By a Board of Trade order, made under the Regulation of Railways Act of 1871, accidents on railways are compulsorily reported. Fatal accidents must be notified to the Board of Trade within 24 hours after the occurrence of the accident. Non-fatal accidents must be reported whenever they prevent the injured servant on any one of the three days following the accident from working for five hours. The "special causes" distinguished in the cases of Factories and Mines are not referred to.
Legislation has done a little to protect the railway worker. While the number of railway employees has increased considerably in the last 20 years—from 350,000 to 579,000—the number of accidents has remained about the same. Nevertheless, the death roll is still heavy and the number of wounded very great. In 1903 there were 497 killed and 14,356 injured. In 1908 there were 432 killed and 24,181 injured. Of course the risk varies considerably as between one kind of railway employment and another. Railway mechanics have an accident death-rate of 1 in 4,524 and an injury rate of 1 in 147. Shunters, on the other hand, are killed at the rate of 1 in 264 per annum, while 1 in every 17 is injured! Goods guards, who are not brought into contact with the public as are their more fortunate and safer colleagues the passenger guards, suffer almost as badly as shunters—1 in 374 being killed and 1 in 18 injured per annum. Facts such as these show how great is still the risk of railway work and what a debt we are under to those who do it. As to the manner of repayment of the debt it may be again remarked that, in 1908, the 27 leading railway companies, employing something like 90 per cent. of the railway employees of the country, paid an average wage of only 25s. per week. There are probably 100,000 railway employees who receive less than 20s. per week.
In the case of merchant seamen we have only the records of accidents resulting in death. Every illness or injury has to be recorded in the ship's log, but only death statistics are compiled. The fatalities from shipwreck and accident vary considerably in number from year to year, but appear to be falling.
It remains only to record the accidents in engineering works covered by the Notice of Accidents Act of 1894. This Act provides for the notification of accidents in the construction of railways and in the construction, working or repair of tramways, canals, bridges, tunnels, or other works authorized by any local or personal Act of Parliament. Also it covers the use of any traction engine or other machine worked by steam in the open air. Under this Act there have been reported, in recent years, about 60 deaths and 1,200 injuries per annum.
Collecting the figures we have reviewed, we are able to construct the table below, which shows, for all occupations, the number of persons reported as having been either killed or wounded in 1908.
REPORTED CASES OF INDUSTRIAL
ACCIDENT AND DISEASE, 1908
Number of Workpeople who suffered Death or Injury.
| Killed, or Died from Disease. | Injured, or Suffered from Disease. | |
| Accidents in Factories and Workshops, etc. | 1,042 | 121,112 |
| Accidents in Mines and Quarries | 1,437 | 148,067 |
| Accidents on Railways | 432 | 24,181 |
| Accidents on Ships, etc.: | ||
| Merchant Vessels | 999 | 3,781 |
| Fishing Vessels | 212 | 392 |
| Accidents in Engineering Works (under Notice of Accidents Act) | 32 | 1,228 |
| Diseases of Occupations | 84 | 966 |
| Totals | 4,238 | 299,727 |
It should be distinctly understood that these figures refer to reported cases only and that they are far from complete. In the case of factories and workshops it is probable that the greater number of the serious accidents are reported, but thousands of minor cases escape record. The railway figures have been much more complete since 1896, in which year the number of accidents recorded jumped from 7,480 to 14,110 owing to a more stringent regulation as to reporting made by the Board of Trade. The figures as to accidents on ships and in engineering works are very incomplete.
Cases of industrial disease form the smallest part of the table, but if the whole truth could be expressed in statistics, the result would be appalling. All that we have reported under this head are cases of metallic poisoning and of anthrax. Terrible as these are, they affect so few people as to be of far less consequence to the nation than the high death-rate of Lancashire cotton operatives or Belfast linen workers. Phthisis does not appear in official statistics as a "disease of occupation," but thousands of textile workers die of phthisis resulting from work done in a humid atmosphere. Physical degeneracy is not an "accident," for it progresses with our knowledge and deliberate consent, but how much graver is the deterioration of the jute workers of Dundee than the figures relating to railway accidents. In 1899, Mr H. J. Wilson, H.M. Factory Inspector for Dundee, measured and weighed 169 boys and girls with a view to discovering the amount of degeneracy as compared with the recognized normal. Here is the melancholy result: