England, where so large a proportion of the population--at least
one-half--is engaged in the prosecution of arts and manufactures, that the
effects of unceasing toil, and the debilitating influences of many
employments, will have a certain effect upon the health and longevity of
the artisan. We cannot pit the tender muscles of the child against the
senseless energy of steam, without producing a strain upon the vital
principle of the workers which must be highly injurious to it. We cannot
consign a population as large as that of many German States to live
perpetually in the bowels of the earth, without being prepared for an
increased death-rate. The hundreds of diverse manufactures and
handicrafts, which make the land hum with labour, must all be prosecuted
under circumstances more or less inimical to perfect health. If we take
the agricultural labourer of the better class, whose daily toil is
performed under the roof of heaven, it must be clear that all trades which
pursue their monotonous vocations in the crowded workshops of crowded
cities, in constrained attitudes, and subject to debilitating emanations,
must, to a certain extent, fall short of his standard of health.
Nevertheless, we do not think the public are prepared for the state of
things which a close examination of the sanitary condition of certain
portions of the working population divulges. Accustomed to be furnished
with all the appliances of easy life and luxury, the great middle and
upper classes have never perhaps given a thought as to the manner in
which these wants and appliances are supplied. Accustomed to sip the
honey, it never strikes us that perhaps its product involves in some cases
the life of the working-bee. Yet the lady, who, from the silken ease of
her fauteuil, surveys her drawing-room, may learn a lesson of compassion
for the poor workman in nearly every article that lies before her. Those
glazed visiting cards, if they could speak, possibly could tell of the
paralyzed hand that made them; that splendid mirror, which lights up the
stately room, has, without doubt, reflected the trembling form of the
emaciated Italian artificer poisoned with mercurial fumes; those hangings,
so soft and delicate, may have produced permanent disease to the weaver,
whose stomach has been injured by its constant pressure against the beam;
the porcelain vase on the bracket has dragged the "dipper's" hand into a
poison that, sooner or later, will destroy its power, and, may-be, produce
in him mania and death; nay, the very paper on the walls, tinted with all
the vernal brightness of spring, has, for all we know, ulcerated with its
poisonous dust the fingers of the hanger. The history of the manufacture
of almost every article of elegance or _virtù_ would disclose to us
pictures of workmen transiently or permanently disabled in the production
of them. All this suffering--much of it totally preventible--goes on
without complaint, the workman falls out of the ranks, and another
instantly takes his place, to be succeeded perhaps by a third. We are
convinced that such a waste of health and life could not be endured, if
the public were fully alive to the magnitude of the evil; for this reason
we shall endeavour, in the following essay, to give a true picture of what
may, perhaps, without pedantry, be termed the pathology of industrial
occupations and professions in this country.
Foremost among those artisans who suffer from the inhalation of dust and
other gritty particles given off in the pursuit of their employment are
the grinders of Sheffield. Dr. J. C. Hall, in a series of papers published
lately in the _British Medical Journal_, draws a picture of the condition
of these unfortunate men, which is indeed appalling, and without doubt
gives them the bad pre-eminence of pursuing the most deadly trade in
existence. Grinding is divided into dry, wet, and mixed; that is, the
various articles of steel turned out of the cutler's shop of Sheffield are
subjected to the stone entirely dry, revolving in water, or to processes
involving both methods. Of the three, the former is by far the most
deadly: forks, needles, brace-bits, &c., are ground entirely on the dry
stone, and the amount of finely-divided metal dust and siliceous grit
given out in the process may be imagined, when we state that a dozen of
razors, weighing 2lb. 4oz. as they come from the forge in the rough, lose
in the process of "shaping" on the dry stone, upwards of five ounces, and
the stone itself, seven inches in diameter, would be reduced one inch. To
receive the mixture of stone and steel thus rapidly given off, the
position of the grinder is but too convenient; straddled across his
"horsing," as the frame in which the grindstone revolves is called, with
his knees bent in an acute angle, his body inclined forwards, and his head
hanging over the work, his mouth is brought into fatal contact with the
poisonous dust, and his eyes with the rush of the sparks. Fork-grinding is
performed entirely on the dry stone, and consequently it is the most
deadly occupation pursued in Sheffield. About 500 men and boys are at
present devoting themselves to destruction during the period of early
manhood, for the benefit of the users of steel forks. "The silver fork
school" imagines perhaps that these vile appliances have long been
banished to the same limbo as snuffers, and will be surprised to learn
that more steel forks than ever are thus fashioned in Sheffield, and the
poor grinder, as he receives into his lungs the products of the
fashioning, in his own person exemplifies the awful passage in the
burial-service--"dust to dust"--as the disease thus induced cuts him off
at the average age of twenty-nine years! "I shall be thirty-six years old
next month," remarked a grinder, pathetically, to Dr. Hall, "and you know,
measter, that's getting _a very old man_ in our trade." Another operation,
almost as deadly as fork-grinding, is that of "racing the stone." These
grindstones are but roughly reduced to the circular form by the quarry
men, and the grinder undertakes the business of reducing and removing all
their asperities, which he does by revolving them against a piece of
steel--a tremendous dust being given off in the process. In wet grinding,
which is employed in the manufacture of saws, files, sickles,
table-knives, and edge-tools, comparatively little dust is made, and in
these employments the grinders enjoy comparatively longer life; their
average age ranging from thirty-five to forty years. In addition to the
destructive effects of these particles of metal and stone upon the
delicate membrane of the lungs, the dry-grinder is subjected to serious
injury of the eyes from the red-hot particles of steel thrown off in the
shape of sparks. The more careful of the workmen protect themselves from
the danger, however, by wearing large spectacles of ordinary window glass.
These spectacles, when they have been in use a little time, give practical
evidence of their utility, for on examining them they are found to be
speckled all over with the particles of steel, which, when red-hot, become
embedded in the glass.
In the rough nomenclature of the trade, the disease which thus early
destroys the fashioner of forks and needles is termed the _grinder's rot_.
The lung, when examined after death, looks as though it had been dipped in
ink, and the texture, instead of exhibiting the usual spongy character of
that organ when in health, cuts like a piece of india-rubber! The colour
and the solidification of the dry-grinder's lung is owing to the chronic
inflammation to which it has been subjected by the presence from an early
age of irritating particles of steel and stone within its finest air
passages. But why dry-grind at all, the reader will involuntarily exclaim,
if the wages of the occupation are death? The grinder replies, that there
are certain operations which cannot be done on the wet stone; giving the
rounded back to razors, technically called "humping," and the rounded side
to scissors, are quoted as examples. The pressure during the process of
shaping is so great, that the rolling friction would speedily make the
stone wear, and the workman would be unable to hold the blade upon it.
Then, again, we may ask, where is the necessity for this rounded
form--would the shaver on a cold morning care a jot whether his razor had
a round or a square back? Would the lady, as she manipulated her lace-work
with her scissors, hesitate to accept a three-sided scissor-leg in place
of a half-round one, if she knew that the difference involved the life of
a fellow-creature? Yet such trifling differences as these between round
and flat, stand in the way of the health or misery of an entire class of
workers! We give a list of the average duration of life of artisans in
steel in Sheffield:--Dry-grinders of forks, 29 years; razors, 31 years;
scissors, 32 years; edge-tool and wool-shears, 32 years; spring-knives, 34
years; table-knives, 35 years; files, 35 years; saws, 38 years; sickles,
38 years--the ascending longevity being in proportion to the amount of
water used on the stone, and to the greater amount of adult labour
employed; such articles as saws, sickles, and tools are happily too heavy
to be manipulated by the children employed, and thus early diseased in the
manufacture of the lighter articles.
The only relief to be gathered from this dismal picture of wasted life, is
the fact that things are not so bad as of old. By means of greater speed
being given to the stone, many articles, such as pen and pocket-knives,
are now ground with a wet stone that formerly were ground with the dry;
and happily much of the dust has been abolished in the best shops, such as
that of Messrs. Rodgers, by the introduction of fans on the principle of a
winnowing-machine, which blows the dust and grit as it comes from the
grindstone clear away through a flue placed in connection with the
chimney. This fan is, however, only partially used; the grinders
themselves, whom they are intended to benefit, complaining that the "trade
is bad enough as it is, and if men lived longer, it would be so over-full
that there would be no such a thing as getting a living:" the same spirit
rejected Mr. Abraham's mask of magnetized wire, invented many years ago
for the same object. There can be no doubt, however, that intelligence
should rule in this matter, and that the Legislature should make it a
fineable offence to work a dry stone without a fan, just as it is to work
dangerous machinery without guards; for where one life is lost by neglect
in the latter case, thousands sink into a premature grave in the former.
Grinders, wet or dry, may also protect their lungs, in a most remarkable
manner, by simply allowing the beard and moustache to grow. The hirsute
appendages of the upper lip and chin are Nature's respirators, and it has
been observed that those men who have allowed her in this respect to have
her way, have discovered that she is somewhat wiser than fashion or
popular usage.
Of those artisans exposed to irritating dust, probably miners take the
second place after the miserable dry grinders. If we investigate the
condition of these men, we are immediately struck with the lamentable
conditions under which they labour, and astonished at the endurance and
patience with which they submit to toil to which that of the well-fed,
well-housed felon is pleasant pastime. There are at present upwards of
300,000 human beings acting the part of gnomes for the good of the
community at large, entering day by day into the bowels of the earth, and
emerging in the evening. Of human life they see as little as the train of
black ants we watch emerging from their holes in the ground. Yet the miner
is the industrial Atlas of England. Were he to cease to labour, this busy
hive of men would speedily be hushed, and the giant limbs of machinery,
which now do the drudgery of the world, become as still as the enchanted
garden of the fairy tale ere the advent of the prince. Without the coal
and the iron, the copper and the tin, they toilfully evolve from vast
depths, England would be but a third-rate power. A life so cheerless, and
yet so useful--nay, essential, to our national existence--should at least
receive at the hands of the Government every protection that can be thrown
around it; yet, if we follow the miner into his gallery and working cell,
we are amazed at the dangers and the difficulties which are needlessly
thrust upon him in the black realm in which he moves and has his being.
Let us take the collier, for example. In many pits in the West of England,
the seams of coal are not more than twenty or twenty-five inches thick;
and inasmuch as the object of the worker is to remove the coal with as
little as possible of the surrounding soil, he often drives his working
to a considerable distance through an aperture not more than, and often
not so much as, two feet high. If our adult male reader will condescend to
squat himself on the floor, _à la Turque_, say under the dining-table, for
instance, and then picture to himself the inconvenience of picking with an
axe the under side of the prandial mahogany for twelve hours, he will
obtain some slight idea of the muscular knot into which the poor collier
has to tie himself, for the whole term of his working life, having to use
violent exercise throughout. Can it be wondered at that, under such
circumstances, the Apollo-like form of man becomes permanently twisted and
bent, like the gnarled root of an oak that has been doubled up in the
fissure of some rock? If we look at a collier, we see instantly that his
back is curved, his legs bowed, and the extensor muscles of his calves
withered through long disease. He has knotted himself so long, that the
erect position of his race becomes a punishment to him. It is credibly
related that a number of colliers, having been sentenced to imprisonment
in Wakefield jail, with hard labour, the only complaint they made was,
that they were obliged, whilst at work, to keep the ordinary posture of
rational creatures. But confined space is only one of the many evil
conditions under which they labour. In the majority of cases the collier
works in foul air; for, notwithstanding all the official inspection, the
ventilation of mines is still execrable. The fire-damp either blasts him
into a cinder, or the choke-damp noiselessly blots out his life. However
good, moreover, the general system of ventilation in a mine, unforeseen
accidents will happen at any moment. The pick of the collier strikes into
the gallery of an old pit, where carbonic acid gas has been gathering
perhaps for a century; and the poisoned air rushes in and does its work in
an instant; or a sudden invasion of carburetted hydrogen, disengaged by
the fall of a mass of coal, meets the miner, who is working, perhaps
imprudently, with a naked candle;--and an explosion follows which crowds
the pit's mouth with a wailing multitude of newly-made widows and orphans.
Upwards of 1,500 lives are annually lost, principally through these
causes, and not less than 10,000 accidents in the same period testify to
the dangerous nature of the miner's occupation, notwithstanding the strict
Government inspection.[50] It is humiliating to know that England is yet
far behind continental nations in her methods of preventing these dreadful
catastrophes. Mr. Mackworth, in his lecture at the Society of Arts, stated
that the mortality from accidents was, in the coal mines of
Killed Persons.
Prussia 1·89 per 1000 per annum.
Belgium 2·8 "
England 4·5 "
Staffordshire 7·3 "
This comparison, so humiliating to England, cannot be explained by the
superior adventure of our countrymen, inasmuch as the production of coal
in Belgium is half as much again per acre of the coal-field as in England.
It is not, however, to the dramatic accidents of coal mines which every
now and then startle the community, to which we wish to draw attention;
but rather to the silent progress of disease, which makes his death so
premature, and his life so miserable. In addition to his cramped
condition, whilst at work, his supply of oxygen is small; for in all
probability the air supplied to him has to circulate many miles through
the mine, and to pass over the excrementitious deposits of man and horse,
and the decaying woodwork of the mine, ere it finally reaches him, in
enfeebled streams, in his solitary working cell. Long deprivation of solar
light, again, tends to impoverish his blood, to blanch him, in short, like
vegetable products similarly deprived of the light of day. It is through
the lungs, however, that the health of the miner is principally attacked.
The air of a coal mine (such as it is) holds a vast amount of coal-dust in
mechanical suspension, and this, as a matter of course, is constantly
passing into the lungs of the miner. The proof of this is the so-called
"black spit" of the collier, which, on being subjected to the microscope,
is found to consist of mucus, filled with finely divided particles of
coal. The permanent inhalation of such an atmosphere results in what is
termed the "black lung." The breathing apparatus of the collier becomes
clogged, in short, with coal-dust, and after death it has the appearance
of being dipped in ink. A writer,[51] who has lately investigated this
singular pathological condition, thus gives his experience of two
_post-mortem_ examinations:--
"In each case, the black treacly fluid obtained by thus cutting the
various portions of the lung (more especially the posterior and
inferior portions of the lower lobes), and by slitting up the
bronchial tubes, was evaporated to dryness, and the residuum being
broken up and subjected to a red heat in a porcelain tube retort,
behaved precisely as coal under similar circumstances, _i.e._ it
evolved a smoke-like gaseous product, which, on being slightly
condensed, deposited hydro-sulphide of ammonium and coal tar, and
being thus purified, burnt in all respects like the well-known
compounds of the two carbides of hydrogen (common gas)."
Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, many years since, by destructive analysis, came
to the same conclusion respecting the carbonaceous nature of this deposit.
The presence of this foreign body in the lungs leads to the whole train of
pulmonary diseases. Asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia are but too
frequent, and we are consequently not surprised to hear that the aggregate
amount of sickness experienced by this class, for the period of life from
twenty to sixty, is 95 weeks, or 67 per cent, more than the general
average.
Rheumatism, leading to heart disease, is another very common complaint of
the miner. Indeed, all the conditions of ill-managed mines seem ready
prepared for the propagation of this disease. When mines are driven to any
considerable depth, the temperature proportionably increases, and 80
degrees of Fahrenheit is a common temperature at the end of workings, all
the year round. After exposure to this oppressive atmosphere during the
whole day, the collier perhaps suddenly emerges into the open air at the
pit's mouth, vitally depressed by his prolonged exertion, when the bitter
wind is shaving the surface of the earth at a temperature much below
freezing point. In the coal-field stretching from Valenciennes to
Aix-la-Chapelle, the mines are made conspicuous a long way off by the
presence of huge buildings, which enclose the machinery and the top of
the pit. In these buildings apartments are prepared in which the colliers
change their clothes before and after labour, and wash themselves in baths
filled with hot water from the steam waste-pipe. The importance of this
sanitary precaution is very great, inasmuch as colliers, like
chimney-sweeps, are subject to a skin disease, in consequence of the
begrimed condition of their skins. Lady Bassett has established these
baths, we understand, at her mines at Camborne, in Cornwall; but we think
that the enforcement of a sanitary act of such importance should not be
left to the philanthropic tendencies of individuals, but should be
required by the Government. If a provision of this kind were made
compulsory, and stricter legislation with respect to ventilating mines
were established, no doubt a vast amount of disease could be eliminated.
It is estimated that the worst coal mines can be ventilated thoroughly at
a cost of one penny per man per day, and that in well-constructed furnaces
the consumption of one ton of coals per day at the bottom of an up-cast
shaft will enable each collier to cut one ton of coals more per day with
the same amount of exertion. Such being the case, there can be no excuse
for asphyxiating the miners wholesale. Those proprietors of mines, who are
only open to these breeches-pocket appeals, should know that it is their
interest, in a pecuniary sense, to ventilate well, inasmuch as the
preservative effect of pure air upon the wood brattrices, which form so
expensive an item in mining, effects a saving of 80 per cent.
Our remarks hitherto have been directed entirely to coal mines and
colliers, as these are by far the most extensive industrial occupations of
the kind. The metalliferous mines, such as the tin and copper mines of
Cornwall, and lead mines of Derbyshire, are in pretty much the same
pestiferous condition, but in one particular they are still more
destructive of life than coal mines. In the latter the tired workman is
lifted from the depths of the mines to the surface by a rope. The Cornwall
miner, on the other hand, has to carry his exhausted body in some cases
thousands of feet up a series of steep ladders to the mouth of the mine.
It has been estimated that many miners have thus to make an exertion
every night equal to climbing to the summit of Cader Idris, and this in an
up-cast shaft used for the extraction of the foul air! The disastrous
effect upon the already weary miner has long been known, yet in only a few
of the great mines of Cornwall has the tireless arm of the steam-engine
been called in to save him from this unnecessary labour. The machinery
used is called a man-machine, and differs entirely from that employed in
coal-pits. In place of a rope, a beam of wood or iron descends through the
whole length of the shaft; this beam, at regular intervals of ten feet,
has little platforms attached to it, sufficient to afford standing-room to
a miner; at the sides of the shaft are similar platforms, at the same
intervals. At every stroke of the engine the beam ascends or descends
through the space of ten feet, consequently the miner has only to step
from the fixed platform to the moving one to be lifted ten feet every time
it ascends. In this manner as many as a hundred men are lifted at the same
time several thousand feet in a few minutes, without any more exertion
than is necessary to make a few score steps. This curious invention has
materially benefited the miner, and where it is used there is a manifest
absence of the heart disease, induced by the climbing of interminable
ladders placed in an almost vertical position.
Dr. Greenhow, in his report on the prevalence of certain diseases in
different districts of England and Wales, very clearly proves the
deleterious nature of the lead-miner's employment by the comparisons he
makes between the death-rates of the men and women of Reeth and Alston,
which are purely lead-mining districts. In the former, the lead-miners die
at the rate of 2,037 per 100,000 of all ages, whilst their wives, sisters,
and daughters, who are variously employed, die at the reduced rate of
1,711 per 100,000; in other words, lead-mining in this one typical
district caused an excess of no less than 3·26 deaths in every 100,000
inhabitants; and if we make a comparison relative to the prevalence of
pulmonary disease between the two sexes, above the age of twenty, we find
the death-rate of the men is double that of the women. The evil influence
of copper-mining on the male population is not quite so marked, but still
it is apparent enough. Thus, in Redruth, in which this kind of labour is
exclusively carried on, we find that in every 100,000 of population, 220
males die from pulmonary disease more than females; and in Penzance, which
is exclusively a tin-mining district, the superior waste of male over
female life, in the same population, of all ages, is 104.
The mason, like the miner, is particularly liable to suffer from the
presence of irritating substances in the lungs. It has been asserted that
in Edinburgh members of the craft rarely live more than fifty years. This
is doubtless owing to the nature of the material they work upon. There is
great reason to suppose that the degree of damage done to the delicate
air-cells of the lung is to be measured by the nature of the particles
inhaled. Thus, the ragged portions of granite detached by the chisel are
much more likely to do harm than the less irregular dust of the
bricklayer. In this manner we can account for the high rate of mortality
said to exist among the masons of our northern metropolis. The scourers in
the potteries exercise their fearful trade in an atmosphere loaded with
pulverised flints, a mineral dust of the most distressing character: we
are not surprised, therefore, to hear that in this process pulmonary
disease is still more rampant than among the Edinburgh masons, and is
little inferior to that of the dry grinders of Sheffield, who receive into
their lungs jagged particles of steel as well as grindstone dust.[52] It
will be unnecessary to consider all the trades which are affected by
dust, inasmuch as the artisans employed in them are similarly subjected to
pulmonary affections, if not in a like degree. Thus millers are rendered
consumptive and asthmatic by the floating meal of their mills;
snuff-makers by the snuff which pervades the air of their places of work;
pearl-button-makers suffer still more from the same cause; and the men of
Sheffield who haft knives with cocoa-wood or ebony are affected with a
disease exactly like the hay-asthma. The shoddy-grinders of the West
Riding, who grind and break up rags in a machine called "a devil," are
subjected to what they term the shoddy fever, in consequence of the
devil's dust given off in the tearing process. The dressers and preparers
of hair, especially of foreign hair, are speedily broken in health by the
dust and stench produced by their operations.