represent machinery in unfenced mills. And
that it is really meant, in the writer's own
phrase to "ignore" the fact that we counted the
killed, is evident from a succeeding sentence.
"If Mr. Dickens, or his contributor, assigns
his number of two thousand a-year, his
opponents may surely cite theirs—of three-and-a-
half per cent, or twelve in a-year." Our
number, cerlainty, was wrong; but it erred
only by under-statement. We might have
said nearly four thousand, without falsehood.
The number of deaths and mutilations together
arising from machinery in factories, has been
two thousand, not in a year, but half a year.
Because we did not wish to urge the slight
cuts, and the few scarcely avoidable mishaps
which did not belong fairly to the case as we
were stating it, we struck off some two
thousand from the number that we might
have given.

Our readers may now form some estimate
of the strange weakness and unreasonableness
of the pamphlet, issued by the Factory
Association to refute us. There is not one strong
point in it that affects the question; there is
only one that seems strong, and to that the
writer had in her own hands a most conclusive
answer. Mr. Fairbairn, in December 1853,
reported against the practicability or safety of
fencing horizontal shafts. The answer to this
is repeatedly contained in the Inspector's
reports for the half year ending on the
thirtieth of April last, cited at the head of Miss
Martineau's pamphlet. Their joint report
states, "that a considerable amount of
horizontal shafting under seven feet from the
floor has been securely cased over in various
parts of the country, and that straphooks and
other contrivances for the prevention of
accidents from horizontal shafts above seven feet
from the floor, have been and are now being
extensively employed in all our districts,
excepting in that of Lancashire, and in places
mainly influenced by that example." And
Mr. Howell is to be found reporting that in
the west of England much new fencing had
been done, and that the experiment had
'"been tried on a sufficiently large scale, and
for a sufficiently long period to prove the
fallacy of the apprehensions that were
expressed, as to the practicability and success
of fencing securely horizontal shafts. It has
proved also that the doing so is unaccompanied
by danger." He gives illustration of this
from the west of England, adding, however,
that "in many instances, and more
especially in the cotton factories in that part
of my district which is situate in Cheshire
and on the borders of Lancashire, little or
nothing has yet been done, with some few
conspicuous and honourable exceptions, to
satisfy the requirements of the law in this
respect."

The pamphlet adds the Manchester cry of
Fire! and quotes the agent of a fire-office, who
gave it as his opinion, that if mills had
boxed machinery they ought to pay increased
insurance, because "away they would go without
any possibility of salvation." The agent
of a fire-office, as we all know, may be the
butcher, the baker, or the candlestick-maker,
sage or not sage; and to judge by his language
in this particular case, not sage. Now,
however, when a very large number of mills out
of Lancashire are habitually working fenced
machinery, will the National Association
be so candid as to tell us not what some
local agent has said, but what the fire-offices
do?

Mr. Fairbairn's authority against rectangular
hooks is quoted in the pamphlet. He
says they will increase the danger—would
pull all about the peoples' ears. But do
they? In the last report which the writer
represents as having been consulted for the
other side of the question, the inspectors
jointly state that "in none of our districts has
any accident come to our knowledge from
the coiling of a strap round a horizontal
shaft where strap-hooks have been put up in
the manner recommended." And Mr.
Redgrave reports thus from Yorkshire: "With
respect to one of the precautions which is
considered of great value in Yorkshire and
other parts of my district—I mean the strap-
hook, for preventing the lapping of the strap
upon the revolving shaft; the fact that
not an accident has been reported to me
during the last six months as having been
caused by the lapping of a strap upon
a shaft, nor by one of the many thousand
strap-hooks which have been fixed tip in a
very large number of factories, more or less
in the different departments of fifteen hundred
out of two thousand factories which constitute
my district, in a large proportion of which,
moreover, they have existed for many years,
may be taken as conclusive evidence that the
strap-hook does obviate the lapping of the
strap, thereby preventing accidents, and does
not increase the danger of the shaft and its
liability to cause accidents."

Our evidence does not end here, but we
must have regard to space. We pass rapidly
over the statements in the pamphlet that the
men who die, die by their own indiscretion,
or, as Miss Martineau expresses it, "climb up
to the death which is carefully removed out
of their natural reach." This climbing up to
death will occur to any sane man or woman,
perhaps, as being excessively probable,
but it is not true; very few deaths are
the result of gross and active carelessness:
some arise from a momentary
inadvertence; but the reports of inquests
constantly sent to us show that at least half who
die, can in no fair sense be said to deserve
any blame. The pamphlet itself quotes
inadvertently the statement of an engineer,
that "there should be a ready means of
putting on the strap when the mill is in motion;"
doing this is a common cause of death.
Again, one man is seized by a loose end of his
neckcloth, another dragged to his death out