300 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE.— <1 9 15. 



inexperience of a learner, and even, in America, to ignorance of the 

 language. But these dangers, mechanical or social, are present to the 

 same degree throughout the day, and, therefore, the resultant accidents 

 are as likely to happen at one hour of the day as at another. In both 

 divisions, therefore, accidents not due to fatigue will not alter the 

 shape of the curve of accidents that were due to fatigue, but will simply 

 make its ups and downs less steep. 



The effect of fatigue would therefore seem to be under-represented 

 by the accident curve, but to what extent depends on the actual pro- 

 portion of accidents that are not in any way attributable to fatigue. 



Bogardus examined the causes of 2,203 accidents in Illinois in 1910 

 individually, and found that only 17| per cent. ' were beyond the 

 control of the injured.' 'This percentage of accidents would only 

 include those purely mechanically or ' externally ' caused (see above), 

 and there must be an additional percentage of accidents due purely to 

 psycho-physiological states other than fatigue. 



If we take particulars presented by the Federation of Master 

 Cotton Spinners' Associations to the Departmental Committee on 

 Accidents (Index Bl), out of 1,362 accidents occurring in all depart- 

 ments with over fifty accidents, i.e., Spinning Eooms (pp. 683 and 

 687), Cardroom (pp. 685 and 686), and Weaving (p. 687), the events 

 causing accident may be classified broadly as follows where 219 ' mis- 

 cellaneously ' caused accidents are omitted. 



1,068 75 



Now out of these events only ' breakage ' and ' sprains, strains, and 

 blisters ' can have no element of fatigue in their causation, while ' cut or 

 hit by falling objects ' may be caused purely mechanically or may be 

 due to the fatigue of the injured's fellow -worker. To all the other 

 events the fatigue of the man injured himself may have contributed. 

 For instance, a splinter is a physical material fact, but the worker's not 

 perceiving it and avoiding it is psycho-physiological. Again, to ' climb 

 on the headstock ' may be reckless, but that such a feat should prove 

 fatal at one particular time and not at another suggests on that occasion 

 an element of fatigue. We may say, therefore, that broadly 93 per 

 cent, of these cotton-trade accidents definitely had some psycho- 

 physiological origin, and of these most were in all probability the result 

 of fatigue. Similarly of industry as a whole, though some accidents are 

 in no degree attributable to fatigue and result in smoothing down the 



