Petitioner seeks to revise the finding and sentence of the Bench Court, Cannanore, fining him Rs. 10 for failure to take out a license under Sect. 249, Act V of 1920.
It is admitted that petitioner has a weaving factory containing 9 looms of the sort which the weaver works with his hands and feet, known as a ‘maggom’ or European loom. The Bench has found that he was liable to take out a license for using for an ‘industrial purpose’ machinery as provided by Sub. cl. (q) Sch. V of Act V of 1920. The question for determination is whether those looms are ‘machinery’ within the mischief of the Act.
The learned Public Prosecutor argues that the Sub. cl. (q) covers anything which is likely to be dangerous to human life, or health or property, and any machinery used for an industrial purpose which is thus dangerous, requires a license. On this interpretation of the clause the word machinery would be otiose. So long as the industrial process were dangerous, it would not matter whether it was performed by hand, instrument or machine; it would still have to be licensed. Something more than a mere dangerous process is evidently intended by ‘machinery’ but the question is within what limits the word is employed. It cannot have been intended that anything which is commonly called a machine must be licensed. For instance, no one has ever supposed that Singer's Sewing Machines required a license; and the literary sense of the word is too general to afford any guidance. In old English, machine was synonymous with universe; and when Hamlet concludes his letter to Ophelia: “Thine evermore most dear lady whilst this machine is to him”, he treats the word as the equivalent of body. For a long time machine was used as another word for vehicle, a meaning which survives in ‘bathing machine’ and is still, I gather from the Public Prosecutor prevalent in the more remote parts of the British Isles and although such general senses are long obsolete and the term is now confined to some sort of apparatus for applying mechanical power, it has within those limits a very wide application. Not only a hand loom but any hand instrument which involves more than one simple mechanical principle is a machine. For instance, though a hammer may be called an instrument, a nail’ extractor is a machine and a hand ginning apparatus is a machine. Thus even in its ordinary sense ‘machine’ would seem to have a wider connotation than the clause intends. The Statute itself affords no assistance by way of definition; but I observe that Sect. 250 refers to mechanical power and I think that this points to the right interpretation. As observed by Professor Murray in the Oxford Dictionary in recent use the word tends to be applied especially to an apparatus so devised that the result of its operation is not dependent on the strength or manupulative skill of the workman. In other words an apparatus driven by other than human, and, I would add animal power. I think that the machinery contemplated in the Act is machinery worked by power such as steam, water or electrical power; and machinery worked by hand such as handlooms OT sewing machines is excluded. This, of course, is the limited sense in which machinery was understood at the time of the Luddite and similar riots. No doubt this is an arbitrary decision, and it would be better if the Statute contained its own definition, but it is the only definition which, after a careful consideration of the matter, seems to afford the licensing officer a clear criterion, and also to confine “machinery” in cl. (q) to such forms of machinery as may reasonably be held to be in the same category as cumbustibles, and unwholesome or dangerous trades.
I find that a collection of maggoms is not machinery under Sch. V (q). The petition is allowed and the conviction set aside. The fine should be refunded
C. K.Petition allowed: conviction set aside.