CHAPTER XVII

THE DEATH ROLL OF INDUSTRY

The Perils of Peace. Accidents Increase with Industry. The Killing, Maiming, and Poisoning of Workingmen. Accidents Inevitable and Preventable. Trade Unions and the Health and Safety of the Workingman. Public Opinion Favors Factory Legislation. Factory Legislation in England and the United States. The Ounce of Prevention and the Pound of Cure. Liability of Employers for Accidents. The Doctrine of Common Employment. Its Injustice. Employers' Liability Laws. Cheaper to Kill than to Save. The Killing of Workingmen not a Matter of Private Agreement. An Argument for Trade Unionism.

THE

HE bread of the laborer is eaten in the peril of his life. Whether he work on the sea, on the earth, or in the mines underneath the earth, the laborer constantly faces imminent death. His peril increases with the progress of the age. With each new invention the number of killed and injured rises; each increase in the number and size of our great engines, each new speeding up of the great mechanisms of industrial life brings with it fresh human sacrifices.

The victories of peace have their price in dead and maimed as well as the victories of war. As the intensity of life increases, as the hold of the weaker becomes feebler, as the struggle for existence grows ever sharper, so the peril to the life and limb of the worker is enhanced with every mechanical advance. The stage coach was more dangerous to the individual passenger than is the railroad; but where the stage coach slew its thousands, the railroad has slain its tens of thousands. Each year the locomotive increases the number of its victims, each year the factories maim more and kill more, each year lengthens the tale of miners who go down into the mines and do not come up again.

The death roll of industry is longer than is evident from official figures. Many are killed without violence. Thousands of men, women and children

lose their lives in factories and mills without the inquest of a coroner.

The

slow death which comes from working in a vitiated atmosphere, from inhaling constantly the fine, sharp dust of metals, from laboring unceasingly in constrained and unnatural postures, from constant contact of the hands or lips with poisonous substances, lastly, the death that comes from prolonged exposure to inclement weather, from overexertion and undernutrition, from lack of sleep, from lack of recuperation, swells beyond computation the unnumbered victims of a restless progress.

However sure the precautions, however perfect the arrangements, it is inconceivable that the gigantic industrial movements of the American people could be conducted without some fatalities. No movement of an army, no great parade, no celebration, hardly a picnic, without attendant danger of life lost or mangled limb. The industrial structure is a huge machine, hard-running, and with many unguarded parts. It would not be possible to conduct our railroads without a single accident, and many of the fatalities in industry, as many deaths in general, are simply and solely the result of “an act of God," inseparable from the ordinary course of existence.

While, thus, some fatalities of our industrial life are inevitable, while many are maimed, many sickened, many poisoned because of conditions beyond the reasonable power or control of employers or of the state, yet there is no doubt that a vast amount of entirely unnecessary and easily avoidable injury is inflicted upon workingmen. The evil is at present greater in volume and extent, although less in intensity, than in the early days of the factory system. When steam began its triumphant march through the industries of the world and production on a large scale drove the small workshops into backward villages, the fate of the wage earner was put in the hands of men concerned singly with the ideal of money getting. The struggle of competition drove each employer to speed up his machines, to drive his workmen, to do all in his power to increase output and reduce expenses. Machinery left unfenced was frequently tended by small children, whom it seized and mangled like some huge, malicious monster. The sanitary con

ditions of the factories and workshops of the day were indescribably bad, and women and children as well as men were exposed to all the maladies which excessive work with noxious materials under unspeakably unsanitary conditions would produce.

The task of converting the factories of civilized nations from noisy, whirling dungeons into the better, cleaner, and more sanitary workshops of to-day fell to the lot of organized labor. For a time, it is true, the impetus to reform came largely from other classes in society, but as soon as trade unions became strong enough to take up the task, they prosecuted it with vigor and in many industries carried it to a successful issue. Both in England and in the various states of this country, the unions have had more success in obtaining from the government legislation regulating sanitary conditions than in any attempt to reduce by law the hours of work. The law has not permitted the fixing of a standard of wages either in the United States or in England, and with the exception of a few trades and barring one or two recent decisions, no legislation regulating the hours of labor of adult male workers has been held constitutional. From the first, however, public sympathy has been with the workingmen in their attempt to make their working places less dangerous to life, limb, and health. It was clearly seen that the individual, unorganized workingman could not in his wage contract or otherwise, regulate the condition in which the factory of his employer was to be kept, and that in order to secure reforms of this sort, recourse must necessarily be had to legislation or to the direct negotiation of a trade union. The public also perceived that for the preservation of its own health and strength, improvement in the sanitary conditions of work was indispensable. It was feared that by permitting the working places of the people to become pests, the door would be open to infectious diseases of all kinds, resulting in ultimate injury to all classes of society.

Even in England no general attempt was made on the part of trade unions much before 1840 to better the sanitary conditions of workshops, and it was not until about thirty years ago that this became universally a

part of the settled policy of trade unions. The argument occasionally raised against insurance, that it is impious, seemed also to apply to attempts to regulate the conditions of work, since the sickness of workmen or their death from accident was attributed to the "act of God," rather than to unsanitary or dangerous conditions. The political economists, who at this time were all arrayed upon the side of the capitalists, stated that the more dangerous and unsanitary the conditions of work, the higher the remuneration, and, therefore, any attempt to improve the sanitary conditions of work would attract new workmen and would consequently lower wages.

Notwithstanding all arguments to the contrary, the desire for reform grew rapidly, as the effect of unsanitary work became more clear. It was soon seen that many of the accidents and much of the disease incidental to various occupations were avoidable, and it also became recognized by the workingmen that the effect of dangerous and unsanitary labor was not to increase wages, but merely to degrade the workers compelled to perform tasks of that nature. The effect of improving the sanitary conditions of work has not been, as was anticipated, a decrease in the wages of the men performing the safer work, but has been, rather, an increase in the efficiency of the workers and an improvement in their general character and calibre.

Gradually, in England and in this country, the legislatures passed laws providing for a number of reforms tending to make the conditions of work more healthful, safe, and comfortable. These acts varied with the nature of each industry and have been more or less sweeping and more or less rigidly enforced in various industries and in various states. The factory laws passed by the legislatures of American states have generally been justified and declared constitutional as coming under the police power of the state.

Factory legislation has been so wide in extent and manifold in character that it would be impossible in a book of this size to consider it in detail. In his Handbook to the Labor Law of the United States, Mr. F. J. Stimson has thus summarized the principal classes of laws of this sort passed by the American states: "Statutes providing for the preservation of the health of

employees in factories by the removal of excessive dust, or for securing pure air, or requiring fans or other special devices to remove noxious dust or vapors peculiar to the trade; statutes requiring guards to be placed about. dangerous machinery, belting, elevators, wells, air-shafts, etc.; statutes providing for fire-escapes, adequate staircases with rails, rubber treads, etc.; door opening outward, etc.; statutes providing against injury to the operatives by the machinery used, such as laws prohibiting the machinery to be cleaned while in motion, or from being cleaned by any woman or minor; laws requiring mechanical belt shifters, etc., or connection by bells, tubes, etc., between any room where machinery is used and the engine room; laws aimed at overcrowding in factories, and at the general comfort of the operatives; and many special laws in railways, mines, and other special occupations, such as the laws requiring warning guards to be placed before bridges upon railroads, requiring the frogs and switches or other appliances of the track to be in good condition and properly protected by timber or otherwise, providing automatic couplings to both freight and passenger trains, and, in building trades, providing for railings upon scaffolds and for suitable scaffolds generally.

"There are most elaborate statutes and several constitutional provisions regulating the conduct of mining industries, the condition of mines, the use of safety cages, etc., in the states where the mining industry predominates.

"Both manufactories and mines are, in nearly all these states, submitted to some kind of public inspection to see that these regulations are in force, and in many states there are special inspectors appointed for the purpose; in others the matter is left to the state labor bureaus, the board of health, the local authorities, or the chief of police. An appeal from their decisions or orders may be taken to the courts."

The most usual, direct, and efficacious manner of protecting the life, limb, and health of the worker is by legally compelling the employer to do or refrain from doing certain things and to appoint inspectors to see that these things are done or omitted. Thus, to prevent men from being need