A few examples will suffice to show how the life of the workers is dependent upon their environment and upon the general conditions under which they work.
- First of all comes the question of accidents. Here are some figures. At the Nevsky Shipbuilding Works in Petrograd, the records of accidents are as follows:
The decline in the number of accidents was mainly due to a series of special measures. But the figure of 210 accidents per 1000 workers is still far too high.
Sometimes accidents occur to 70 per cent. of the workers every year. According to the reports of a district surgeon, during harvest time in Ekaterinoslav province the country hospitals reminded him of field hospitals in war time. Of course such accidents are not peculiar Russia, but occur everywhere. In the British parliament, Ramsay MacDonald once pointed out that of 1200 miners killed at work, 1100 were killed owing to the neglect of the requisite precautionary measures by the capitalists.
The last example indicates that if we wish we can enormously reduce the number of accidents. But from the capitalist point of view the necessary measures would not “pay.”
- The second basic question is that of injurious working environment and the occupational diseases and the mortality arising thereform.
Let us consider, for instance, phosphorus manufacture. Lazarev reported that in Russian phosphorus factories, where no precautionary measures were employed, five years sufficed to make of the worker a “living corpse.” In chemical works, glass works, mines, etc., numerous so-called occupational diseases were rife. Like phenomena were observable in