692 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION f. 



the authors dealt with the free use of question and answer, of special knowledge 

 possessed by students, and of blackboard diagrams. What is wanted is emphatic- 

 ally not lecturing but teaching which will make use as far as possible of the 

 students' experience. The character of the work done was discussed. The main 

 difficulties are the practical ones of overtime and unemployment. 



3. Statistics of Cotton Mill Accidents. By H. Verney. 



If the curve representing the fluctuations in the annual number of accidents 

 occurring in connection with cotton spinning machinery be compared with that 

 representing the consumption of cotton, which may be taken to be a rough index 

 of the varying activity of employment in cotton mills, both being on the 

 logarithmic scale, it is seen that, after 1900, the fluctuations in the two curves 

 agree closely, except that the amplitude of the fluctuations in the accident curve 

 is from two' and a half to three times as great as that of the consumption curve ; 

 that is to say, when trade expands, accidents increase two and a half to three 

 times as fast, and vice versa. This is what might have been expected. There is 

 a normal accident rate corresponding to normal activity of employment in the 

 mills. When trade becomes brisk, managers exert themselves to increase the 

 output of the mills; the time allowed for cleaning the machinery while it is 

 stopped is curtailed ; new and inexperienced hands are taken on ; and in many 

 such ways the liability to accident is increased. On the other hand, when trade 

 is slack, there is little ' driving ' ; there is not the same incentive to clean the 

 machinery while it is running. If any hands have to be discharged it is the 

 incompetents who go, and the rest may be put on short time. In all these ways 

 the liability to accident is reduced. 



Before 1900, however, the two curves differ from each other mainly in the 

 upward slope of the accident curve. The continuous increase in accidents which 

 this upward slope would indicate is largely fictitious, and is due to progressively 

 improved reporting, accelerated and completed by the action of the Workmen's 

 Compensation Act, 1897, which came into force in 1898, and may be supposed to 

 have produced its full effect in this direction by 1900. 



Other accidents than those occasioned by machinery occur in cotton spinning 

 mills, but these are the more important and include the bulk of the preventable 

 accidents. In 1907, 2,989 were reported, the number of workpeople in that year 

 being 239,000, giving an accident rate of 1'26 per cent, for cotton spinning ; for 

 cotton weaving the rate was 0'29 per cent. ; for the whole trade 0'69 per cent. 

 That is, out of every thousand cotton operatives, 993 might have expected to work 

 a whole year without sustaining any accidental injury sufficient to keep them 

 away from work for one day, that being the criterion of absence in force in 1907. 

 These figures are even more remarkable than they appear, for no less than 83 per 

 cent, of these accidents gave rise to slight injuries only, i.e., such as ought 

 not, with proper attention, to keep the injured person away from work for longer 

 than about three weeks. The fatal accidents are extremely few. In 1907 they 

 numbered thirty-seven in spinning and twelve in weaving. 



As to causation, it was found that 26 per cent, of the accidents reported in 

 1909 as having occurred in connection with cotton spinning machinery were purely 

 accidental and unpreventable, and that 37 per cent, were due to the practice, 

 almost confined to the cotton trade, of cleaning the machinery while it is working. 

 Fifty per cent, of the accidents were due to the negligence of the injured person 

 alone, negligence which in 6 per cent, of the cases could only be described as 

 gross. In all, 68 per cent, of the machinery accidents were due to negligence. In 

 only 5.2 per cent, of the case6 was there any contravention of the Factory Acts. 



As to the non-machinery accidents, which are about as numerous as those due 

 to machinery, the enormous majority, 98 per cent., are not more than slight. 

 They are largely due to falls, knocking the hands against hard objects and sharp 

 corners, cuts, scratches, and so on; and most of them may be placed in the category 

 of the purely accidental and unpreventable. 



Joint Discussion with Sub-section B {Agriculture) on the Magnitude of 

 Error in Agricultural Experiments. — See p. 587. 



