Statutory provisions against accidents to workmen reveal quite as much timidity as do provisions regarding employers’ liability. The yearly number of accidents in our industries is unknown, and can be only roughly guessed at. The investigation of the New York Commissioner of Labor, in the spring of 1899, would indicate a yearly average of 14,576 accidents for factory workers alone in one State. In the Pennsylvania anthracite mines more than 400 persons are killed every year, and in the bituminous mines of the same State the yearly average for the period 1895-98 was 171 killed and 421 injured. An official report made to the United States Geological Survey in September gives the record of lives lost in mining coal for the year 1901 as 1467, and the number of workmen injured as 3643. In the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania 513 men were killed and 1243 injured, and in the bituminous fields of the same State 301 were killed and 656 injured. The railroads provide a yearly Gettysburg, with some 40,000 casualties to workmen alone; and many an industry annually furnishes its humble Bull Run or Fort Donelson.
Regulations, however, proceed cautiously, not to say haltingly; they are generally tame regulations, they are frequently disobeyed, and their effect on the casualty rate is anything but radical. Though for 1901 the increased use of safety appliances lessened the percentage of coupling accidents on railroads, the percentage actually increased for 1898, 1899, and 1900. Since 1898 there has been an increase in the rate of accidents in coal mining, and doubtless, also, if the figures were known, an increase could be shown for factories and workshops.
Although twenty-one States, according to Mr. William F. Willoughby, in the _Bulletin_ for January, 1901, provide for an inspection service in factories, only thirteen impose specific provisions making it obligatory upon factory and mill owners to take certain precautions against accidents. Only one of these laws, moreover,--that of Ohio,--may fairly be called an adequate and definitely expressed statute. There are but five States that have enacted laws “the purpose of which is to make it obligatory upon directors of building and construction work to take certain precautions against accidents,” and only one of these (New York) has given the measure an adequate comprehensiveness. Twenty-three States have more or less elaborate mining regulations; but as compliance with these laws is usually left to the honor and benevolence of the mine owner, and as mining accidents continue at a practically static rate, it is hard to see the beneficial result. Some of the States compel railroads to block or guard frogs, and several have laws independent of the Federal statute of 1893, requiring the use of automatic couplers and power brakes. The former may be evaded, however; and, in the absence of statute imposing liability, the evasion counts for nothing in behalf of an injured workman’s claim for damages. The effect on the accident rates has already been mentioned.