Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/410

 THE COURTS AND FACTORY LEGISLATION.

WITHIN the past fifteen or twenty years statutes have been enacted in nearly all the great manufacturing states of this country which under various names, such as factory acts, mine laws, labor laws, railroad laws, building laws, and the like, have for their common object an increase in the safety of working people engaged in dangerous occupations by obviating dangers not necessarily inherent in the trades themselves.

These statutes take various forms ; frequently in forbidding the employment of certain classes of workers (as women and children of tender years) in highly dangerous occupations; in directing the manner in which certain work shall be performed, by prescribing the particular precautions for the safety of employes which shall be taken by employers, and by providing for certain safety appliances upon machinery or rolling-stock which shall render the chances of personal injury to employes less imminent. The propriety, and even necessity, of what is called factory legislation, in its general principles, is rarely dis- puted now. The danger of employment in manufacturing estab- lishments increases yearly with the perfection by modern inventive genius of complex, rapidly moving, and dangerous machinery. The number of death cases and cases of serious injury in manufacturing establishments increases yearly in pro- portion. In New York the report of the factory inspector for 1899 shows that in this state alone the number of workmen killed per annum in industrial establishments was more than twice as large as that of the soldiers killed in the Spanish war ; and shows further that, leaving out of consideration the death cases (involving the destruction of some seven hundred lives), the casualties involving crippling, maiming, and wounding would show "probably not fewer than forty thousand injuries all told." Under such circumstances appropriate legislation to reduce the number of casualties by making safer the conditions of employ- ment is amply justified, and statutes having such humanitarian

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