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:

PHYSICAL DETERIORATION IN DUNDEE[33]

Speaking of the deaths from phthisis and diseases of the lungs in Belfast, Dr Whitaker, Medical Officer of Health for that city, says in his report for 1902: "Of the 2,911 deaths reported from these causes, 1,779 were attributed to diseases of the respiratory organs and 1,132 to phthisis. It is therefore evident that these diseases caused upwards of one-third of the mortality in our midst. This is not to be wondered at when we remember the nature of the occupations in which so many of our people are engaged and the unhealthy surroundings which environ them."[34]

The truth is that many thousands of the deaths which occur in the United Kingdom every year are really caused by "diseases of occupations," and that to the thousands of deaths must be added hundreds of thousands of cases of direct injury to health arising from work in unhealthy and insufficiently controlled factories and workshops.

Death, injury and disease have thus been administered to our industrial population for several generations. To-day, conditions are better than of old, but they are still so bad that to speak of improvement is to indict the past as black indeed. Against the fact that industrial hygiene has improved, must be set the grave consideration that it is in part an enfeebled people which is now provided with a slightly better environment. We have effectually degraded no small proportion of the race; the present measures of industrial control are not strong enough to restore it.