From Fabian Tract No. 75 I quote—
Much has been done in the way of improvement in various parts of Scotland, but 22 per cent. of Scottish families still dwell in a single room each, and the proportion in the case of Glasgow rises to 33 per cent. The little town of Kilmarnock, with only 28,447 inhabitants, huddles even a slightly larger proportion of its families into single-room tenements. Altogether, there are in Glasgow over 120,000, and in all Scotland 560,000 persons (more than one-eighth of the whole population), who do not know the decency of even a two-roomed home.
A similar state of things exists in nearly all our large towns, the colliery districts being amongst the worst.
The working class.—The great bulk of the British people are overworked, underpaid, badly housed, unfairly taxed but besides all that, they are exposed to serious risks.
Read The Tragedy of Toil, by John Burns, M.P. (Clarion Press, 1d.).
In sixty years 60,000 colliers have been accidentally killed. In the South Wales coalfield in 1896, 232 were killed out of 71,000. In 1897, out of 76,000 no less than 10,230 were injured.
In 1897, of the men employed in railway shunting, 1 in 203 was killed and 1 in 12 was injured.
In 1897, out of 465,112 railway workers, 510 were killed, 828 were permanently disabled, and 67,000 were temporarily disabled.
John Burns says—
This we do know, that 60 per cent. of the common labourers engaged on the Panama Canal were either killed, injured, or died from disease every year, whilst 80 per cent. of the Europeans died. Out of 70 French engineers, 45 died, and only 10 of the remainder were fit for subsequent work.
The men engaged on the Manchester Ship Canal claim that 1000 to 1100 men were killed and 1700 men were severely injured, whilst 2500 were temporarily disabled.