possesses all the information, but its jurisdiction covers too extensive a field. The Factory Department ought to form a separate and distinct branch of the Home Office to be directed by a Secretary or Under-Secretary of State. Year by year the work of the Department and its scope increase, and surely among the many Departments of the State there can be none of greater importance than that which watches over the millions of persons engaged in factories and workshops in the United Kingdom.
THOMAS OLIVER.
Chapter II
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEGISLATION FOR INJURIOUS AND DANGEROUS INDUSTRIES IN ENGLAND
“Now, since both the Ages of Antiquity and that we now live in shew Laws ... calculated for the good Order and Reputation of Tradesmen, ’tis but reasonable that Physick should contribute its quota for the Benefit and Comfort of those of whom the Law has been so tenderly careful, and display itself in a particular manner (that has been hitherto neglected) for the safety of Tradesmen, that they may follow their Trades without injuring their Health.”--RAMAZZINI: Treatise of the Diseases of Tradesmen. English Edition, 1705. Italian Edition, Modena, 1670.
“Year after year, as far forward as any present judgment would willingly speculate, the same terrible waste of adult life must, with no great mitigation, continue, unless the Legislature see fit to provide by special enactment for more wholesome conditions of labour.... The canker of industrial diseases gnaws at the very root of our national strength. The sufferers are not few or insignificant. They are the bread-winners for at least a third part of our population.... That they have causes of disease indolently left to blight them amid their toil ... is surely an intolerable wrong. And to be able to redress that wrong is perhaps among the greatest opportunities for good which human institutions can afford.”--Report of the Medical Officer (Dr, afterwards Sir John Simon) to the Privy Council, 1861.
From the benevolent and learned Italian physician of the seventeenth century, in touch with every available source of information of his own and preceding ages, searching for mitigation of the diseases of workmen which he believes to be “incurable,” to the English State physician of the nineteenth century seeking to persuade men that the diseases must not be allowed even to arise, is indeed a long way. The way is long in all that concerns knowledge of the causes and treatment of disease, no less than in circumstances and organisation of industry. It is doubtful, however, whether the transformation of ideas in either is so great as in the general attitude of civilised society towards protection of labour and promotion of industrial health. The change cannot be accounted for, completely, either by change in the methods and organisation of industry, or by increased knowledge, medical, economic, or social. Nor can the increased breadth of conception be attributed solely to that increased intensity and quantity of human suffering which inevitably accompanied concentration and growth of industry. In all ages there have been physical, moral, and economic evils which fell to the lot of the labourer, probably differing from time to time on the whole more in degree than in kind, and doubtless felt at each stage by the sufferers, and sometimes by onlookers, with an intensity which relatively was great, and which with adequate discernment of a remedy and the duty or expedience of applying it, would have led to legislative action.
In the great civilisations of antiquity, whether in the East, West, or in Europe generally, there was sufficient concentration of the forces of labour to produce the intensest forms of the maladies classed by Pliny as the “diseases of slaves.” Some of the most injurious processes known to us now are extremely ancient. To mention but a few: lead and quicksilver mining, the potters’ craft, and the textile processes of preparing and weaving asbestos and flax.
The long history, in another department of social ills, of legislation and organised guild efforts for protection of buyers from dishonest manufacture and dishonest trading in adulterated products, or again, of efforts to regulate supply of labour and to enforce honest service from workers, affords many illustrations of the action that could be taken in Middle Age and Renaissance Europe, where an evil was both recognised and also believed to be remediable. It is to be noted how few the indications are that the strivings after social improvement of handicraftsmen and labourers were in those times inspired by any clear vision of the physical safety and health of individuals as part of the well-being to be sought. Illustrations might indeed be gathered from records of craft guilds and municipal organisations, of provisions and regulations that tended to results similar to those expressly aimed at by modern sanitary regulations. This is especially true of England, where the masses of manual workers came earlier than in other countries of Modern Europe to comparative physical comfort. We must, however, avoid the mistake of reading into past events, however interesting, ideas that are consciously at work in practical affairs only in our own times.
Of much later date are the first documents that I have been able to trace expressly dealing with the nature and results of industrial occupation in dangerous or injurious processes. These are in the Transactions of the Royal Society of England, and are of the theoretic and reflective character that is appropriate to their setting. Belonging to the same century as Ramazzini’s most human treatise (1670 and onwards), touching both manufacture and mining in Europe (e.g., manufacture of white lead, silvering of mirrors by mercury, lead mining, coal mining), they would take an important place in a general history of European thought and action on this question. The vivid descriptions by the Italian as well as by the English writers of the effects on the worker of lead,[3] of mercury,[4] of silk dust,[5] of explosions in mines,[6] give one a sense now of the kinship of past labour with present, and a clearer perception of the magnitude and the worth of the object that this generation has set itself--to remove such causes of suffering from the path of the labourer.
In those papers, however, we are still far from any practical preventive treatment of industrial diseases. My task in this paper is to trace out in England, that is in the foremost industrial community of recent times, the history of tentative, halting efforts, almost wholly within living memory, to engraft on the earlier legislative movements of the nineteenth century towards hygienic and moral reforms in industry, that special, applied regulation of injurious manufactures for which Sir Edwin Chadwick[7] and Sir John Simon were the earliest and most distinguished advocates. In this history itself, I think, is found the nearest attainable explanation of the wide difference between the general attitude of our day towards care of the health of the adult labourer at his trade, and that of any previous age, when the diseases accompanying industry were the subject of scientific observation. In it is to be seen the gathering momentum which could so completely sweep away age-long modes of regarding the worker at his bench as merely a means to the ends of others than himself and his family, that the legislature and administration could at length treat the promotion of the physical security of each individual labourer as a worthy end for the State no less than the labourer. Lord Londonderry, when he railed in Parliament in 1848 against the “hypocritical humanity” which sought by protective legislation to save the lives and limbs of the miners of Great Britain, represented but a singularly extreme though not isolated survival of the older assumption of legislators that the health of the masses of people, as of individual labourers, might be left to take care of itself, if indeed it was worth thinking about at all. Even the learned and humane contributors in the seventeenth century to the Transactions of the Royal Society on dangers of mining and means of overcoming them, can tell without a thought of irony how a ventilating tube was first placed in a dangerous mine after an accident from fire-damp, resulting in the loss not only of men but of a “gentleman of quality.” There is indeed a long series of laws, extending back to before the time of Elizabeth, for the protection of the poorer wage-earner in making his contract so that he should not be cheated by extortionate charges or unfair payments in goods. The real contrast in the normal attitude of the centuries before our own towards the persons of workers is nevertheless well seen in Macaulay’s wondering notice of the fact that in the latter end of the seventeenth century it was possible for an eminent philanthropist to exult in the thought that in Norwich, the centre of the clothing trade, where “a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour,” boys and girls of “very tender age created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by £12,000 a year.” Greater degradation than any shadowed there had to be achieved, in England at least, before the first legislative foundations could be laid, on which afterwards was to be engrafted the special trade legislation with which we are here concerned. Out of the desecration of child*-life and womanhood, underground and in factories and workshops, recorded in the Blue Books of the earlier part of last century, came the needed force for the beginnings of a State control in England of special conditions of health and security, which in some other European countries had been for long, at least in mines, partially maintained through the operation of a more or less definite theory of State or Imperial ownership.[8]
Although I refer necessarily to the general sanitary and social protective measures, the development of which belongs to the great humanitarian movements of the first half of the Victorian age, I must at this point make it clear that I exclude here their history, so far as concerns purely the control of economic and moral abuses, which were not inherent in manufacturing and mining industry itself. We are not directly concerned with physical sufferings which, owing to the apathy of the community, in fact accompanied the earlier developments of the factory system, nor with the barbarities which culpable ignorance too long allowed to survive, from rougher and harder times, underground in mines. Our concern is with those material risks in any industry which, when reasonably good methods of working have been developed by the necessary help of law, remain as ordinary accompaniments of the occupation itself, either because of the nature of the substance used, or because of the appliances necessary to the processes carried on. Some special regard for classes of persons employed is also necessary in so far as they are specially affected by risks on account of tender years or physical constitution, but not because Parliament was first and foremost compelled by unnatural conditions to safeguard young workers and women, nor because the force of law remains, and, humanly speaking, will continually remain necessary in competitive manufacture to maintain for them good normal conditions.
We must remember that applied scientific protection of all workers against industrial injury was from the outset introduced step by step into two distinct sets of Acts of Parliament, the Mines Acts and the Factory Acts, both with primarily social aims, each acting and re-acting on the other throughout, both in Parliament and in the Department administering them. This compels study of the stages of development in those Acts, as distinct from the movements which produced them, in order to arrive at any comprehension of the nature of the now resulting form of control of injurious trades.
In a complete history of this subject a long section would be devoted to the development of the later-initiated law relating to Public Health, to the origins of the two great Sanitary Commissions of 1843–5 and 1869–71 and their reports, and adequate recognition would be possible of one main cause of gradually quickened public and official understanding of the need of special precautions for health in injurious industries. This cause was the introduction into the service of the State, first as special commissioners, later as permanent officials, of scientific investigators and medical officers, whose work brought to light not merely new facts bearing upon industrial disease, but also new and broad ideas as to their origin and effects, and whose reports secured in some instances attention far beyond the boundaries of England. It is difficult for a modern Factory Inspector to realise all that is implied in the brief allusions of a former Chief Inspector, Mr Redgrave, in one of his annual reports, as late as 1868, to the fact that cleanliness, ventilation, and prevention of disease generally, in factories, were then regulated only so far as they were provided for at all in the “Sanitary Act,” and applied by local medical officers--where there were any--without effective central control or organisation. What it meant in loss of life and injury to the bread-winners of the masses of the nation was only too clearly set forth in the accumulated evidence in Dr Simon’s and Dr Greenhow’s reports to the Board of Health and to the Privy Council on the sanitary state of the people of England from 1858 onwards. The words I quote at the head of my paper indicate Sir John Simon’s idea of the magnitude of the evil at that time. In many passages he showed his view of the worthlessness of such general powers as then could be applied to the more general classes of evil.[9] In prolonged special investigations, guided by the danger signals of mortality statistics, he traced out the preventible injuries going on steadily in half-regulated or wholly unregulated dangerous trades. “Certain industrial establishments,” he said, writing in 1862, “are subject to Government inspection, and some to a very limited extent are regulated by Act of Parliament.... Is there any sufficient reason why these precedents should not be followed in other industrial establishments.... There is abundant causation of premature death in mines which are neither coal mines nor ironstone mines,[10] and potters, grinders, carders, hacklers, not to mention hosts of other artisans, may, any of them, show the same claim as miners--the claim of grievous physical suffering--to have the special circumstances of their industry subjected to Government supervision.”[11] These observations were not based on vague description or casual inquiry into the circumstances of industry, but on systematic notes of conditions of employment in selected localities where mortality due to given diseases--for example, tubercular phthisis or irritative disease of the lung--was three, four, or even six times as high as in other parts of England. The evidence for this need of supervision by centrally directed specialists, working under a specialised legislation, had been already repeatedly touched on in Reports of Royal Commissioners primarily appointed to inquire into employment of children and women. Far more had to be later said and written before the first steps could be taken in some of these manufactures to remove causes of injury which, later, the Commissioners of 1878 referred to as a “public scandal,” and for which no basis of control existed until 1891.
What, then, are the first beginnings of special legislation; and how did the succeeding steps follow each other in the Factory and the Mines Acts respectively? First, it must be pointed out that whereas the particular kind of legislative weapon (the provision for “Special Rules”), which was destined to be forged for use against dangerous trades, was first planned in connection with regulation of mines, it reached its most elaborate form in connection with regulation of manufacturing industries, that is, in the earlier and more fully regulated industries, under the Factory Acts.
It is now almost incredible that one of the most dangerous of all groups of industry--mining--should have been free in England from any form of protective legislation until 1842,[12] when women and girls were excluded from underground working, and that it was not until 1855 that any comparatively useful safeguards of health, life, and limb were prescribed by law. It is still more difficult to realise that before 1814 it was not customary to hold inquests on deaths of miners killed by accidents in mines. With the exception of regulations against truck, there was no provision except such as protected the colliery owner--and of that kind there were many--against injury to his property by miners.
Meanwhile the landmarks from the present standpoint in factory regulation had been the Acts of 1802 and 1833. The first, aiming only at the preservation in cotton mills of the “health and morals” of apprentices, further laid down that “visitors,” to be appointed by justices in every county for repression of contraventions, were empowered to “direct the adoption of such sanitary regulations as they might on advice think proper.” The Act of 1833,[13] regulating first the labour of children and young persons in textile factories generally, replaced those “visitors” of the Act of 1802 (who had seldom been appointed, and still more seldom had acted) by “inspectors” with similar powers of entry, and of calling to their aid expert advisers, but with additional powers: to administer oaths and to make such “rules, regulations, and orders” as were necessary for the execution of the Act, and to convict offenders and impose penalties under the Act, as if they were Justices of the Peace. In 1844 an Act applying similarly only to textile factories repealed these remarkable powers of Factory Inspectors to make rules, orders, and regulations, and to act as Justices of the Peace; at the same time it organised the Inspectorate, with institution of an office in London, on lines comparable to those of our own time. Certifying surgeons were then first provided primarily for the purpose of examining young workers under sixteen years of age as to their fitness for employment, and granting certificates of age and ordinary strength; but further also, for re-examination of such workers at the instance of an inspector where there was reason to believe that injury would be caused by continued employment. The Acts were now extended to women, and for the first time special provisions for health and safety (as distinct from general provisions for cleanliness of the factory) began to make their appearance. Workers in wet spinning became entitled to sufficient means against being wetted and against unnecessary escape of steam into the room if young persons or children were employed there; but far more important were the new attempts to reduce accidents by providing for the safer use of machinery, inquiry into causes of accidents, and penal compensation to workers for accidents due to machinery remaining unfenced after notice from the inspector that it was “deemed to be dangerous.” These provisions embodied a few of the recommendations made in Special Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, presented to Parliament in 1841, and the recommendations of the Select Committee of the House of Commons presented in the same year; with them, however, was also introduced the principle of Arbitration on the objections raised by an occupier. The inspector might give notice of dangerous machinery to be fenced, but for fourteen days the right remained with the occupier to require the appointment of arbitrators “skilled in the construction of the kind of machinery” to which the notice referred. Each party, the occupier and the inspector, was then to nominate his arbitrator, and the two arbitrators were to proceed to examine the machinery “alleged to be dangerous” within fourteen days. If they could not agree, they were together to appoint as umpire a third arbitrator “possessing a similar knowledge of machinery.” When the ultimate decision supported the occupier’s objection, the inspector’s notice as to danger was annulled, and even if an accident thereafter occurred, penal compensation could not be obtained for an injured worker. Not until the Act of 1891 did this principle, later so greatly extended in application to matters of health as well as safety, cease to control the fencing of dangerous machinery (other than mill-gearing) in factories, and it still remains for all dangers in mines not expressly covered by any other provision. As regards this first introduction into the Factory Acts of penal compensation for preventible injuries, it appears to have been the outcome of a discussion by witnesses before the Royal Commission on Labour of Young Persons in Mines and Manufactures in 1841. This was the “trade charge or insurance payable by the branch of industry liable to the accidents,” which has been at length secured to the worker only at the end of the nineteenth century by the Compensation Acts.
In the year in which these considerable steps had been taken in factory legislation (1844), the Mines Inspector under Lord Ashley’s Act published his first report. Even two years later women were still to be found in considerable numbers underground. Progress nevertheless was being yearly made--through the reports on safety and ventilation of special scientific commissioners (including Lyell, Faraday, Playfair), by the action of associations of miners, by spread of knowledge of the dangers of mining, and not least, by the recurrence of appalling accidents which ever increasingly shocked the public conscience--came the first tentative measure for general safety in coal mines--the Act of 1855[14] In 1854 the Select Committee on Accidents had reported, adopting among other recommendations a suggestion of the Inspectors for legislative extension of the practice of several colliery owners, of framing special safety rules for working in mines. The Act, in addition to specifying seven general rules binding on owners and agents of collieries for safety, relating to: (1) adequate ventilation to dilute and render harmless noxious gases; (2) fencing of disused shafts; (3) fencing of pumping pits when not at work; (4) secure lining of shafts; (5) proper means of signalling; (6) indicator and break for machine raising or lowering persons; (7) proper gauges and valve for steam boiler, provided for the framing and enforcement of special rules, to be submitted by owners for approval of the Secretary of State, at every colliery. These special rules, when established, were to have the force of law both for owners and miners, but were enforceable only by penalty in the case of owners, by penalty or imprisonment with or without hard labour (maximum three months) in the case of miners. This latter distinction occasioned considerable bitterness at the time, but the provision which was most generally criticised was the elaborate one for arbitration in case of objection on the part of the owner to any alteration or addition to special rules made by the Secretary of State. Within twenty-seven days the owner had power to nominate three or more “practical mining engineers or other competent persons of experience in the district,” not “interested in or employed in the management of ... the colliery,” and the Secretary of State might appoint “one or more” such persons “to determine the matter in difference.” In case of the owner not exercising this power within the time specified, arbitration could be organised on lines very similar to those provided by the Factory Act of 1844, with the difference that in the case of special rules in mines one of the parties to the arbitration was the Secretary of State instead of the inspector. In the framing of special rules following on this Act, it was common for groups of collieries working under similar conditions to adopt one set of special rules, but sometimes individual owners drew up their own special rules, and occasionally attempted to introduce remarkably irrelevant matter, such as attendance at “Divine Service at least once on the Lord’s Day,” for the regulation of the conduct of miners.
Five years later the law relating to mines was extended, and in some ways strengthened, several disastrous accidents and explosions, entailing loss in the aggregate of thousands of lives, having in the meanwhile occurred. At several of the inquests strong evidence was given of incompetent management and neglect of rules in addition to disregard of inspectors’ suggestions for improvement of ventilation in the interests of safety; in one case the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against the manager, the overman, and the fireman of the colliery, though this was subsequently followed by acquittal at the assizes. The Act of 1860 touched on several new points, besides extending the law to include ironstone mines; wages and education sections were first introduced, but a demand for certificated managers of coal mines was not met until 1872. The chief advances in the direction of increased safety were, by extension of the general rules to include provision for places of refuge on engine planes, use of covers overhead in lowering or raising persons in every pit, fencing of fly-wheels of every engine, maintenance of boreholes to prevent inundations, by empowering an inspector to propose additional safeguards for dangers not covered by any rules (but in case of objection by the owner, the matter was to go to arbitration); by raising the age of those entrusted with charge of steam engines to eighteen years.
In the meantime the course of factory legislation continued to illustrate the strength of the original motive--rescue of young workers and women in textile factories from monstrously long hours and overwork--rather than intelligent and steady assimilation by the community of the evidence of need of special control of drainage, ventilation, use of deleterious substances, and other matters affecting health in a large number of non-textile industries. Such evidence was first strikingly presented by the Report of the Commission on Mines and Manufactures, published in 1843, but later in greater detail as regards the injurious industries of lucifer match and pottery making in the Report of the Children’s Employment Commission of 1862. A long and fierce battle had to be waged over the form and degree of limitation of hours in textile works before the gradual extension of the principle of regulation could begin and proceed from trade to trade. It was in the Act of 1864, which added the largest number of these, including earthenware and lucifer match works, that the fruit of the labours of expert commissioners began to appear in explicitly sanitary measures, applicable to all classes of factories under the Acts.[15] In this Act we first find the idea of ventilation applied in order to render harmless “gases, dust, or other impurities generated in the course of manufacture that may be injurious to health.” And here we find the first fleeting attempt to introduce the “special rules” system from the Mines Acts, on the employers’ initiative, but without the arbitration clauses. Manufacturers were empowered to draw up special rules binding on workers, after approval by the Secretary of State, “for compelling the observance ... of the conditions necessary to ensure the required degree of cleanliness and ventilation, and to annex to any breach of such rules a penalty not exceeding one pound.” These powers were extended to many other trades, including indiarubber works, letterpress printing works, blast furnaces, and iron mills, by the Act of 1867, and were soon unfavourably reported on by inspectors, as throwing too heavy a burden on the workers, “the onus of being a principal under the Act,” to use Mr Baker’s words. In 1868 he reported that special rules were in force in most of the iron works in his district, which gave the employer “power over his workpeople who sub-employ in his works,” by holding them responsible for various sections of the Acts relating to employment of young persons; a purpose which we can now readily see to have been foreign to the general intention of such legislation. By the Act of 1871 penalties for breach of these rules were made recoverable by summary proceedings, but the provisions for framing such rules disappeared when the law was consolidated by the Act of 1878. The Workshop Regulation Act of 1867, amended in 1870, practically completed the application of the general law to all workplaces in which manual labour was exercised for gain, in the making or finishing of articles or parts of articles for sale. The “Sanitary Act” of 1866 had provided for cleanliness, ventilation to remove injurious gases and dust, and for freedom from overcrowding in any workplace not under the operation of any of these Acts. The Factory Acts of 1864 and 1867 prohibited the taking of meals in certain workrooms where dangerous processes are carried on, e.g., lucifer match making, earthenware dipping, china scouring, glass-making (mixing, grinding, cutting, polishing), and the application of power to the extraction of injurious dusts was furthered by introduction of provision for a “fan or other mechanical means,” approved from time to time by the Secretary of State, in case of grinding, glazing, polishing on a wheel, or “any other process in which dust is generated or inhaled by the workmen to an injurious extent.” The Act of 1878, in consolidating all previous Factory and Workshop Acts, re-cast some special safety provisions (for example, those relating to prohibition of certain workrooms for meals), in such a form as to empower the Secretary of State to extend the prohibition to other industries, a power which was exercised in a considerable number of industries. Employment of young workers was also prohibited in certain dangerous processes, and power was taken to extend such prohibition. Nothing was done, however, at the time of this great measure--which was primarily for better administration of existing provisions, and was accompanied, on the recommendation of the Commissioners of 1875, by a thorough reorganisation and extension of the inspectorate--towards securing more detailed regulation of methods and conditions of working in dangerous trades, in spite of a recommendation to that effect by Mr Redgrave. The first decisive step in that direction was taken in 1883 in the case of one of the most deadly of lead industries, the manufacture of white lead, whose effects had been recorded for centuries, and in France had been the object of special inquiry followed by regulation early in the century under the direction of the Conseil de Salubrité. It is rather remarkable to read in a report of the Chief Inspector, 1882, that although “employment in dangerous occupations has on several occasions been brought under the notice of the legislature, until recently special attention has not been drawn to the manufacture of white lead.”[16] Now, however, the evils pressed for remedy, and the “Mines Acts as to general precautions and special rules” were adopted as a “precedent” to be applied to white lead works.[17]
Before touching further on this new departure and tracing out its sequel, a brief reference must be made to the course of Mines legislation since 1860. While political conditions had been unfavourable to additional legislation for some time after the Act of that year, the conditions in the coal industry had been developing steadily, both as regards extent and methods of getting mineral on the one hand, and as regards association amongst miners on the other, in such a way as to make a complete law possible when it inevitably came. Scientific knowledge as to mechanical means of ventilation and other provisions for safety became at the same time incomparably wider spread. Greatly increased public discussion brought out far more clearly the objects and desires both of masters and men, and the determination of the latter to obtain certificated and competent management, extension of the system of “general” safety rules, improvement of the method of forming “special rules,” and increased inspection, had its effect in the consolidating and amending Act of 1872. The number of general rules was more than doubled, matters formerly left to the chances of special rules were permanently transferred to the general law, which now included compulsory use of safety lamps where needed, regulation of use of explosives in blasting, securing of roofs and sides, daily examination of the state of the mine, facilities for inspection by representatives of the miners. Special rules became more clearly defined as intended for the guidance, safety, and proper discipline of the miners at work, and they might only be transmitted for the Secretary of State’s approval after they had been posted in the mine for two weeks with a notice that objections to them might be sent by any person employed to the inspector of the district. Wilful neglect or contravention of any provision of a kind likely to endanger safety became punishable, in the case of employers as well as miners, by imprisonment with hard labour. The machinery of arbitration on any questions of safety under the Acts was made considerably clearer. In all these matters[18] the great advance was by way of development of previous ideas. The entirely new departure lay in the six sections relating to daily control, and supervision of every mine by a manager holding a certificate of competency from the Secretary of State, after examination by a board of examiners appointed by the latter, power being retained to the Secretary of State to cause inquiry, if necessary, later into the competency of the holder of the certificate, cancellation or suspension of the certificate being possible in case of proved unfitness. There is little room for surprise that so great an advance in the law should have given widespread satisfaction to the miners, and that for a considerable time efforts of their associations were directed to securing vigorous enforcement rather than extension of the law. In the same year the question of health and safety in Metalliferous Mines[19] received its first treatment in a separate code (which remains in force to the present time), of similar scope to the Coal Mines Act. A Royal Commission had been appointed in 1862, and had reported in 1864. The great excess of mortality and sickness among metalliferous miners, “mainly attributable to the imperfect ventilation of the mines” and inhalation of gritty particles, to excessive physical exertion in climbing up and down ladders of great length, to the great changes of temperature, and exposure to wet, were brought out in the report and made the subject of recommendations. It was also shown that accidents were of frequent occurrence from falls from ladders, falls of the rock or stuff, carelessness in blasting, defective gear, and sudden irruptions of foul air and water. The method of regulation adopted for Metalliferous Mines, by general rules for safety, special rules for conduct and guidance of miners, and the requirements as to notice of accidents, coroners’ inquiries, fencing of abandoned mines, being similar to those for Coal Mines, details are unnecessary for the purpose of the present essay. In 1881 the Coal Mines Acts were strengthened in regard to the use of explosives underground, in 1886 the Secretary of State was empowered to direct a formal investigation of any explosion or accident and of its causes and circumstances to be held (a provision embodied by reference in the Factory Acts in 1895). In 1887 the Coal and Ironstone Mines Acts were again consolidated with amendments strengthening the already existing provisions. By General Rule 4 more stringent provision for inspection of working parts of mines before commencing and during shifts, and the distinction between mines in which inflammable gas had been found within the preceding twelve months and those in which it had not, disappeared. By Rules 8, 9, 10, 11, construction and use of safety lamps became much more detailed and stringent than in the former Rule 7, which they replaced. By Rule 24 the age of competent male persons in charge of machinery for raising and lowering persons at the mine was raised to twenty-two. By Rule 34 provision of ambulances or stretchers with splints and bandages ready for immediate use at the mine became compulsory. Other main provisions of the Act strengthened were those relating to distance and height of communications between the two shafts required in mines; daily personal supervision of the mine by the certificated manager; notice of opening or abandoning seams. Arbitration on special rules and other matters was modified so that while the qualification of being a practical mining engineer was retained for the two representative arbitrators, the umpire, if any, is bound to be a county court judge, a police or stipendiary magistrate, a recorder of a borough, or a registrar of a county court.
Turning again to the Factory and Workshop Act of 1883, which forms the first distinct attempt to regulate a dangerous manufacturing industry, we find, in its unamended form, a remarkable parallel to the method of mines regulation, not merely in the requirement that every occupier of a white lead factory shall frame and submit for approval to the Secretary of State special rules[20] which have been affixed in the factory with a notice to the workers of their power to send objections to the Chief Inspector; but also in the prescribing of six general conditions for obtaining a certificate to carry on the dangerous industry. These include provision for ventilation of stoves and stacks, means of maintaining personal cleanliness, and proper room for meals. The special rules, however, were not in the original statute liable to any process of arbitration, merely to full consideration by the Secretary of State, who had power to make modifications after hearing the occupiers’ objections, if any, to his modifications. This procedure was considerably modified when by the Act of 1891 provision was made for establishment of special rules in any industry (not being a domestic industry) certified by the Secretary of State to be dangerous or injurious to health, or dangerous to life or limb. Then the initiative in drafting the “special rules or requiring the adoption of such special measures as appear to the Chief Inspector to be reasonably practicable, and to meet the necessities of the case” was transferred from the occupier to the Factory Department, but a counterbalancing force was provided by addition of the arbitration clauses wherever the occupier persisted in objections to the proposed special rules, and the Secretary of State could not see the way to accepting modifications asked for by the occupier. At the same time the share of the worker in framing the rules, by his legal right to make objections before they were established, entirely disappeared. It was not until the Act of 1895 that this loss was imperfectly compensated, by a right to representation on the arbitration on conditions prescribed by the arbitrators which was then secured to workmen interested, or any class of them. In 1896, in the Mines Acts that privilege was superadded to the other. The general tenor of the Factory Act of 1891, following as it did on the important work of the House of Lords’ Committee on the Sweating System, and the Berlin International Conference, was one of development of sanitary organisation, particularly with regard to workshops, and of closer regulation of dangerous and injurious trades. It had been preceded in 1889 by an Act with special reference (like the Act of 1883) to a single class of factories, in this case the cotton cloth factories, in which excessive heat and humidity produced by artificial means seriously affected the health and comfort of operatives. The Act not only limited the temperature of workrooms and amount of moisture in the atmosphere, but also provided for tests and records of the same, and fixed a standard minimum volume of fresh air, 600 cubic feet, to be admitted in every hour for every person employed. Power was retained for the Secretary of State to modify by order the maximum limit of humidity of the atmosphere at any given temperature, and a short Act of two sections in 1897 extended this power to other measures for the protection of health recommended by a Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Act of 1889. Without doubt, the most important measures adopted under this Act in 1898 were those tending to purify the air of workrooms by prescribing a CO standard of ventilation (“during working hours in no part of the Cotton Cloth Factory shall the proportion of carbonic acid in the air be greater than nine volumes of carbonic acid to every ten thousand volumes of air”), and by prohibiting use of impure water for production of artificial humidity. One other point of historical interest in connection with the Act of 1889 must be touched on. It contained a general provision enabling an inspector, where he considered that dust was inhaled by the workers to an injurious extent, to serve a notice on the occupier of the factory to adopt mechanical or other means for its removal, but subjecting the notice in case of objection by the occupier to the same process of arbitration as the notice of fencing for dangerous machinery provided in the Act of 1844. In both cases the power of the employer to send the notice to arbitration was repealed by the Act of 1891, and, consequently, the ordinary procedure for the inspector to enforce such notices was by establishment of the evidence in support of his requirement in the ordinary courts. For the first time some provision was made in 1891 for means of escape in case of fire in factories and workshops. Certifying surgeons were now called upon to report annually as to the persons inspected and the results of inspection.
On the Act of 1891 followed a period of greatly increased administrative activity with the new powers to initiate detailed regulation for promotion of special hygiene in factory and workshop life. No fewer than sixteen trades, including the majority of those referred to in the reports of Royal Commissioners and special medical experts of the earlier and middle parts of the century, were certified, under sections, by the Secretary of State, as dangerous or injurious within four years of the passing of the Act.[21] The Act of 1895, extending greatly in several directions the sanitary control of industrial life, followed on this period of increased activity, after the Royal Commission on Labour had reported on the results of its wide survey of industrial conditions, after two important Departmental Committees had reported on lead and phosphorus industries, and after two successive annual reports had embodied reports and recommendations from the women inspectors who in 1893 were first added by the Home Office to the staff of factory inspectors. In the year in which this Act came into force, medical knowledge was established as a guiding factor in the permanent administration of the Department. Probably no more important step towards control of use of poisonous substances in manufacture has been taken than that contained in the provision for reports to the Chief Inspector from every medical practitioner attending in certain cases of poisoning contracted in any factory or workshop. Complementary to this is an extension of the province of certifying surgeons; it included now not only examination of workers under sixteen, but also the duty of inquiry and report in certain cases of industrial disease and accident, and, under special rules, where required, periodical re-examination of workers. In the general provisions of the Act appear for the first time the questions of reasonable temperature, requirement of lavatories where poisonous substances are used, formerly only touched by special rules; it became possible by order of a court of summary jurisdiction to secure prohibition of use of dangerous structures or a dangerous machine until the necessary steps had been taken to remove the danger by the occupier of the factory or workshop. The field of factory regulation was extended by the inclusion of certain conditions of health and safety in “laundries,” and of general and special conditions of safety in every dock, wharf, quay, and warehouse. In the special rules it became possible for the Secretary of State, subject to the award of arbitrators if objection were raised, to introduce provisions prohibiting or limiting employment of any classes of persons in the industries scheduled as dangerous, a power which has been exercised in the case of white lead works (prohibition of women’s employment in the most dangerous processes), vulcanising of indiarubber by bisulphide of carbon (limitation of hours of adults), and lead smelting works (limit of spells in cleaning flues).
A few words must be said about the dangerous industry of quarrying in open quarries (as distinct from underground quarries under the Metalliferous Mines Act). These were nominally under the Factory Acts by section 93 of 1878, but it was not until special rules could be introduced under the Act of 1891 that any practical steps could be taken at all to enforce the particular measures of safety applicable to the conditions. These proved inadequate, and in 1894, on the recommendations of a Special Committee appointed in 1893 to inquire into the whole matter, a special Quarries Act was passed which, while retaining those provisions of the Factory Acts that were suitable, such as fencing and regulation of employment, applied also those provisions of the Metalliferous Mines Acts which from the nature of the industry rendered them better adapted for control of its peculiar dangers; at the same time the administration passed to the Mines Department, and in a few years it was reported that special rules for safety had been established in over 2000 quarries with satisfactory results.
Much remains to be said of the methods of regulation of injurious and dangerous industries since 1896;[22] of the steps taken by inquiries and action of the permanent staff, with its increasingly expert character; of inquiries by Departmental Committees and by specially appointed advisers on scientific and technical aspects of processes; of endeavours, successful and unsuccessful, to frame and carry through special rules without resort to arbitration to meet the risks to the life and health of whole classes of workers; of the results of arbitration in two of the most injurious industries, manufacture of earthenware and china, and of lucifer matches, where white or yellow phosphorus is used. All this, however, belongs so much to current history and controversy that its true meaning and tendency can best be brought out later, and perhaps by a more detached observer. At the very time when the proofs of this sketch leave my hands, an important Bill is passing to report stage in the House of Commons from the Grand Committee on Trade, where opinion has been shown to be practically unanimous in regard to the substitution of a better method of establishing special rules for the precarious and clumsy method of arbitration; power has been taken to prohibit, limit, or control use of any material or process in industry; and, where fruitful extension has been made of the principle of legislating, for details in matters of health by means of departmental orders. Enough has, I trust, been said to illustrate the rise and growth in the last hundred years of the still new ideas of the claim of the industrial worker in a civilised country to reasonable, practical measures to secure his immunity from needless suffering, of the claim of the community that the profits of manufacture shall not be bought at the expense of the life and health of citizens, in whose individual well-being the true wealth of the community lies.
ADELAIDE M. ANDERSON.
Chapter III
REGULATION OF INJURIOUS OR DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS IN FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS IN SOME OF THE CHIEF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.
In the historical sketch of the development in England of factory and workshop hygiene, I have endeavoured to indicate the groundwork on which special regulations for dangers arising out of the nature or the organisation of particular processes rest. Comprehension of the meaning of regulations for industrial health in other countries would be greatly increased for the student of this branch of comparative legislation and administration, if there were knowledge of the historical development of these institutions not only in one but in all the countries touched on. But then, equally so would there be gain in acquiring practical administrative experience in all those countries. Although both kinds of knowledge are not equally impracticable of attainment by one individual, the limits of space and time in such a chapter as this prohibit any attempt to enter on either field so far as details are concerned, and it is only possible to take the absolutely necessary step of entering a warning against over-estimation of the value of comparative surveys of systems of factory law and schemes of administration which are not followed by further research. With a view to such further research I trust that the slight survey attempted here may be of value.
While fully appreciating the need of supplementing study of the law relating to factory hygiene in any country by reference to the system of local government and the law relating to public health, I am compelled by the limits already touched on to concentrate attention on the one branch of law--factory legislation proper.
England stands in a special position, with its own qualities and own defects. Having entered long before most other European countries on the path of control of employment in factories owing to the earlier need of such regulation, and having admittedly also led the way in the task of building up a complete and precise sanitary code for regulation of public health, England has shown in the later stages of the part of the work which touches industry too little interest in the later efforts, on different lines of other countries. This slowness is traceable in part to the same causes as those which have retarded in England the general study of comparative legislation and administration, of which foremost, no doubt, stands the necessity of developing on national lines our own safeguards, yet it seems probable that the country which in a singular degree stimulated European progress in Public Health by the justly famous “Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population,” 1838, and its immediate fruits, has latterly retarded its own progress in industrial hygiene by too close an adherence to its own methods. However this may be, it is clear that whereas Continental thinkers have already begun to utter warnings as to the limits of the value of comparative study of labour legislation, we in England are still waiting for sufficient material and accurate information on which to base any comparisons at all. Even for those who have time to do little more than mould their opinions by reading the daily and weekly papers, still more for those who desire to devote more time to these subjects, it would be well if we had continually accessible, in convenient form, current documents which would enable us to estimate more exactly what we have to learn from other countries, and what are the ideas applied there which are capable of application here under different circumstances of social and administrative tradition and legislative groundwork.[23] And to understand any one branch of factory legislation, even the sanitary, engineering, and medical side of prevention of industrial diseases and accidents, knowledge must be acquired of other sides, the economic one of limitation of hours and times of work, and protection of workers in making their contract, no less than the social side of propriety of arrangements in the workplace, and direct or indirect protection of women, home life, and children’s training. The time has come, however, when there is a new readiness for the interchange of ideas between this country and others on the question of general provision for sanitation and special regulation for dangerous, unhealthy, and injurious occupations. As I have said elsewhere, “with the rise and development of new methods and even entire industries in new places, old and new dangers and diseases are rapidly becoming clearer. The international interest in applying science at an equal pace to the development and to the sanitation of injurious industries is at once more equal and more urgent than in the indirectly hygienic questions of hours and holidays for industrial workers. At the same time the difficulties of regulation are far less prominently economic, legal or social, and more especially questions for treatment by expert scientific advisers.”
In order to estimate with an approach to accuracy the value of special measures adopted in other countries, it is necessary to obtain some idea of the ordinary scope of factory legislation, and of the degree in which the laws are made operative by methods of administration, and by sanctions attached to contraventions. The regulations for ordinary health and safety, which “at first blush” bear considerable resemblance to each other, are found on closer examination to have widely differing effectiveness, owing perhaps in one case to lack of precise definition or to special limitation of the class of workplaces covered; in another to the powers conferred both on local and on central authorities to sanction exceptions either to the Industrial Code, or orders made under it; in another to local variations in economic organisation of industries affected. For example, on the first point, more cases of disputed application of the code, which contains no definition of the term “factory,” have in Germany come before the courts than in England, and in Germany the special restrictions as regards hours and health for women and young workers apply only in “factories.” The various decisions, on particular instances, of the Supreme Court lay stress now on one feature, now on another, of what is understood as a factory, such as numbers employed, size of the building, subdivision of labour, active personal share of the employer in the processes. Application of mechanical power to manufacture by machinery generally brings a workplace under the scope of the factory regulations, but power is retained for the Federal Council to exempt even from this rule any special undertaking. The Austrian Industrial Code does define the term “factory,” but very much on the lines threshed out by the decisions of the German Reichsgericht. In both these countries there is much less control of conditions of labour in workshops than in factories, although Austria makes rather less distinction than Germany between the two. Whereas England distinguishes these two classes of workplace only by relegating general sanitary control of the workshops to the local authority, not by differing requirements, France makes none of the distinction between factory and workshop which in one form or another is found in other European countries. In both these countries the general protection of the law covers alike factory and workshop employé; in Germany the Code has not gone further than to empower the Federal Council to extend the factory regulations, if cause should be found, to workshops. “Domestic workshops” are entirely exempt from regulation of labour in Germany and Austria. England stands alone in defining limits in domestic workshops for the labour of children and young persons, but hitherto has not taken the power of applying special sanitary regulation,[24] which both France and Belgium possess, for protection against dangerous or unhealthy occupations carried on in them. From even so brief a review of the classes of workplaces covered, it easily appears how in the past in some countries the domestic workshops in dangerous industries, e.g., lucifer match making (unknown except in factories in England), have furnished a disproportionate number of victims of industrial disease.
While the first question necessarily is, what are the workplaces covered by the regulations? the second and equally important is, what is the system of inspection? In most countries, as in England, the institution of a special inspectorate has followed, not accompanied, the enactment of measures of protection, even though in some countries the idea of sanitary regulation has preceded limitation of hours for women and minors. In Belgium, Holland, and Sweden the institution dates from 1888–9; in Switzerland, and some of the German States, beginning with Prussia, it dates from 1878; in Austria, from about 1887; France, from 1874; Denmark, 1873. About 1892 to 1893 both France and Belgium undertook the reorganisation of their inspectorate, which corresponds to the thorough reconstruction that in England followed the Royal Commission on Factory Legislation in 1876.
In several of these countries, all of which had originally to some extent looked to the far earlier example and experience of England in enforcement of the law, the important step was taken, considerably in advance of England, of bringing into the factory service medical, engineering, and chemical expert knowledge. No doubt in England, the delay in this matter is directly traceable to the character stamped on the institution by the educational, moral, and social origin of our Factory Acts, and to the very recent beginnings of development (1883–1891) of a special basis of factory hygiene. The delay in England was probably further increased by the introduction (referred to in my historical sketch) of tentative investigations of industrial diseases under the ægis of an entirely separate Government Department, concerned with local government and administration of the law relating to public health. This delay as compared with Germany was, however, more than compensated, when the Act of 1891 had introduced special means of control of injurious trades, by the centralised, organised character of the English inspectorate. Although the German Federal Council can make regulations for injurious industries throughout the Empire which over-ride special state or local rules, still each state has hitherto appointed its own inspectors, and when appointed these inspectors in order to enforce the rules must ordinarily report infringements to the local police authority, who may or may not always take action. Thus in Germany uniformity of administration in such matters outside the boundary of any state, so far as it depends on centralised supervision, can hardly be looked for. Much more closely knit is the Austrian inspectorate, with its chief inspector, who has some expert advisers on his staff, and power himself to take part in final decisions on cases brought up, on appeal, to the industrial authority of third and final instance at the Ministry of the Interior. Only in Austria, so far as I know, is it obligatory in fixing a penalty for a contravention to take into account both the amount of advantage the offender might expect from the infringement and the amount of harm that the worker may suffer. The latter consideration would be weightiest in questions of health and safety, and since the fines have to be paid into local provident funds for workers, would correspond to the penal compensation in case of injury through neglect to fence machinery possible under English law. Medical and chemical reports are less prominent in the Austrian inspectorate than the German, and it has been distinctly laid down that the inspectors are not so much engineering and sanitary experts as a special institution for the protection of labour; since 1876 the supervision of dangerous and unhealthy industries has been one of the functions of the provincial authorities for public health. Although in France the inspectorate has been organised on lines, so far as territorial divisions are concerned, similar to those in England, i.e., with district and superintending inspectors, it is without a chief inspector, and works under the general supervision of a commission (Commission supérieure du Travail dans l’Industrie). This system has been declared by one of the oldest superintending or divisional inspectors to work most unsatisfactorily in the matter of control of dangerous industries where the great need is that the circumstances not of a locality, but the country as a whole, should be considered by a chief having under his directions both expert officials and an organised staff. The special expert character of the central Belgian inspectorate is determined by the fact that the earliest inspectors were appointed (1889) under the law relating to sanitation and safety in dangerous or unhealthy industries, and not under the law limiting hours of labour for women and children. The latter were first appointed in 1891, and the whole service organised as one in 1895. Of the Scandinavian countries Denmark has had the most definitely constituted inspectorate, but here the central authority has hitherto been divided (as it was before 1876 in England) between two principal inspectors. This is now altered. An Act which came into force on 1st January 1902, not only amends and strengthens the law relating to factories, but also centralises the control by providing for a single chief or director with two expert secretaries, one trained in economic questions, the other in technical questions. Of the remaining European countries Hungary possesses an organised and centralised inspectorate of the English type. In Russia control of the methods of inspectors is by a system of Provincial Boards under the supreme supervision of the Chief Factory and Mining Board, presided over by the Minister of Finance, who places some of the principal inspectors on the Board.
I may turn from the field of application of the laws and methods of organising inspection to the methods of securing general sanitary conditions and security in workplaces. England stands alone in both delegating certain sanitary powers to local authorities, and at the same time retaining power to the Government inspectors to intervene in these matters in case of default of the local authority, and yet we have nothing quite comparable to the powers of health authorities in Belgium, Germany, and Austria, to lay down in certificates of authorisation for large numbers of workplaces, conditions aimed at securing the health of the workers as well as the public health. In some cases, particularly in Belgium, this power extends beyond the trades here classed as noxious or offensive, and includes amongst many trades recognised as injurious to workers even laundries, one of the last of the great manual industries to be regulated in this country. Quite early in the nineteenth century we find laundries appearing in French lists of noxious or offensive trades under two classes, (a) as requiring authorisation for establishment near dwellings, (b) as requiring internal supervision on account of decomposing soap and water. In Germany and Austria, lists of trades subject to preliminary authorisation are shorter than in Belgium, but there is nothing in other countries equivalent to the absolute duty placed upon German local authorities, apart from all initiative of numerous Government inspectors, to visit every industrial establishment where protected persons are employed at least once in six months, in order to apply the provisions of the industrial code in all matters relating to safety, sanitation, and propriety of arrangements. Further, we have in England nothing comparable to the powers of the separate State Authorities in Germany to call in the advice of the Accident Assurance Associations under the Accident Insurance Laws in order to restrict hours of labour in dangerous occupations, or to carry into effect the general requirements of the Code relating to safety and health. In general, in comparing special rules against dangers in industry as between England and Germany, due weight must be given to the consideration that for many years in Germany there has been insurance for workers both against accident and sickness; also it must be remembered that the Civil Code lays a positive obligation on every master to secure for his servants arrangements for health, safety, and morality in their employment such as are also required in the Industrial Code. We are, moreover, in Austria and Germany reviewing countries in which traces of the old guild organisation of industry survive both in law and fact, and the industrial codes, while defining the duties of employers to workers, expressly require obedience and fidelity from the worker to his employer. Discipline thus is a far easier matter in a German than an English workplace, a factor of very considerable importance in regulation of dangerous trades.
It would not be difficult to demonstrate in tabular form that England and Germany stand easily first among the European countries in respect of detailed attempts to regulate unhealthy industries by special Government rules, but it must suffice presently to set forth the trades so regulated in these two, while touching on some of the salient features of special rules in other countries. First, however, it must be indicated how the various countries stand to each other in such general matters as ventilation and lighting of workrooms, temperature, provision of meal rooms, cloak rooms, lavatories, drinking water, arrangements for sanitary accommodation, reporting and prevention of accidents.
As regards ventilation, until the Bill of 1901 to amend the Factory Acts was introduced by the Government, England stood almost alone in requiring removal of air from workrooms only so far as injurious dust, gases, and vapours arose from the manufacturing process. The laws of Germany, Austria, and Belgium recognised much earlier the need of ample ventilation in a workroom, quite apart from the special question of removal of poisonous or injurious products of manufacture, although for those too sufficient provision had been made. In Belgium, general ventilation of workrooms was one of the special conditions of authorisation of unhealthy trades under a decree of 1886, but in 1894 it was particularly laid down for all workshops that means of securing renewal of the air equal to at least 30 cubic metres per hour per worker should be provided, and that where unhealthy processes were carried on, the removal should be equal to 60 cubic metres. “The inlets for fresh air and outlets for vitiated air shall be so placed as to cause no inconvenience to workers.” On this followed the further provisions for exhaust ventilation for steam, gases, and dust. A French decree of the same year is rather less exacting in the matter of general ventilation, but more precise as to the measures necessary for removing or preventing injurious dusts, gases, and steam. In Austria and Germany, in addition to the general proviso that workrooms are to be maintained in such a condition as to secure the health of workers, both general ventilation and special provision for removing dust and fumes are required. These requirements are of much earlier date than the French and German decrees referred to. General ventilation and removal of dust from workrooms are required in Hungary by the law of 1893, and will be in Denmark by the law to come into force in 1902.
As regards lighting of workrooms, a condition of health almost as important as ventilation, several of the more important industrial countries have provisions, although England has hitherto left the matter untouched. Germany by section 128, and Austria by section 74, of their respective industrial codes recognise sufficient light as an essential condition of health in factories. In France provision is made for proper lighting of workrooms and also of passages, staircases, and other accessory parts of factories and workshops. In Belgium and Denmark lighting has hitherto been required as a measure of safety, not of health. On the other hand, the important sanitary question of temperature is more carefully provided for by the general law now in England than in the codes of other countries.
Suitable dining-rooms, which can only be required in dangerous industries under special rules in England, may by the German code be ordered wherever it seems desirable by the local authority, who may also require that they shall be heated in cold weather. In France, although it is laid down that all workrooms must be cleared, and the air entirely renewed during meal hours, the law is silent as regards provision of meal rooms; consequently, as in certain cases in England, inspectors report difficulties in enforcing the evacuation of workrooms during meal hours. It is frankly admitted in the latest annual report that the law has hitherto only been strictly applied where the nature of the manufacturing process makes the restriction essential for protection of the health of the worker: mostly in trades classed in this country as injurious. The Belgian law does not in this matter go quite so far as the French, the restriction applying only to rooms in which poisonous substances are handled. Suitable lavatories, cloakrooms, and drinking water are required in all factories and workshops in France by the decree of 1894, a requirement going far beyond those of other countries, for example Germany, where provision of lavatories and cloakrooms depend on their being required by the nature of the work, and where a detailed order must be made to that effect by the police authority for specified classes of workplaces. As in the case of meals in workrooms, it appears from the official reports that in France the provision of washing appliances is enforced only in chemical works, workplaces where poisonous substances are handled, rag-sorting shops, tobacco factories, and a few other classes of workplace, where the nature of the work makes it important that such protection should be given.
The French and the Belgian laws are as yet the only ones which attempt to define precisely a standard, independent of local conditions, for sufficient and suitable sanitary conveniences. The German code makes a general requirement as to sufficiency and suitability, having regard to number and sex of workers, and leaves details to police regulation. In Belgium the number must be one convenience at least for every twenty-five workers, in France for every fifty workers, and in neither country may there be direct communication with workrooms. It is clearly stated in inspectors’ reports that in France the conditions in sanitary respects are far from being fully enforced, although the general limit of one in fifty is not infringed. These two countries again have general provision for the very important matters of drainage of floors and frequent cleansing of workrooms, and prompt removal from them of organic matter. “The floor shall be cleansed, thoroughly, at least once a day before or after the period of employment,” in the French decree of 1893, is a provision which appears to be well enforced and is applicable to all industries. The inspectors are specially instructed to draw attention to the hygienic value of a cleansing which takes place before the entry of workers. The sanitary value of such a practice, whether in dusty, poisonous, or ordinary workshops, cannot possibly be overrated.
Glancing for a moment at general regulations to protect women and young workers, as distinct from adult workers, two points only can be touched on, protection of young workers against overstrain, and women from accidents and from too early employment after childbirth. The brevity of this article makes it impossible to compare in detail the limits of age for child labour in the different countries, but some special safeguards under the French law cannot be passed by: (a) careful detailed regulation of the weights that may be pushed, lifted, carried by girls and boys under eighteen years of age; (b) prohibition of employment of girls under sixteen at machines driven by treadles; (c) prohibition of employment of young workers in a large number of processes scheduled as unhealthy; (d) cleaning of machinery in motion is prohibited not only for young workers but also for women. The German Industrial Code especially insists on the peculiar responsibility of employers to take every possible step to protect young workers from risks of all kinds.
The limitations as regards employment of women after childbirth may be briefly summarised as follows:--
Belgium.--“Women must not be employed in industry within four weeks after childbirth” (sect. 5 of Law of 5th December 1889).
Switzerland.--“A total absence from employment in factories of women during eight weeks before and after childirth must be observed, and on their return to work proof must be tendered of an absence since birth of the child of at least six weeks” (section 15 of the Federal Law of 23rd March 1877). An order of the Federal Council, 1897, indicates a further abstinence from employment before confinement (the length of time unspecified) in certain dangerous occupations, e.g., in processes in which fumes of white phosphorus are produced; or in manipulation of lead or lead products; or where mercury or sulphuric acid are used; in dry cleaning works; in indiarubber works; any processes involving lifting or carrying heavy weights, or risk of violent shocks. As the limit of the period is undefined, and means of enforcing the prohibition unspecified, it is difficult to see how the regulation does more than outline an excellent theoretical protection.
Holland.--“Women must not be employed in factories or workshops within four weeks after childbirth” (Law of 5th May 1889).
Denmark.--“Women must not be employed within four weeks of childbirth except on production of a medical certificate showing that the mother’s employment will not be injurious to herself or the child” (Law of 1st July 1901).
Germany.--The Industrial Code contains the same absolute prohibition of employment during four weeks as the Dutch law, but extends it to six weeks if a medical certificate cannot be produced approving employment at the end of four weeks.
Austria.--The Industrial Code lays down the same prohibition as the Dutch law.
Spain, by a law of 13th March 1900, prohibits employment of women within three weeks of childbirth, but lays a further obligation on employers to allow one hour at least in the ordinary period of employment (for which there must be no deduction from wages) to nursing mothers to nurse their infants. This hour may be divided into two separate absences of half-an-hour, and may be fixed at pleasure by the mother, whose only obligation is to notify the times she chooses to the overlooker.
Turning to accidents and their prevention in factory and workshop employment, it is probable that only in Germany and Austria, through the operation of the long-established insurance laws, is there anything approaching the completeness of information with regard to occurrence and causes of accidents secured in England by the duty of reporting so precisely defined in the Factory Acts. On the other hand, through the operation of the same insurance laws, the fencing and other precautions against occurrence of accidents, necessarily tend to be far completer than in any country where this motive has only recently arisen (as in France and England). It is indeed expressly stated in the last annual report of the French inspectors, that the statistics of accidents are very far from indicating the real state of affairs, and that it cannot be known until the law of employers’ liability for accidents, of 1898, has come fully into operation. Possibly to the admittedly ineffectual control by Government in France of the causes and prevention of accidents is due the formation and steady growth of Employers’ Associations with the object of reducing industrial accidents by careful fencing and organisation of work. Details as to methods adopted in the various countries for guarding machinery and reducing risk of accidents would be too elaborate and technical for this article. So far as the various laws, distinguished from administrative regulation, are concerned, none contain so complete a series of provisions as the English Factory Acts, though Belgian and French decrees contain some excellent safeguards. In Germany, as can be readily verified by reference to any volume of Government inspectors’ reports, much of the detailed work of enforcing use of safeguards is done by the Trade Accident Associations, often acting in co-operation with the State inspectors. Not only are rules relating to safeguards--for example, the elaborate ones in aerated water works--drawn up by the Trade Associations, but they are enforceable by penalty both on employers and employed after they have been duly authorised by the Imperial Insurance Office. Employers neglecting the rules may be condemned to pay double their ordinary contribution to the Trade Association, and the fines imposed on workers are payable to the Sick Insurance Fund.
Turning now to governmental regulation of specially unhealthy or injurious occupations by more closely applied and more easily amended rules than are possible in a general code, I must revert again to the observation made above, that only in England and Germany can a clear comparison be made of “special rules”; this applies both to the method of formulating such rules, and to the number and variety of trades so regulated. Other countries have in their general factory law powers to make somewhat similar regulation, but have relied in a greater degree on control of injurious occupations by local authorities concerned with the law relating to public health, or have endeavoured, especially in France, to lay down in a single administrative decree general requirements as to exhaust ventilation for dust and fumes, washing appliances, meal-rooms, etc., which would be likely to cover the special risks in many industries. In Belgium, where special rules for safety of workers in dangerous industries (such as manufacture of lucifer matches by means of white or yellow phosphorus) have been drawn up, both in pursuance of the general law regulating factories (1889) and of the laws relating to noxious industries, under control of local authorities, there is an increasing tendency for sanitary regulation of workplaces to pass into the control of the central factory inspectors.[25] There we find in the decree of 1894, relating to general precautions in unhealthy industries, very similar provisions to those in the French decree of the same year; but the Belgian decree is declared in its preamble to be a codification of the conditions liable to be attached to certificates of authorisation by the local authorities, whereas in the French decree we clearly find the first step in an attempt to apply the general law of 1893, relating to hygiene in factories and workshops. An exceedingly interesting commentary on the incomplete and unsatisfactory effect of this latter method is found in the summary to the annual report of the French inspectors for 1899. I gave a translation of the terms of the decree in my annual report for 1894 to the Chief Inspector of Factories, and need not repeat them here. The difficulties since complained of in France are twofold--(a) judicial, as to interpretation in the courts of some of the exceedingly vague terms employed, (b) technical, owing to the inappropriateness in some of the industries of rules which are admirable in others. There is a growing demand, likely to be met after completion of current investigations in various unhealthy industries, for more detailed and precise rules, applicable to special processes or to classes or allied groups of industries. Such special rules were clearly originally intended to be the outcome of the law on hygiene, 1893, but in only one case, the manufacture of emerald or Schweinfurth green, have special rules binding both on employers and workers been applied (decree of 29th June 1895) to the peculiar risks of the processes. “Does that mean,” says the official report of 1900, “that it is only in this branch of manufacture that the need for special protection of workers against the injurious effects of the processes has appeared? No. The Government have had under consideration a certain number of draft rules for application to particular industries ... for example, industries in which lead and lead compounds, mercury, arsenic, or arsenious acid, and varnishes with an alcoholic base are used.” In the meantime the result of their considerations has been that draft rules for electric accumulator works, vulcanisation of india rubber, laundries (against danger from infectious diseases), horn and woollen factories, handling of foreign hides and skins, were referred to the Committee of Public Hygiene, for an opinion to guide the Minister of Commerce and Industry before he finally issues the decrees, embodying the rules. It appeared, however, that the statutory powers of this Committee do not go beyond the framing of recommendations applicable to industries in general, and the Minister of Commerce and Industry appointed, therefore, in December 1900 a special Dangerous Trades Committee, composed of nine members, under the Presidency of M. le Docteur Napias, Member of the Académie de Médecine. The aim in selecting the members of the Committee was to secure the technical and scientific knowledge necessary for preparation of special rules suitable to particular classes of industry, processes, or modes of working. In addition to expert members such as M. Bouquet, M. Fontaine, and Professors of Chemistry, Economics, and Representatives of Employers and Employed, four other members may be appointed for the special technical considerations belonging to each trade or class of work to be regulated.
As regards poisonous processes, in all but the deadliest, where the frequency and severity of illness (as, e.g., amongst white lead workers) long ago led to inquiry followed by special local precautions, inquiry must be greatly handicapped in France, as it has been in Germany, by the lack of complete statistics of industrial poisoning such as have been secured in England. In no other country has the step been taken of laying both on the occupier of a factory or workshop and on every medical practitioner the duty of reporting to a chief inspector of factories, or the central authority, individual cases of industrial poisoning. The lack of information would possibly have been earlier felt in all its seriousness in both France and Germany had there been the centralised responsibility that followed the appointment of a single chief inspector in England. Although in France the attention of the Minister of Commerce and Industry has been repeatedly drawn to the effects of lead poisoning in potteries, and special precautions are recognised as necessary, it is difficult, as Dr Oliver pointed out in his report of 1899 to the Home Secretary, “to estimate the amount of lead poisoning that occurs in the potteries in France,” owing to the incompleteness of statistics. In Germany, where considerable information can be obtained in some districts, through the records kept under the Sickness Insurance Laws, the incompleteness and uncertain character of the information supplied is the subject of frequent report by the factory inspectors. In the Potsdam district, where there are innumerable glazed-tile stove factories, great service was done by the action of a sick fund doctor, who reported that in the dipping department nearly every worker suffered, more or less, from lead poisoning. Energetic precautionary measures were taken by the local authority, and great improvement in health of workers was soon reported by the doctor. In other districts, on the other hand, comments are frequent from the inspectors on the lack of effective assistance from sick funds and their doctors in tracing the origin of industrial diseases.
In spite of this defectiveness in statistics of industrial disease, it is with the German Imperial Regulations (Orders of the Federal Council made in pursuance of section 120 of the Industrial Code) that the English method of regulating dangerous trades can be best compared.[26] Some years before it was possible in England under section 8 of the Factory Act of 1891 to schedule as dangerous or injurious any process, machinery, or particular description of manual labour in a factory or workshop, the Federal Council of the German Empire, or the central authority in any one of the Federal States, was empowered to draw up special rules to guard against risks of injury to life, health or limbs of workers, and to limit hours of adults as well as of minors. Such rules, bearing date 1888 and 1889, are still in force. This power was strengthened by an amendment in 1891 to the Industrial Code, applying to protected persons, which empowered the Federal Council to forbid entirely the employment of women or young workers, or to make it dependent on very stringent conditions in occupations dangerous to health or morality. At no time has there been under the German Code a power reserved to employers, similar to that in force in the English law until 1901, of compelling such objections as they can sustain to proposed rules to be settled by arbitration. It has been repeatedly remarked by competent observers that special hygiene in German factories, particularly chemical factories, has far surpassed the standards obtaining until recently in England. This is not surprising when the greater facilities in Germany for giving effect by administrative measures to expert recommendations are remembered; but the readiness of workers to submit to regulations, to which I have referred already, is certainly a factor of importance. It is remarkable that, in spite of the difference, more or less stringent special rules have been established in twenty-four classes of unhealthy industries in England, as compared with fifteen similar sets of rules in Germany; it must be observed that in some of the latter more than one class of works is included, as, for example, in the special rules of January 1899, which cover both horsehair spinneries and brushmaking works.
It is of interest to compare as follows the classes of industries included, and the date of the regulations:--
SPECIAL RULES FOR INJURIOUS OCCUPATIONS.
ENGLAND.
Date of Industry or Process. Schedule.
1 Bichromate works, 1892
2 Bottling of aerated water, 1896
3 Brass and alloy mixing and casting, 1896
4 Bricks, glazing of, by lead, 1898
5 Chemical works, 1892
6 Earthenware and china, 1892 & 1898
7 Enamelling of iron plates, 1892
8 Electric accumulator works, 1894
9 Explosive works in which dinitrobenzole is used, 1892
10 Flax spinning and weaving, 1894
11 Lead (red and orange) works, 1894
12 Lead (white) works, 1883 & 1893
13 Lead (yellow) works, 1892
14 Lead smelting works, 1894
15 Lead, yellow chromate of, 1895
16 Lucifer match factories, 1892
17 Paint and colour works, and extraction of arsenic, 1892
18 Skins and hides, sorting, 1898
19 Tinning and enamelling of iron hollow ware, 1894
20 Tinning and enamelling of metal ware, 1894
21 Transfers (lithographic) for decoration of china, etc., 1898
22 Vulcanising of indiarubber, 1896
23 Wool sorting, 1896
24 Wool combing, 1899
GERMANY.
Date of Industry or Process. Regulation.
1 Basic slag works, 1899
2 Bichromate works, 1897
3 Brick works, 1892
4 Brushmaking works and horsehair spinning, 1899
5 Cigar factories, 1893
6 Chicory works, 1892
7 Electric accumulator works, 1898
8 Glassworks, 1892
9 Hackling and preparing rooms in textile factories, 1893
10 Lead, colour and acetate of lead works, 1893
11 Letterpress printing works, 1897
12 Lucifer match works, 1884 & 1893
13 Sugar refineries, 1892
14 Vulcanising of indiarubber, 1888
15 Wire-drawing mills, 1892
It must not, however, be forgotten that some dangers for which no apparent provision is made in the list of German rules are to some extent covered by other means--for example, mercurial poisoning among thermometer makers by rules of the Accident Insurance Associations, or earthenware works by regulations of local authorities or by action of separate State authorities.
On first comparison of the two sets of special rules in detail, it would appear that whereas white lead works, earthenware works, and indiarubber works, are far more stringently regulated in England than in Germany, other industries, for example, electric accumulator works, letterpress printing works, are subject to closer control than any here. In the German rules for electric accumulator works we find prohibition of employment of women and girls, limitation of hours for men, detailed conditions as to construction and cleansing of premises and floors, in addition to the more common regulations for baths, lavatories, medical examination, sick registers; whereas in the English rules there are only provisions for baths, lavatories, respirators, and gloves, no restrictions on employment beyond the ordinary factory limits, and no medical examination. It must be noted that the enforcement of these rules does not rest solely in the hands of the Government inspector, and that before action is possible, the matter must be referred to the local police authority, whose powers in Germany, however, are considerable. The special rules for letterpress printing works are so interesting and typical that I append a translation herewith for comparison with similar English regulations. It seems clear that some of the rules are directed as much against propagation of tubercular disease as against risks of lead poisoning.
In closing this brief survey, reference must not be omitted to the experiment that has been made in three European countries--Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium--of limiting in a single instance (in the interests of the health of workers) the use of a poisonous material in industry. I refer to the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of lucifer matches. In Switzerland and Holland the use of the material in this industry has been prohibited; in Belgium its use has been limited to a maximum of 8 per cent. in the paste.
ADELAIDE M. ANDERSON.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
Order of the Federal Council of July 31, 1897, regulating Letterpress Printing Works and Type Foundries in pursuance of section 120_e_ of the Industrial Code.
I. In rooms in which persons are employed in setting up type or manufacture of type or stereotype plates the following provisions apply:
1. The floor of workrooms must not be sunk deeper than half a metre (1.64 feet) below the ground. Exceptions may only be granted by the higher administrative authority where hygienic conditions are secured by a dry area and ample means of lighting and ventilating the rooms.
Attics may only be used as workrooms, if the roof is underdone with lath and plaster.
2. In workrooms in which the manufacture of type or stereotype plates is carried on the number of persons must not exceed such as would allow at least 15 cubic metres of air space (529.31 cubic feet) to each. In the rooms in which persons are employed only in other processes there must be at least 12 cubic metres of air space (423.450 cubic feet) to each person.
In cases of exceptional temporary pressure the higher administrative authority may, on the application of the employer, permit a larger number in the workrooms for at the most 30 days in the year, but not more than will allow 10 cubic metres of air space (352.87 cubic feet) for each person.
3. The rooms must be at least 2.90 metres (8.528 feet) in height where a minimum 15 cubic metres are allowed for each person, in other cases at least 3 metres (9.84 feet in height).
The rooms must be provided with windows which are sufficient in number and size to let in ample light for every part of the work. The windows must be so constructed that they will open and admit of complete renewal of air in workrooms.
Workrooms with sloping roof must have an average height equal to the measurements given in the first paragraph of this section.
4. The rooms must be laid with a close fitting impervious floor which can be cleared of dust by moist methods. Wooden floors must be smoothly planed, and boards fitted to prevent penetration of moisture.
All walls and ceilings must, if they are not of a smooth washable surface or painted in oil, be limewashed once at least a year. If the walls and ceilings are of a smooth washable surface or painted in oil, they must be washed at least once a year, and the oil paint must, if varnished, be removed once in ten years, and if not varnished, once in five years.
The compositors’ shelves and stands for type boxes must be either closely ranged round the room on the floor so that no dust can collect underneath, or be fitted with long legs so that the floor can be easily cleaned of dust underneath.
5. The workrooms must be cleared and thoroughly aired once at least a day, and during the working hours means must be taken to secure constant ventilation.
6. The melting vessel for type or stereotype metal must be covered with a hood provided with exhaust ventilator or chimney with sufficient draught to draw the fumes to the outer air.
Typefounding and melting may only be carried on in rooms separate from other processes.
7. The rooms and fittings, particularly the walls, cornices, and stands for type, must be thoroughly cleansed twice a year at least. The floors must be washed or rubbed over with a damp cloth so as to remove dust, once a day at least.
8. The type boxes must be cleansed before they are put in use, and again as often as necessary, but not less than twice at least in the year.
The boxes may only be dusted out with a bellows in the open air, and this work may not be done by young persons.
9. In every workroom spittoons filled with water, and one at least for every five persons, must be provided. Workers are forbidden to spit upon the floor.
10. Sufficient washing appliances with soap, and at least one towel a week for each worker, must be provided as near as possible to the work for compositors, cutters, and polishers.
One wash-hand basin must be provided for every five workers, with an ample supply of water laid on.
The employer must make strict provision for the use of the washing appliances by workers before every meal, and before leaving the works.
11. Clothes put off during working hours must either be kept outside the workroom, or hung up in cupboards, with closely fitting doors or curtains, which are so shut or drawn as to prevent penetration of dust.
12. Artificial means of lighting which tend to raise the temperature of the rooms must be so arranged or provided with counteracting measures, that the heat of the workrooms shall not be unduly raised.
13. The employer must draw up rules binding on the workers, which will ensure the full observance of the provisions in sections 8, 9, 10, and 11.
* * * * *
II. A notice must be affixed, and a copy sent to the Local Police Authority, showing: (a) the length, height, and breadth of the rooms; (b) the air space in cubic measure; (c) the number of workers permitted in each room.
A copy of rules 1 to 13 must be affixed where it can be easily read by all persons affected.
* * * * *
III. Provides for the method of permitting the exceptions named above in sections 2 and 3, and makes it a condition of reduction in cubic air space for each person employed as typefounder or compositor, that there shall be adequate mechanical ventilation for regulating temperature and carrying off products of combustion from workrooms.
IV. PRINCIPLES OF PROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION FOR DANGEROUS TRADES
“Quot manus atteruntur ut unus niteat articulus.”--PLINY. Natural History, Book II., chap. lxiii.
He who attempts to deal with the future of industrial legislation is confronted at the outset by two obstacles. The one is inherent in most endeavours which relate to prospective law-making. The barque which sets forth into the sea of futurity should, if its voyage is to terminate in the safe anchorage of a fair haven, steer clear of those currents which only too easily carry it upon the shoals and quicksands of controversial politics. Once launched, it is scarcely possible to avoid stranding upon the sterile shore of party. And even a successful cruise must bring it perilously near the Scylla and Charybdis of government and opposition. The effort of this chapter will be to steer as even a course as possible between these opposing forces.
The second difficulty is more of a particular than general nature: particular to the subject under consideration. A study of what has gone before, especially of the historical chapter preceding this, must force the conclusion that what has up to now been achieved seems to have been more the result of accident, or of some extraneous agitating forces, than of any carefully considered or preconceived plan. How piecemeal the work has been, and how intricate a fabric! Upon what lines can so patchy a structure be developed? Upon what principle applicable to the whole code can our industrial legislation, already a congeries of partially connected details, proceed?
Students of the British Constitution will be tempted to draw an analogy from their favourite example; and indeed there is much at first sight in common between the histories of the Factory Acts and the British Constitution. The structure of each is compounded of small accretions, contributed by what seemed the necessity of the moment. But in the one case, in spite of the seemingly haphazard nature of the work, judged by the manner in which it has been performed, the British Constitution is firmly established upon a solid foundation, the independent blocks have fitted well into their time-assigned places, and have become welded together into a sound, cohesive whole in the process Mr Walter Bagehot has admirably called “the cake of custom.” How far has this been the case with the Factory Acts? Certain warring elements have gradually become adjusted; incongruous items have in certain cases been made to harmonise. The best example of this is to be found in the Consolidating Act of 1878, by which many inconsistencies were corrected. But even this admirable piece of work left the door open to the recreation of the incongruities and anomalies. In many cases the loopholes have been but too freely utilised, and exemptions and exceptions have been widely extended. These have largely tended to weaken the law and to create confusion.
This want of homogeneity in the base work suggests problems of procedure difficult of solution. In view of the danger that any weighty superstructure would threaten foundations thus composed, it might be urged that our first care should be to remodel the foundations that the base may be secure. Such a course would involve the inevitable risk of disturbing what is already firmly rooted, and the true answer is that only a few reforms in the foundation work are required. These reforms, successfully executed, would produce a basis upon which the most elaborate fabric might rest secure.
A glance at the general nature of the work, which has been ably described, reveals the fundamental doctrine that protection is necessary, protection of the wage earner against cruelty or harsh treatment, against fraud, against accident, against poisoning, even against himself. There is a small and rapidly diminishing school of thinkers, who hold that any protective law is wrong unless it be applied equally to men and women. But as men and women are not equally subject to the same risks and dangers, it is idle to argue that they can be treated in the same way. Those who are sceptical of the value of protective law would do well to remember that it was during the heyday of the Manchester School, when freedom of action, and of trade, and non-interference generally were at the zenith of their popularity, that some of the earliest Factory Acts were passed into law. If the necessity for the regulation of the labour of women and children was recognised at a time when such restrictions were eminently repugnant to the public mind, that necessity must have been great indeed. Is it suggested by the opponents of protective measures, that although such a necessity did exist in the past it has been dealt with and no longer exists? The facts go to show that the need continues, and even increases, with the volume of trade.
Statistics make it abundantly clear that there is much sickness and mortality engendered by industrial occupations, and that a large proportion of this is preventable. The method of prevention is the subject which has to be considered, and before doing so, it is desirable for a moment to refer to the historical chapter preceding this. There it is shown that there is a multitude of injunctions laid upon manufacturers in the form of rules known as “special rules.” The imposition of these rules is limited to such trades as are certified by the Secretary of State to be dangerous or injurious. The rules are all imposed with one end in view, the safety of the worker, and though they deal with an infinity of matters, the cleanliness of the operative is one of the objects most commonly designed. To effect this many forms of words have been drafted and are at present in use. In these varying forms the duty of providing and maintaining the means for cleanliness is laid upon the manufacturer, and the duty of availing himself of those means is laid upon the operative. Not only does this injunction vary in form in different trades, but different codes embracing different standards are found in separate factories in the same trade. It will be asked how did this come about? How could a sane legislature or an administration outside Bedlam permit one law for the good employer and another for the less sensitive in conscience, though more sensitive in pocket? How could such a system creep into any code of law? As a matter of fact, it is the creation of that hysterical fear of compulsion, that nervous concern for the liberty of the subject, which has carried its mischievous influence into many spheres of activity. The plea that the employers’ grievances should be heard has gradually developed into an argument that each employer should be allowed to object, and objecting, he has eventually, by a process called “arbitration,” been enabled to procure a law to his own liking.
It is scarcely necessary to demonstrate the great inconvenience and injustice which arise from such a system. Two men carry on the same trade; two standards of efficiency are demanded by the law. One manufacturer is required to set up and keep in good repair an apparatus, which is as nearly perfect as human ingenuity can devise. The other, perhaps sceptical of the advantages of such an apparatus, or more often for the sole reason that he objects to the cost and trouble of erecting it, is permitted to provide something less efficient. This system, happily described as “the creation of industrial Alsatians,” is open to five obvious objections: (1) As between the two employers it is a substantial injustice; (2) it is not less unjust to the operative, compelled in his need to accept worse conditions than his comrade; (3) it puts a premium upon resistance, in that the objecting employer is rewarded; (4) it imperils the dignity of the law; and lastly, (5) it embarrasses those who administer it.
The situation then demands redress. How can this best be effected? Two reforms, one already indicated, suggest themselves as most ripe for decision. The first is the consolidation of the special rules and the direct enactment of such of them as are common to all or many of the dangerous trades. Of this class consideration has already been given to washing appliances. Such other matters as the provision of a dining-room, the prohibition of taking meals in dusty workplaces, the provision and maintenance of mechanical apparatus for withdrawing fumes, gases, or dust, the prohibition of certain classes of persons from working in certain places and processes, might each and all be embodied in the general Acts with specific reference to particular industries. And indeed they do find a place in the general Acts, but owing sometimes to capriciousness of reference and sometimes to vagueness in form, their inclusion has failed to effect that simplicity and uniformity in the law which is so much to be desired. By such a consolidation the multiplication of codes of special rules would be avoided, and even in some cases their elimination would be secured. But not only so: an immense gain would result from the uniformity which could be achieved. If the sporadic and capricious incidence of these obligations could be abolished, the gain would be indeed enormous.
Not less simple is the reform which is called for in the employer’s power of objection and the system of arbitration. The working of the existing system has long been condemned. Nobody in the House of Commons is found to defend it; and yet, like other friendless doctrines, such as that of “common employment” in the law of Employers’ Liability, it has lived into the twentieth century. Last year an attempt was made to alter the law. Although this attempt would have been a step in advance of the present situation, it was so slight a step that it was not greeted with enthusiasm by those for whose benefit it was intended. The proposal was to substitute a system of reference for that of arbitration. Some advantages were claimed for this proposal in that uniformity would be secured. But the uniformity would have been at the expense of a thorough and stringent code of rules, which might have been acceptable to some of the employers. The referee’s court would have inevitably toned the rules down to suit the objectors. Evil as is the existing system, no alteration would be a gain which, while it purchased uniformity at such a cost and amended the procedure to so trifling an extent, postponed a radical and effective change to the Greek Kalends.
Full inquiry into the alleged dangers of a trade and full hearing of the manufacturers’ case are carefully designed by the present system. This design might well be satisfied, these effects be yet retained, and without revolutionary change additional advantages be secured; the advantages of a decision of the Secretary of State, unjeopardised either by arbitration or by reference, given after consultation not only with employers but with workpeople, and subject only to the control of Parliament. Legal provision should be made for full inquiry (such as it is now the practice to make by departmental committees) into the special conditions of the trade alleged to be dangerous; if, on the conclusion of the inquiry, regulation by Special Rules be recommended, and the Secretary of State certify the trade to be dangerous, he should issue to the manufacturers, and by public notice in the factories or workshops to the workpeople, a copy of the rules he proposes to make. The manufacturers and workpeople should be entitled to make objection in writing to the rules, or any of them, within one month of the receipt of such notice. Then the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Chief Inspector of Factories and the recommenders of the rules, should consider any objections so made, and the rules as drawn up after such consideration should be laid on the Table of both Houses for forty days, and have the force of law if during that period no objection to them be raised. It might often be desirable that the rules should be considered individually by Parliament, and provision for such consideration should be made. Under this scheme the clumsiness and delay now inevitable would be averted, and with proper safeguards for his interest being retained the manufacturers’ power of rejection would be transferred to Parliament.
Other reforms in the regulation of dangerous trades demand mention. It is true of most poisonous substances in use in dangerous trades that adults whose constitution is fairly established can resist their danger more easily than can young persons. This is especially true of lead, whose insidious character has often been dwelt upon by scientists and statesmen; the inevitableness of its action is now recognised, and wherever risk of poisoning by this agency is established, there are to be found regulations and restrictions of a more or less effective nature. But it is also true of other substances, the absorption of which is injurious, and in all cases where much dust is generated, as in the manufacture of flax or hemp, or in trades where steam is given off in considerable volume, the labour of persons of immature years should be prohibited. This would be one reform.
Again, there are other trades in which the degree of danger is peculiarly influenced by the continuity of the exposure to it. Such, for example, is the use of inflammable paints, where continuous employment during the normal period of five hours inflicts injury appreciably in excess of that caused by exposure of the same duration but broken in its continuity. Shortened spells of work were recommended by the Dangerous Trades Committee in the indiarubber trade, where carbon bisulphide is used, and in the painting of ships with inflammable paints. The special rules applying to indiarubber works embodied this recommendation, and there should be no great difficulty in extending the principle to other trades where it is obvious that the danger of employment is increased by long periods of exposure to these deleterious influences. Such trades as bronzing in lithographic works, in wallpaper, and in paper-staining works would greatly benefit by such a provision.
Another reform was recommended by the Dangerous Trades Committee, which made its final report in 1899. All officials who have had occasion and opportunity to investigate the subject are convinced that many deaths occur which are primarily due to some industrial occupation, but are never so classified or reported. Diseases of occupation are so numerous and varied in character, and liable to disclose themselves in such diverse symptoms, that the initial cause of illness is often lost sight of, or still oftener never discovered. It consequently arises that the statistics of illness and death from industrial causes are most imperfect. Any improvement in the manner of obtaining such statistics and eventually of striking at the causa causans would be valuable. All cases of death where the person has worked in a certified dangerous trade, or in a trade to which any of the consolidated special rules are applicable, within a prescribed period before death, should be reported to the coroner, who would, if he thought fit, conduct an inquiry into the circumstances of the case.
No chapter dealing with the future government of dangerous trades would be complete without an appeal for drastic and thorough measures. Loose wording in the rules, or, still worse, small omissions, may involve mischief out of all proportion to their apparent significance or to the value of the compromise effected. Numerous instances of the injury caused by the admission of small concessions to protesting manufacturers could be given. Possibly none is more striking than that of the bottling of aerated waters. Conducted under proper conditions there is no reason why the operatives should be subject to any but unimportant and minor casualties, but conducted as it often is, grave accidents occur with a persistent and alarming regularity. Many cases of persons losing their eyesight, and even cases of death, from injuries received by the bursting of bottles could be quoted. The rules as originally outlined by the Dangerous Trades Committee contained provisions for the protection of all persons engaged in the labelling of bottles, but in the rules as finally issued to and accepted by the manufacturers, persons engaged in labelling bottles standing in cases were exempted from the safeguards. From this simple omission, many accidents and much suffering have resulted. One is tempted to ask how, in the first place, this apparently small precaution was omitted, and when its importance was discovered, why the defect was not remedied. The answer to the first question is probably that the manufacturers demurred as to its necessity, upon which for the sake of peace and economy of time and temper their view was adopted. This is but a surmise. The explanation of the subsequent inaction requires no surmise. After the danger had been established, Sir Matthew White Ridley, in answer to a question upon the occurrence of one of these accidents, said in the House of Commons:--“I have not the power at pleasure to make or alter special rules. They must be settled either by arrangement with the employers or by arbitration, and in the present case I cannot regard the occurrence of a single accident, much as I regret it, as sufficient reason for re-opening a question which has just been settled, after long and difficult negotiations.” From this answer the importance of thoroughness in translating the recommendations of committees into special rules becomes obvious.
Nor is it sufficient to hope that by persuasion or agreement with employers rules suggested by the Factory Department or the Secretary of State will be effectually carried out. In some cases they may be, in others they will not. The same unfortunate results proceed from such a course as are to be traced to the existing system of arbitration. It has been shown how that system is unjust both to employers and workpeople, how it encourages the careless and irresponsible employer, how it derogates from the dignity of the law and embarrasses its administrators. This is true of persuasion.
As in human nature there is every gradation of sensitiveness of conscience, so must there be in the factory, if reliance be placed on the forces of moral suasion alone, a corresponding gradation of conditions from excellence and thoroughness to indifference and neglect. Uniformity in these matters is an urgent necessity; and uniformity is incompatible with the substitution of persuasion for compulsory powers.
Let thoroughness, then, be the watchword of those whose prerogative it is to frame these protective measures. Let the loopholes for escape from the provisions of the rules be closed up; let the channels for contracting out of just obligations be carefully dammed; and do not let small pretexts of irksomeness, or the employer’s scepticism, or the manager’s contempt, or the workpeople’s want of care, weigh in the balance for a moment against the health, the well-being, and the lives of masses of working men and women.
For a strong Government and a humane House of Commons, the few reforms indicated would be but a light undertaking. They would put no undue strain upon the executive or the legislature; and they would, directly and indirectly, prevent a large amount of suffering, now patiently borne by a lowly and an inarticulate portion of the community. If simplicity, uniformity, and thoroughness be established in the government of the trades which carry grave risk to those engaged in them, the national conscience will be relieved of an oppressive burden, sometimes perhaps but dimly realised, but always real, and assuredly its removal will enhance the security and confidence with which this generation entrusts to its heirs the great destinies of our race.
NOTE.--The year 1901 has witnessed the efforts of the Government and the House of Commons to amend and consolidate the law relating to Factories and Workshops. In this effort, so far as dangerous trades are concerned, certain changes have been effected. There is a prohibition of eating meals in factories and workshops where lead, arsenic, or other poisonous substance is so used as to cause dust or fumes. Power, too, is granted to the Secretary of State to prohibit, limit, or control the use of any material or process; but although he had not this power before, he could practically exercise it under section 28 of the Act of 1895. Electrical generating works, and those railways which connect factories with each other and the main lines, are now brought within the law for certain purposes; and dangerous trades conducted in domestic factories or workshops can now be regulated.
But the most important alteration is that which transfers the responsibility for the special rules from an arbitrator or umpire to the Secretary of State. Under the new law the Secretary of State may frame regulations, and if they are not accepted, modified, or withdrawn, he must (unless the objection to them is withdrawn, or is, in his opinion, frivolous) order a public inquiry to be held by “a competent person.” The Chief Inspector, and any person affected by the draft rules, may appear at the inquiry either in person or by counsel, solicitor, or agent. This inquiry will take the place of the present arbitration, and the person holding the inquiry has, unlike the arbitrator or umpire, no power of adjudication. He will report to the Secretary of State, who is not bound to adopt his recommendations. The responsibility for the rules will rest with the Secretary of State, subject only to the control of Parliament (the rules will lie on the table for forty days), and in this lies the main advance effected. This advance may, however, prove more theoretical than practical, for it is unlikely that the Secretary of State will reject the advice of the person whom he has specially selected to advise him. The Government insisted on retaining the competent person, in spite of the contention of the reformers that reliance should be placed in the Committee of Inquiry, in whose minds all the circumstances and evidence taken would still be fresh, and in the Secretary of State’s permanent official advisers.
After full credit has been given for the transference of the final responsibility, the question arises: Are the two main defects of the present system remedied? Can uniformity be said to have been achieved, when we find that the new regulations “may provide for the exemption of any specified class of factories or workshops either absolutely or subject to conditions”? And is it satisfactory that we should have still with us, in the form of the “competent person,” in one of the most important advisory positions in the State, “the man in the street,” “the irresponsible outsider” so properly described by Mr Ritchie in his introductory speech on 28th March 1901?
H. J. TENNANT.