Page:The Factory Controversy - Martineau (1855).djvu/37

 track,—every deaf old man who chooses the railway for his walk,—every fidgetty traveller who steps out while the train is in motion, in the face of extra-large print, on the station walls, which forbids him to do so,—to be regarded as the victims of the railway proprietors? The universal practice, in the preparation of the annual railway statistics, is to class under separate headings those who have suffered through and without fault of their own. Mr. Horner makes no such distinctions, and thus points out the innocent and injured employers to the indignation and jealousy of their operatives on precisely the same terms as the most culpable. Taking the law and principle of the case into his own hands, without misgiving or modesty, Mr. Horner (for here the other Inspectors retreat from his side while the legal decision is pending) pillories, as culprits, some of the first citizens in the kingdom, side by side with such hard-hearted, sordid, law-hating men as Mr. Dickens chooses for his heroes or his butts; and as "Household Words" supposes to be fair specimens of the mill-occupiers of Great Britain. Messrs. Worthington, under this method of official partiality, are brought into court, though no accident has ever happened from their long-established machinery; and Messrs. Wild are treated, as we shall see, on account of the death of a man, who, knowingly and disobediently, put himself in the way of destruction—to the great pain, annoyance, and loss of his employer, at best, even if Mr. Horner had not instigated Lord Palmerston and his successor in office to a course of illegal and unconstitutional proceedings against Messrs. Wild.

James Ashworth was killed, in the way described, on the 23rd of December, 1854. He had a father and mother, a wife, and two children. On the 24th, the Factory Inspector, Mr. Patrick, called on the widow, and told her that she might bring an action against her husband's employers, under the Factory Act. By his advice, she went to the office of the Inspectors' Solicitor at Manchester, and there took out letters of administration to her husband's