WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORIES. 61
Prevention of Accidents.
For this no quick cure is possible. Better and more general
education, improved health and physique, greater discipline in work,
and the building up of a more regular factory population would all be
valuable. In the meantime, however, much is being done to increase
safety, and more still remains to be done. There is no department of
work to which Inspectors of Factories have given more attention through-
out India in recent years, and if it had not been for their patient and
thorough work, the increase in the number of accidents would have been
much greater. Generally speaking, inspectors have regarded this as
their primary duty, and in those provinces where the staff has not been
sufficient to secure adequate inspection in all directions, this branch of
their work has suffered least. Their efforts to secure adequate fencing
and the enforcement of safety regulations have been coupled with an
endeavour to educate the workers. In this some employers have co-
operated by the employment of safety posters, and, more rarely, the
establishment of a safety committee ; but there are other employers
who themselves need education. We believe that, in spite of illiteracy,
something can be done along the lines of the Safety First ” move-
ment, which has made great headway in the last decade in most in-
dustrialised countries. Safety committees should be of considerable
assistance in large factories employing a number of skilled operatives.
Much could probably be done in such cases by charging a particular
officer with the duty of investigating and preventing accidents, and
bhis is one of the many directions in which a special labour officer can give
valuable service. InJapan the safety movement started as recently as
1916 with the founding of a Safety First Association. From 1925 on-
wards two associations, the Industrial Welfare Association and the J apan
Mines Association, were together responsible for considerable headway
being made throughout Japan in accident prevention. The custom of
inaugurating Safety Days and Safety Weeks spread rapidly, until in 1929 it
was universal. As a result it is stated that “instead of being only a
sporadic agitation, the Safety Week has had a lasting effect as it has
almost always been the occasion for setting up a permanent Safety
Committee ”. We are aware of the added difficulties to be encountered
when dealing with an industrial population which is mainly illiterate,
but we believe that the success of the movement in J apan is not with-
out its significance for India and that considerable advance might be
made along these lines, if the idea were adopted in all branches of
industry, including railways, with the co-operation of societies and others
interested in the welfare of the industrial worker.
Safety Provisions of the Law.
So far as official regulation is concerned, the provisions of the
Factories Act, supplemented by fairly elaborate rules in all provinces,
appear to be adequate in most directions. Our attention has been
called, however, to some apparent defects. In the first place, the
Act does not give sufficient power to secure safety in connection with
