A CRJ-200 Captain expressed his dismay about his airline's flight crew scheduling practices that; he feels; do not take adequate note of flight crew fatigue issues. He also addressed concerns about aircraft maintenance practices.

Narrative

On the sixth consecutive day at work my company wanted me to fly seven legs. I finished the day with seven hours forty eight minutes block to block hours and almost fourteen hours on duty. It is as if recent accidents in which fatigue was a contributing factor had never happened.My First Officer on the last two legs was brand new. He was a good pilot; but hadn't quite put all the pieces of the puzzle together yet. He had to be watched a lot. I found myself too tired to say everything that needed to be said to get him flying the aircraft accurately. Sometimes we weren't quite on the airspeed we were assigned. Changes to heading and course were not as prompt or as accurate as they should have been.Driving pilots to the limits of the regulations and placing all the responsibility on them to call it quits is not a safety-minded practice. This; combined with the fact that our aging aircraft are falling apart because we are hemorrhaging mechanics who know them tells me that management is lying when they say safety is number one. Fiduciary responsibility to stockholders and labor relations brinksmanship have supplanted safety at our airline. Clearly; management is gambling that they can make it through a 'rough patch' without crashing anything.So; what do I think needs to be accomplished to prevent this from occurring again? Obviously; a fatal crash where scheduling asked the pilot to fly something appalling and the pilot chose to try it to the point of exhaustion; or where inexperienced mechanics messed something up to the point where the crew could not recover; or both. In the past two months I've had two landing gear malfunctions. I've heard of several others. My money is not on the company; or the stockholders.