large proportion of them are such as no
prudence or foresight on the part of the workman
could have hindered. That, from the nature
of the several disasters, can be shown; but
it is evident enough from the fact, that many
of these heedless fellows are men maimed
when in the prime of life, after a long
familiarity with factory machinery, and a career
in which they have become so noted for their
skill, carefulness, intelligence and steadiness,
as to have been promoted above their fellows
to situations of trust and responsibility. Let
us grant, however, that the victims are all
negligent rogues who have not done what
they were bidden to do. What is to be said
of the superior heedfulness of orders shown
by the masters, who, being bound to hang up
in their mills a list of certain obligations laid
upon them, thereby advertise to all their
men that certain things which the masters of
the masters order them to do, they have not
done? For thus begins the list which is
hung up in all the factories throughout the
kingdom:

"DANGEROUS MACHINERY AND ACCIDENTS. Every
fly-wheel connected with the steam-engine or water-
wheel, whether in the engine-house or not, and every
part of a steam-engine and water-wheel, and every hoist
or teagle, and every shaft and every wheel, drum or
pulley, by which the motion of the first moving power
is communicated to any machine, must be securely
fenced; and every wheel-race must be fenced close to
the edge; and the said protection to each part must
not be removed while the parts requiring to be fenced
are in motion, 7 & 8 Vict. c. 15, §§ 21,73."

It is indeed, then, to a "wanton disobedience
of orders," that the accidents in factories are
commonly to be ascribed. But who is guilty
of the disobedience,—the masters or the men?

We may sum up this part of the subject in
the words of the manager of a great factory,
quoted by Mr. Howell:—"The fact is, that
all these shafts can and ought to be fenced;
they ought to be cased. This is a plain
question, upon which an intelligent man in
a fustian jacket who spends all his time
among the machinery in a factory, can form
as sound a judgment as the gentlemen in the
counting-house who calculate the expense.
They have not got to handle the scraps;
they do not put them on the drums; nor are
they liable to be caught by a strap lapping on
a naked unfenced shaft."

A few months previous to our last
discussion on this subject, in a circular letter
dated the thirty-first of January eighteen
hundred and fifty-four, mill-owners were
reminded of the law as it regards the fencing
of mill-gearing,and were informed that its
provisions must be, for the future, strictly
observed. Out of this announcement was bred
the great meeting of mill-owners at
Manchester, whereat fire and ruin were predicted
in the manner already shown. At that
meeting a deputation was appointed, which
was received at the Home Office in March last
year, and which there made representations of
the impossibility of fencing horizontal shafts;
of the danger of fire if the impossibility were
accomplished; of the fact that horizontal
shafts usually revolve at a height from the
floor, which makes it impossible for danger
to arise from them; and of the great expense
that would be incurred by mill-owners in
doing impossibilities to prevent impossibilities,
whereby they would, after all, only
set their premises on fire. By some such
line of argument the Home Secretary was
induced to direct that, inasmuch as the circular
letter of the thirty-first of January had been
construed to require the universal adoption
of a permanent fixed casing, that circular
should be for a time suspended, and need not
be acted upon. But, at the same time, the same
Secretary pointed out various modes and
precautions by which danger to the workpeople
from horizontal shafts might be prevented.
This concession to the mill-owners was
promulgated in a circular bearing date the
fifteenth of March last year, which closed in
this manner: "The best proof that the adoption
of these or any other suggestions is a
sufficient compliance with the requirements
of the law in this respect, will, of course, be
the absence of accidents hereafter in those
factories in which these precautions shall
have been adopted; at the same time the
inspectors are instructed to remind the
occupiers of factories that if an accident shall occur
in any factory in which no attempt shall have
been made, within a reasonable time, to
introduce any contrivance by which this accident
might have been prevented," they will be
liable to prosecution.

The required proof of the sufficiency of
mild suggestions has not been given. During
the past year, deaths and mutilations of the
most horrible kind have been as frequent as
they ever were; many of them have been
caused by machinery revolving at heights
above seven feet from the floor; they have
been found to occur even at a height of
nearly fifteen feet. In comparatively few
cases have the suggestions offered by the
Home Office for the prevention of this crushing
and maiming, received any practical
attention.

The right step has, in consequence, been
taken by the Government; and on the eighth
of January in the present year, a letter was
sent from the Home Office to the Factory
Inspectors, directing that they should
institute proceedings to enforce the law which
requires that horizontal shafts shall be fenced,
and that they should not defer such proceedings
until after the occurrence of accidents
which such fencing might have prevented.
The relaxations allowed by the circular of
the fifteenth of March in the previous year,
were therefore withdrawn, and ceased to be
in force. "The object of the law was," as
Lord Palmerston said, "to prevent accidents,
not to punish for them." Indulgence, trust