Disabled workers. The sanitarian question in the reports of the Commission of Social Reforms

Abstract

The creation of informative commissions or the studies about material and moral conditions of the working class, take place along the 19th century in different European countries under process of industrialization. The reason is the interest of the new dominant class, the middle class (bourgeoisie), in controlling the activities of the working class (proletariat). In Spain the same process happens with the creation of the Comisión de Reformas Sociales (Commission of Social Reforms) at the end of 1883. The Commission was the precedent of the Instituto de Reformas Sociales (Social Reform Institute) and the beginning of an increasing control of the state in social and labour matters. Inválidos del trabajo (Disabled workers) is the title of the 5th group of the studies published between the years 1889 and 1893 by the Commission, and explain different aspects related to the sanitary conditions of the Spanish working class during the last third of the 19th century.