Dangerous trades Author:Thomas Oliver Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV PRINCIPLES OF PROSPECTIVE LEGISLATION FOR DANGEROUS TRADES " Quot manus atteruntur ut unus niteat articulus."—Pliny. Natural History, Book... more » II., chap. Ixiii. HE who attempts to deal with the future of industrial legislation is confronted at the outset by two obstacles. The one is inherent in most endeavours which relate to prospective law-making. The barque which sets forth into the sea of futurity should, if its voyage is to terminate in the safe anchorage of a fair..haven, steer clear of those currents which only too easily carry it upon the shoals and quicksands of controversial politics. Once launched, it is scarcely possible to avoid stranding upon the sterile shore of party. And even a successful cruise must bring it perilously near the Scylla and Charybdis of government and opposition. The effort of this chapter will be to steer as even a course as possible between these opposing forces. The second difficulty is more of a particular than general nature : particular to the subject under consideration. A study of what has gone before, especially of the historical chapter preceding this, must force the conclusion that what has up to now been achieved seems to have been more the result of accident, or of some extraneous agitating forces, than of any carefully considered or preconceived plan. How piecemeal the work has been, and how intricate a fabric! Upon what lines can so patchy a structure be developed ? Upon what principle applicable to the whole code can our industrial legislation, already a congeries of partiallyconnected details, proceed ? Students of the British Constitution will be tempted to draw an analogy from their favourite example; and indeed there is much at first sight in common between the histories of the Factory Acts and the Br...« less