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Leader (1850-1860), 2nd February 1856, Edition 1 of 2, Page 110, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      CANDIDATES ARD CONSCIENCES : OR , A TALE OF A THICK . The rival powers of Cork-street and Grout Georgestreet , the Sanitary Reformers ami the lCuK inuws , represented respectively by Mr . 1 <\ O . Wni' ( lnn < l Mr . Itobert Stcphenson , "have hml , during the piist wcelc , a fierce encounter , in which ( iront ( k-orfjestrect has won a numerical Tictory , wliile Mr . Ward and his friends have achieved a inovnl triumph . The matter in dispute was the engiucership oi the Metropolitan Board of Works ; and the question on whicli it turned was a . question not ot engineering skill , but of personal integrity . The pav-

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      now . The Court of Directors , however , took alarm at what they designated the " demented " ambition of their servants , and forbade any further enlargement of their territories . This was in 1765 . A few years later , this same Soojahood-Dowlah hired an English brigade from Warren Hastings and his Council , to enable him to execute his schemes against the Rohillahs . In 1775 , he was succeeded by his son , Asoph-ood-Dowiah , the fourth of the family who held the viceroyalty , and the third

      to whom the vizierat had descended . The Calcutta Council , however , made him pay for a renewal of the treaty with his father , and compelled him to cede Benares and Ghazeepore , and to raise the monthly subsidy from . £ 21 , 000 to £ 26 , 000 , as the price of their recognition of his accession . Twenty-three years Jater Saadut Ali was likewise obliged to purchase the protection of -the Governor-General on yet more arduous terms . He had to cede the fortress of " Allahabad , with

      . £ 80 , 000 for the repair of its works , besides paying £ 150 , 000 on other pretexts , and to raise the annual subsidy to £ 760 , 000 for the maintenance of a force of 10 , 000 men . The Marquis of Welleslet , the next Governor-General , applied the screw with still greater severity . He not only insisted upon the disbandonment of a large portion of the Oude army , and the substitution of a strong British

      Contingent in . its stead , but he also extorted the territorial cession of jRoKkmrid , in . lieu of the payment of a subsidy ; these lands , even at that time , yielding mote than £ 1 , 350 , 000 per annum . This treaty was signed in 1801 , and rendered the Nawab little better than a cipher in his own dominions . Saadtjt Axi died in 1816 , and was succeeded by his son , Ghazeeood-jxeen-Hyder , to the unbounded satisfaction of the Resident , and also of the Calcutta

      Government . Three years later , the Nawab was instigated by Lor d Hastings to assume the title ofKing , and to renounce even nominal allegiance to the wretched puppet who represented the Great Mogul dynasty at Delhi . It was a childish policy , for the imperial power was long since effete , whereas under a really able ruler the kingdom of Oude might have become a thorn in the side of the British possessions . However , each successive king has been weaker and worse than his predecessor

      , until at last the measure of their iniquities is full and overflowing . By the treaty of 1837 , the right was specifically ceded to us of taking into our own hands the management of every misgoverned district . But the entire country is misgoverned , the people universally oppressed . The kingdom of Oude , therefore , is justly forfeited . And yet to avoid an idle clamour , we hesitate to adopt a measure that will eventually become an inevitable necessity . We have now assumed the reins of

      Government . Wo have appointed a British officer as responsible minister . We have taken all power out of the hands of the king , but we insult him with the semblance and insignia of royalty . Far more honest would it have been to have invited the people of Oudo to elect for themselves , either to pass absolutely under British sway , or to be left entirely to themselves to settle , their grievances with their own Sovereign in their own way . Half measures are ever objectionable . They evince weakness or vascillation , and require dcmblo the effort to complete them , which would have sufficed in the first instance .

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      to be crushed , or mauled , or killed . Factory owners have at times been reckless , either through cold-bloodedness or through penury ; people have been killed through the fault of their masters ; pity has been excited , indignation aroused , Parliament invoked , and we have statutes to prevent mill-owners from letting their hands be killed . This led to the enforcement of the dormant Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844 , which remained unenforced for nine years . But in 1853 the factory inspectors brought under notice an " enormous amount" of accidents caused by contact with machinery , and hence a much more active intervention . Now

      Miss MA-HTDsrEATJ incontinently assails the facts and the conclusions . tl The facts , " she cries , are enormous" only in their exaggeration ; the conclusions are entirely fallacious , and The whole number of accidents from machinery , in three years , was reported to be 11 , 716 , of which 3 , 434 were of a serious character . The serious ones are all that require any notice , as the others are of so slight a nature that they would not be noticed anywhere but in a special registration like that provided by the Factory Act . For instance , 700 are cases of cut fingers . Any worker who rubs off a bit of skin from finger or thumb , or sustains the slightest Cut which interferes with the spinning process for a single

      day , has the injury registered under the Act . Now , it should be observed that , of the whole number of accidents in three years , 128 had occurred from shafts ; that is , about 42 in a year . Of tlie 128 , 35 resulted in death , or a fraction aTboYe 11 in a yeai * . In other words , the number of persons affected by the factory law being from 500 , 000 to 600 , 000 , the proportion injured in . any way by accident from this cause is ( assuming the lowest number of people ) about one in 12 , 000 ; and the proportion of deaths among them is about one in ' 45 * 0 * 00 . This is the proportion on the showing of the Inspectors ; and those who care to institute a comparison between the danger of this and other modes of occupation will find that ia no other is the proportion of deaths so small .

      The coroners' reports show ~ tha-t , in the factory districts , the fatal accidents from carts and other agencies concerned in labour were 79 to 29 in factories ; and of the factory accidents , not five per cent , are owing to machinery . In the year preceding that in which the Inspectors made their appeal to Lord Palmerston , there were 12 deaths from factory machinery in the whole kingdom ; whereas the deaths from other accidents , in Manchester alone , were 531 . By as near a computation as [ can be made in the imperfect state of our statistics , the number of fatal accidents in the United Kingdom averages about 5 , 000 , of which 12 are cases of mill accidents from all kinds of factory machinery . *

      There might be some force in this argument if the counterfacts on which it is founded were not , as it now appears , utterly disproved and the figures " cooked ; " but we cannot take tlie case isolated from other questions that properly "belong to the subject . It is true that when mills are well constructed , under the care of owners who have the conscientiousness and the means for causing the

      machinery to be well made , the danger is minimised , and such owners require no compulsion from the law . We are not to presume , however , that other owners , less conscientious or less in command of means , would keep their machinery up to the standard of efficiency and safety , if there were not some check more immediate and potent than their own intelligence and prudence , or the indignation of their workpeople .

      . There is , indeed , a much larger consideration . Miss Maktineau proposes to leave the settlement of injury between man and man to the common law—non-intervention . The principle is not to be accepted without examination ; but at all events , if it is to bo accepted , it must not be on one side

      HARRIET MARTINEAU ' S PROUDHONISM I-. IBGXSI . ATION specially protects large numbers who are collected into factories . The machiner y in these . great buildings moves with im mense power and rapidity l , who puts himself in tho way of its beams is liable

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      110 THE LEADER . [ No .. 306 , Saturday ,

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      * " The Factory Controversy ; a warning a ^ ainat moddling leginlation . By Harriet Mtirtiuoau . Issued by tho National AtiBooiiition of Factory Ocoupiern , 13 , Oorporation-stroot , Manchester . "—This pamphlet is , in fnofc , an article very properly declined , on aooount of tho ditjtroBBing violence ftnd rookloaa abuse , tho tnuliebris irnpotentia , of itB tone , by tho W&tUninster JRoview . It has alrondy rooeivod a crushing reply , written with admlrablo temper and conaluaivcnoeH , in lloxuicttold Words .

      only . If the law is not to interfere between millowner and worker for the sake of tie worker , neither must it interfere for tlie sake of the owner . Let us see how the factory hands are brought into tlie factory . Some of them were in their own persons , or in the persons of their parents , brought up from the rural districts by the agents of the State , under the stringent operations of tlie New Poor Law . They were brought for the purpose of reducing poor rates in the

      rural districts , wages in the factory districts . They are lodged in the middle of iactory labour by fate , and must accept that mode of life which lies to their hand . They may be divided into four classes , —children , " young persons , " women , and men . The children are the slaves of their parents , they have no choice whether they snail enter the factory or not ; they cannoit leave it , if the machinery is unsafe for them . Their parents , whom the State empowers to use them as slaves , in too

      many cases feel no conscientious duty to look after their life or limb . Children , then , are not-feee agents , and the State Las interfered to place them where they are ; Is it to leave them unprotected ? The " young persons " are ia somewhat the same predicament ; though , in fact , not under such complete bondagV The law would compel them to obeyNJiheir parents , but fact permits them to doxotherwise ; they can leave a mill where \ the machinery is unsafe ,

      if they are prepared to throw themselves ont of work , and to run " the risk of . starvation . The women are almosfAas much under bondage to their husbands as their children—they are not free agents . Even ] the men can only clioose between such employment as the factories give , with circumstances as they are , or want of work , which is want of food . A man . who is unemployed in tnis country is a vagrant ; he becomes am&Qabjle to the Poor-law ; he can be put in prison . None of these persons , then , are free agents . If we do not admit the necessity of interference to protect them against

      dangerous machinery , we ought to abolish interference which compels them to be there . We ought to leave the child its free will ; to recognise tho emancipation of young persons ; to tell women that they shall not expose themselves to the Juggernaut at the dictate of their husbands ; and with respect to the mon , we ought to repeal those laws which restrain them from idleness , from combination , or from any other measures that tiiey may take against tlie factory owner , short of directly invading his life and property . If you invoke thcYloctrine of non-intervention , carry it out , and repeal ninety-nine hundredths of our statutes .

      But the same rule applies outside the walls of the factory . Admit the doctrine of nonintervention , and how large a portion of our compulsory statutes would full to the ground ? Admit that the dictates of conscience , " enlightened self-interest , " affection , ami other instructive or intellectual influences would suffioe , and you must cut up , root ami Imineh , the larger portion of our moral and political system . There is something to bo said lor that side of the question .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 2, 1856, page 110, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2126/page/14/