Page:The Factory Controversy - Martineau (1855).djvu/20

 consequence here. Whether it is true or not, that there are fewer accidents from the shafting of mills than from any other industrial apparatus of any magnitude, it is our business to see how accidents can he best guarded against,—in other words, what is the true relation between the millowner and the government on the one hand, and his workpeople on the other. Whether the deaths be 12 or 12,000 in a year, the question is—what ought to be done? There is the Common Law, which operates for the protection of all; and there are the Factory Acts, which are intended for the special protection of factory operatives. The question is, how these special Acts stand in relation to the protection of life and constitutional liberty; what they contain, and how they are administered.

In reply to the Inspectors' Report of April, 1853, Lord Palmerston called the attention of the inspectors to the accidents "from machinery" which had occurred, to the number of 2,119, in the preceding half-year. In the Report by which they replied to the then Home Secretary, the Inspectors pass over altogether without notice, 2,098 of these accidents, and report only on 128, which had occurred from shafting in the course of three years (six times the period in question). Lord Palmerston seems to have been satisfied with their notice of one in a hundred of the cases he commended to their examination, and he certainly asked no questions about the two thousand and odd, and "how to prevent their recurrence." If he had known that the bulk of the larger number were mere finger cuts, rubs, and bruises, the omission might be less remarkable; but it is clear, from the next proceeding, that he had no idea of the sort.

At the suggestion of the Factory Inspectors, Lord Palmerston resolved that the Factory Acts should be enforced in those provisions which had hitherto been left unused; and happy was this determination, in another sense than that which was intended. The immediate effect of this resolution was to convulse the manufacturing interests of the kingdom; but the necessary