in strap-hooks and spontaneous humanity,
have been tried. The result has been no
diminution in the accidents, and very little
use even of those cheap contrivances which
the deputation of mill-owners suggested as
effectual, and promised for their body to
adopt. It has become evident, also, that the
contrivances in question would indeed lessen
by fifty per cent. the number of preventible
accidents, but would leave still a large annual
list of killed and wounded. Measures of
complete prevention introduced voluntarily
into some extensive factories, have worked in
such a way as to disprove all the arguments
against them put forth a twelvemonth ago by
the mill-owners' deputation. Complete
protection of the lives of factory operatives is
now, therefore, no longer a fiction introduced
among the statutes; but the means towards
it are to be henceforward, without further
wavering, strictly and actively enforced.

The battle will have to be fought stoutly
by the factory inspectors; for, they have
much passive resistance to subdue. Mr.
Leonard Horner tells us in his report, of
a young man aged twenty-two, who in
November last perished at Oldham. His
foot became entangled in a strap of the
machine at which he was working, and
the strap having lapped round the
horizontal shaft, he was dragged up, his skull
was fractured, and he died immediately. A
few guide hooks to prevent the falling of the
strap would have made that accident impossible;
but even this simple protection to life
—one of those promised by the Manchester
deputation—was not furnished by the mill-
owner. He was prosecuted; there was no
doubt about either the facts or the law
relating to them; but five magistrates (of whom
three happened to be themselves great owners
of unfenced machinery), after a short retirement,
came into court and announced that
the case was dismissed, without giving any
reason for the decision. Mr. Horner adds
to this, another case, which occurred in
his district a few weeks later. A man in
the prime of life—aged twenty-nine—
immediately after he had begun work one morning,
was caught by a strap and dragged up to
a horizontal shaft, totally unfenced, revolving
at a height of ten or eleven feet from the
floor. The shaft dashed out his brains upon
the ceiling, until the engine could be stopped.
The owner of this unfenced machine was
prosecuted before the local magistrates—
again gentlemen who had the "owner's
interest" uppermost in their minds. The
case was gone into very fully, and it was
proved that, had a very few shillings been
spent on strap-hooks (as the Home Office
had recommended), the brains of the deceased
would not have been beaten out in the
defendant's service. ''After being absent
for an hour with their three clerks, the
magistrates returned into court, when a
neighbouring mill-owner said, that after
much consideration they had come to the
conclusion that the act constrained them to
convict; but they should do so in the lowest
penalty," that is—Ten Pounds. When the
mill-owner sets that price on his workman's
brains, who can wonder if the workman sets
a price still lower on his master's heart!

We have not spoken of this state of things
as if we loved it; but at the same time let it
not be supposed that we attack this grave
and general shortcoming, in any spirit of
unkind feeling against mill-owners as a body.
The very same report that tells us of these
base things, tells also of noble enterprises
nobly ventured, and of a fine spirit shown
by other chieftains of the cotton class.
Sir John Kincaid writes of "the praiseworthy
liberality of some mill-owners, which
was gradually extending itself, in providing
comfortable accommodation for their workers
during meal hours, and before commencing
work in the morning." The Messrs. Scott of
Dumfries, have established at their works,
a kitchen and refreshment room. For a
penny they supply a quart of porridge and
milk, a pint of tea or coffee, with milk and
sugar, or a quart of broth with meat, adding
potatoes for another halfpenny. "The quality
of each article supplied was reported by the
sub-inspector to be substantial and good.
The Messrs. Scott have also lately added a
reading-room, lighted with gas at their own
expense, for the benefit of their workers. At
the cotton mills, near Lanark, an apartment
has also been fitted up at the expense of the
company, for the accommodation of their
workers during meal hours, and provided
with a comfortable fire in cold weather."

And, finally, who shall say that there is no
health in the system which is producing that
vast establishment of Saltaire, near Bradford,
probably the largest factory in the world,
wherein Mr. Titus Salt, the first
manufacturer who introduced fabrics of Alpaca
wool, sets at work fifty thousand spindles,
twelve hundred power looms, and a little
colony of people. He has gone out to the
valley of the river Air, which supplies water
for his engines, has the Liverpool and Leeds
canal under his warehouse walls, and a branch
from the Leeds and Bradford railway running
into his premises. These premises being four
miles from Bradford, he knows better than to
adopt the agricultural idea, of giving an eight
mile walk to and from work by way of freshener
to the strength of his labourers, and to avoid
giving them a settlement upon his land. He
is forming for them a settlement under the
shadow of the factory, in a new town built
wholly for them and their families—for a
population, it is supposed, of about eight
thousand. This town is to be thoroughly
drained, amply supplied with water, and will
be lighted with gas; it will contain a church,
schools, a market, a public dining hall and
kitchen, baths and wash-houses, ground for
recreation; the streets are to be spacious;