Chapter LIX: Miscellaneous Trades

_Silicate of Cotton._

The name silicate of cotton is misleading, for the manufacture of this substance has nothing whatever to do with cotton. It is a fleecy, white substance, hence the name. The danger in its manufacture is not from dust but from fluff of a metallic nature. Silicate of cotton is made from the refuse basic slag of ironworks. It is manufactured in Middlesborough, Redcar, Skinningrove, Hazlehead, etc. It is a small industry, and gives employment to very few people. The process of manufacture is simple. It consists in allowing a small, thin stream of molten slag to flow in a special direction, so that at a particular spot the stream is met by a strong blast of steam blown through a narrow pipe. Very minute particles of slag are thus formed, which are driven with great velocity into a collecting chamber in which no person could stand at the time. The small particles of slag are extremely viscous, and as they are blown through the air with very great velocity and meet resistance they become drawn out into very fine filaments like cotton wool, and fall to the ground as a loose, spongy material, not unlike snow or very fine spun glass. The material is then known as silicate of cotton, or slag wool. It contains the ordinary constituents of slag, viz., silica, lime, alumina, with a small percentage of iron and magnesia, etc. As it is a non-inflammable material and a non-conductor of heat, it is used for packing the pipes that come away from steam boilers, and for laying between floors to deaden sound, etc.

The danger to the health of the workmen lies in the inhalation of the fine filaments of slag wool, for they are extremely light, and this occurs mostly during the act of packing the silicate into bags. At this time the filaments are apt to get on to the skin and to adhere to the clothing, particularly where it meets the skin. On account of their sharp needle-like form they cause considerable irritation and induce an itchiness of the skin which is extremely trying, for it endures by night as well as by day, robbing the individual of his sleep, and as he is likely to scratch himself, the inflammation of the skin leads to eczema. Beyond this itchiness or pruritus, the Dangerous Trades Committee, whose description of the process of manufacture I have largely reproduced, did not find anything in the trade that could be considered prejudicial to health. The industry had been previously inspected by Mr Edward Gould, now Deputy Chief Inspector of Factories, but he did not observe anything in the occupation to cause it to be regarded as really dangerous. Yet it is scarcely an industry for growing lads to be sent to, as they seem to suffer more than men, probably on account of being more impatient under the influence of pruritus, and being less able to bear the effects of loss of sleep from it. The working shifts ought to be short, and the men when engaged in packing the slag wool ought to wear a veil or respirator. As it is desirable to cover the ears, nose, and eyes, a loose gauze or muslin veil is preferable. The men ought not to enter the chamber into which the slag wool has been blown until the atmosphere has become clear, through the settling down of the fleecy filaments.

_Upholsterers’ Occupation._

As the work of the upholsterer is largely concerned with the manipulation of feather, flock, hair, etc., the subject is indirectly dealt with under Shoddy and Rags. The dust is provocative of respiratory troubles. If the rags, feathers, and hair have not been previously cleaned, the dust not only causes bronchial irritation, but may be the means, owing to morbific germs adherent to these products, of causing infectious diseases such as smallpox and erysipelas, and such intestinal derangements as vomiting and diarrhœa.

The manufacture of mattresses is an unhealthy occupation, for the dust that escapes from wool and horsehair during the operation of carding often causes cough, difficulty of breathing, and retching, and if these have not been previously sterilised, the dust may cause blood-poisoning. Ramazini alludes to the ill-health of the Jews in Italy who undertook this work, and to the fact that they became emaciated.

Mattresses that have been lain upon by persons who have died of infectious diseases occasionally find their way into third-rate upholsterers’ shops, where their contents are picked and mattresses are re-made. It is very dusty work when the picking is done by hand, and besides, there escapes an unpleasant, sickening odour which causes headache and a feeling of malaise. When mattresses have become fouled in places by discharges from patients suffering from infectious diseases, considerable risk is incurred by those who by hand teaze the contents of such bespoiled bedding.

A short while ago a Commission in France dealt with the subject of the cleansing of bedding. It reported that used mattresses often harboured the germs of smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, and typhoid fever. Before any old mattress is picked, it ought to be exposed to a very high and dry temperature, say 100° C. or 212° F. Woollen and other flock materials should be previously exposed to superheated steam and afterwards to sulphurous acid vapour, which can be got from burning sulphur. In ordinary medical practice, particularly in large towns, many of the municipal authorities not only provide the means for sterilising, but require that the bedding that has been used in infectious cases shall be disinfected. It is desirable in the interests of the public that the Sanitary Authorities should also offer facilities to furniture dealers for the disinfection of second-hand mattresses, and that upholsterers who re-make these mattresses should not be allowed to have their contents picked by hand until they have been dry stoved. Cardage by machinery is fortunately replacing hand-picking, but in places where hand-picking is still carried on the workers should wear respirators, and the ventilation so arranged whereby the dust may be carried away from them.

From _feathers_ dust of a suffocating character is also given off. Sometimes it induces ophthalmia, also diseases of the bronchial tubes and lungs, but as feathers can be very readily disinfected by means of steam, and the industry is a small one and offers work only at irregular intervals, the number of people who actually suffer in health from feather dust is not large.

_Joiners and Carpenters: Workers in Sequoia Wood._

The occupation of joiners and carpenters is on the whole healthy. Beyond a greater amount of exertion required in some branches of the trade than in others, and greater exposure to the weather, the industry calls for very little consideration here. The removal of timber in dockyards is heavy work, but it is undertaken by labourers. A few years ago, when sawpits were more in use than now, the act of sawing imposed a considerable strain upon the men, and as the sawpits were often out of doors or at the best very imperfectly covered, the sawyers often suffered from rheumatic affections, bronchitis, and asthma. Thirty years ago, before machinery had so generally supplanted hand-sawing, sawyers occasionally came to the Newcastle Infirmary suffering from disease of the aortic valves, and presenting such other signs of cardio-vascular degeneration as are found in men whose work is hard, and who have been exposed to all kinds of weather. Beyond the large but diminishing number of surgical accidents caused by the circular saw, the use of this implement, especially when acting upon soft wood, cannot be regarded as the cause of ill-health to men employed in the joiner’s shop.

Carpenters are said to suffer from contracted tendons of the hand, owing to the protracted use of the chisel, and in men who plane much the hands become enlarged. As these workmen stand on their feet all day they run the risk of suffering from hernia and varicocele, but I am not disposed to admit that their liability to these affections is very much greater than in men in other trades, nor have I noticed to any extent, in turners, the depression of the left shoulder, the bulging of the shoulder-blade, and protrusion of the left hip, through the individual throwing the weight of his body upon the left leg when at work, to which some authors allude as of common occurrence.

_Sequoia Wood._--A short while ago my attention was directed by Sir James Russell of Edinburgh to a series of symptoms said to be experienced by joiners when working with sequoia wood. To Councillor Telfer of the same city I am indebted for a short account of the supposed effect of the sawdust on those who saw and chip the wood, also for samples of the sawdust. The symptoms produced resemble those of a bad cold in the head and chest. There is a running at the nose, with frequent fits of sneezing, irritation in the throat and chest, followed by coughing, laboured breathing and quickened pulse, and later on by a sense of oppression at the pit of the stomach and a smarting sensation in the eyes. The symptoms usually last for only twenty-four hours, and are especially pronounced in men working for the first time with the wood. By next morning the unpleasant symptoms just described have, as a rule, disappeared. A kind of tolerance comes in time to be established, although in the case of men who are the subjects of asthma and throat affections, their experience is painful and the effects enduring. I am informed that if a splinter of the wood penetrates the skin to any depth the wound almost invariably suppurates. The sequoia tree is a conifer, and is found in California. It requires a good deal of moisture, grows well in fog, which is said to be essential to its life, for on passing through the fog belt into clearer air no sequoia trees are to be found. It is a wood not unlike mahogany in appearance, and is used for house panelling. Dr R. A. Bolam and myself have examined sequoia sawdust both chemically and microscopically without finding in it anything definite to explain the symptoms attributed to working with the wood. It can be kept mixed with water without giving an acid reaction. I covered the floor of a rabbit’s hutch with sequoia sawdust instead of ordinary sawdust, but the rabbit confined in the cage, although thus exposed to it for several weeks, took no harm. Rats, on the other hand, seemed susceptible to sequoia sawdust; they suffered in a few instances from running at the nose. That the dust of some kinds of wood are more irritating than others has long been known. Rosewood, for example, has had a bad reputation in this respect. The presence of a large amount of inorganic matter in wood causes the sawdust to be much more irritating than that obtained from wood in which such inorganic matter is, comparatively speaking, absent.

_Manufacture of Celluloid._

In the manufacture of _celluloid_ two risks are incurred: (1) fire, and (2) inhalation of harmful vapours.

Celluloid is a complex product formed from pyroxiline, camphor, and alcohol. It was invented by an American named Hyatt in 1869. When rolled and compressed after having been very gently heated, it forms a hard, elastic, transparent substance, capable of taking a beautiful polish, and as various pigments can be added to it, celluloid can be made to resemble coral, ivory, ebony, malachite, etc. Heat quickly softens it. If brought into contact with a naked light it is readily ignited, producing a smoky flame and a disagreeable camphor-like odour. Several explosions and burns have been known to occur when hairdressers have been using celluloid combs in close proximity to a naked light. Celluloid is used for making billiard balls, knife and umbrella handles, combs, frames for eyeglasses, also washable imitations of linen,--for example, American cuffs and collars, etc.[179]

One of the principal dangers in regard to using celluloid is fire. No naked lights, therefore, should be allowed near at hand, nor should there be any open hearths where celluloid is being manufactured or stored. Should celluloid by any chance become ignited, sand and water will extinguish the fire.

There are also dangers incidental to its manufacture. Pyroxiline is prepared from vegetable cellulose by treating it with nitric and sulphuric acids. Apart from the burning accidentally caused by these acids, the workpeople breathe while in the factory an atmosphere charged with nitrous vapour, which causes cough, a feeling of suffocation followed at times by bloody expectoration and signs of pulmonary congestion. No mixing and pounding of the celluloid should be done in open tubs, but in hooded receptacles, so that the irritating fumes are carried away from the workmen. Gloves ought to be worn. No young person should be employed in the industry.

_Tobacco and Cigar Manufacture._

Medical opinion is divided as to whether the manufacture of tobacco and cigars really exercises any injurious influence upon the workers. As far back as 1846 this subject was carefully investigated by Dr Melier at the request of the Academy of Medicine of Paris. In the manufacture of tobacco for smoking it is generally conceded that during the chopping up of the leaves and their subsequent exposure to a high temperature in shallow vessels, certain fumes are given off that are obnoxious to the workmen engaged in this operation, also that during the grinding of snuff irritating gases and dust are evolved. Apart from these, however, the industry is on the whole a healthy one. Some people have an idiosyncrasy which causes them to be easily affected by tobacco. New hands on entering a tobacco factory for the first time often experience a good deal of nausea, headache, and giddiness, and they sometimes too have a sense of faintness, but by degrees they become accustomed to the odours. At the Newcastle Dispensary I am occasionally consulted by female tobacco-spinners on account of persistent headache, nausea, dislike to food, anæmia, and muscular feebleness. I have never observed the transient loss of sight nor the pharyngeal catarrh alluded to by some writers. Melier held the opinion that working in tobacco arrested tuberculous disease, but this is simply an opinion, and is uncorroborated by the experience of others. Poisson and Eulenburg take the opposite view, and maintain that tuberculosis is a very frequent disease indeed in tobacco workers, especially in females. In the lungs of tobacco-workers, both at home and abroad, there have been found pigmentation and patches of brown induration. Similar lesions have been observed in the lungs of animals experimentally exposed to tobacco dust; but at the best these changes in the human subject must be regarded as of extremely rare occurrence, and are more than likely due to the inhalation of vegetable and mineral dusts which dry tobacco often contains. Given a healthy man or woman, and a well-ventilated factory provided with the proper means for removing dust and foul air, there is nothing in the manufacture of tobacco or in the making of cigars to cause the occupation to be regarded as one very prejudicial to health. Anæmic girls and those with an idiosyncrasy to tobacco are not good subjects. As to the work causing excessive menstruation and producing sterility, confirmation is required; and the same remark applies to the supposed frequency with which pregnant tobacco-workers and cigar-makers are said to miscarry. In _Poisons Industriels_, p. 201, it is stated that the midwives who attend the female tobacco-workers of the Rue Jean-Nicot in Paris often remark upon the readiness with which pregnant cigar and cigarette makers abort, and that the only way by which it is possible for a pregnant tobacco-worker to carry her child to term is to give up her employment for the time being. It is also stated that the infants are either born dead or die soon after birth. Out of 100 pregnancies in female cigar-makers, Dr Jacquemart observed 45 miscarriages. Personally I do not attach much importance to these statements, nor to that regarding infants suckled at the breast, who are said to suffer from colic after a meal, and to die from inanition. In Madrid infants are taken at certain hours of the day to the large cigar factories to be suckled by their mothers. While I am far from countenancing the practice, I must admit that, having examined as many as 30 and 40 infants being thus fed at a time, the children looked plump and healthy; so, too, did the mothers. Tobacco is not an emmenagogue. Its abortifacient properties, it seems to me, have been exaggerated; and in this I am supported by Poincaré, and also by Ygonin, who found in 750 female cigar-makers that miscarriages were by no means more frequent than in women engaged in other occupations.

The subject of amblyopia or loss of vision in tobacco-workers is dealt with in another part of this book by Mr Simeon Snell.[180]

An interesting contribution to the subject of the manufacture of cigars, from the social and hygienic standpoint, appears in the _Economic Journal_, December 1900, from the pen of Miss Grace Oakeshott. It is the result of an inquiry undertaken by the Women’s Industrial Council. Smokers need hardly be reminded that two kinds of cigars are made, the machine or moulded, and the handmade cigar, nor is it necessary to do more than mention the superiority of the latter over the former. A woman requires rather a long apprenticeship, nearly five years, before she becomes an adept in making handmade cigars. Miss Oakeshott had several opportunities of coming into close contact with female cigar-makers, from whom she learned that they themselves believe there is nothing in the work that is unhealthy nor in any way trying to an ordinarily healthy woman. The occupation is decidedly sedentary, and it is more than probable that the women sit too long. As to a supposed protection to the workers from epidemic disease afforded by tobacco, I am not in a position either to support or contradict the statement. I doubt it. In 1862 a Parliamentary Report was published on the tobacco manufactories of Lancashire. It dealt especially with the female workers in Liverpool. The medical men gave it as their opinion in the report that tobacco had no permanent effect upon the health of the workers, and that “though at first the women were attacked by sickness and faintness due to the smell of tobacco and to insufficient ventilation, they soon grew accustomed to this, and that, moreover, at the time of a cholera epidemic the cigar-makers in the town were free from the disease altogether.”

Women, taken all in all, are slower cigar-makers than men. Men will make from 800 to 1270 cigars in a week, and women from 400 to 800, and yet it occasionally happens that a woman who is an exceptionally quick worker will beat the best male worker. The cigar trade is one that requires deftness and skill in manipulation, and as both of these are possessed by women’s fingers, the occupation is one particularly suited for women. The work is neither hard nor laborious; it is quiet, and on the whole it is well paid.

_Engine-Drivers and Railway Employés._

What strikes one most in dealing with the subject of workmen employed on railways is the large number of accidents that befall them. It is a general opinion that engine-drivers are a healthy class of men. The records of their Insurance Societies show this, and medical experience confirms it. The wages that drivers receive enable them to buy good food. As they have few opportunities of getting much physical exercise, several of the men become rather obese. My own professional knowledge of engine-drivers is limited. Most of those whom I have had medically to deal with have suffered from acute inflammatory affections of the chest, or from dyspeptic troubles due to their long and irregular hours, their long journeys, and lengthened absence from home. These irregularities oblige drivers and firemen to take with them on the engine food already cooked, and often to eat it when they can. Their duties are of an anxious nature, and are accompanied by a considerable amount of nerve tension, which may cause them to break down in health. Dr Alexander Scott, of Glasgow, at the meeting of the British Medical Association at Cheltenham, August 1901, expressed the opinion that most of the accidents on the line are the result of nervous tension on the part of railway servants. He cited instances of signal-men becoming paralysed through fear, and of experienced engine-drivers losing their head and suffering from temporary mental aberration. Nervous tension causes headache, weariness of brain, and sleeplessness. Whether it is in consequence of this nerve strain that engine-drivers as a class suffer more frequently from diabetes than men engaged in other occupations, I am not prepared to say. Dr Atkinson, of Crewe, states that engine-men are usually long lived, but that they are subject to bronchitis in winter, while their common complaints are indigestion, varicocele, and varicose veins, the latter in consequence of their prolonged standing. Out of 4000 men employed at Crewe, not more than 6 die annually from phthisis.

Through the kindness of Dr Atkinson, of Crewe, I have been furnished with the Annual Reports of the London and North-Western Railway Insurance Society for Drivers and Firemen for the last six years. The average number of men in the society has been 10,817. The average annual number of deaths during these six years has been 91, and the average annual number of deaths from accidents 9.6; that is to say, one-tenth of the deaths is due to accidents received when at work. On looking over the causes of death, it is noticed that the largest number of men die from old age, and that pneumonia, heart and kidney diseases, also the combined influence of these two latter, carry off by far the next largest proportion. I am struck, however, by the number of deaths from diabetes. They vary from one to four per annum; no age period is spared, but the maximum rate of mortality is above fifty years of age. More of the men die from pneumonia than phthisis, probably in consequence of exposure. Dr Atkinson concludes a letter by remarking that drivers and firemen “are very long lived and healthy, and fewer of them suffer from hernia than the public generally.”

Stokers are said to suffer from pulmonary anthracosis, a form of consumption like coal-miners’ phthisis, but I am doubtful of the prevalency of this ailment among stokers, just as I am of their becoming deaf owing to the soundings of the whistle. Men employed in the sheds cleaning the engines with soda and potash often become thin and anæmic, but if they are given outside work they rapidly regain the appearance of health.

_Labourers_ on the railway employed to look after the transport of living cattle, or who have to handle the carcases of dead beasts, skins, and hides, run the risk of contracting blood-poisoning. As the identity of human and bovine tuberculosis has recently been disputed by Koch, the following fact is of considerable importance. Two labourers employed on an American railway to clean and repair cars used for transporting cattle, suffered from local tuberculosis of the skin, following a slight injury to the hand caused by a splint of wood. One of the men died a year afterwards from tuberculous disease of the lungs. There is every reason, therefore, why infected cattle and carcases should not be allowed to be carried by rail. In our own country we know how often anthrax has been traced to the importation of diseased hides and infected hair (see “Anthrax”). While people may thus become infected, not only on the railways but in the factories, it is absolutely necessary that diseased cattle should not be allowed to travel either by road or rail. In the event of infected animals having been conveyed by rail, complete disinfection of the waggons is an absolute necessity. This is sometimes done by washing out the interior of the waggons and brushing them with quicklime. Superheated steam is by many believed to be better than antiseptic solutions, for if these are to be of any service they must be used strong. Pasteur taught that all disease-causing germs were destroyed at a temperature of 110° C., or 233° F., and that moist heat is superior to dry. A few minutes’ exposure to superheated steam kills even the most resistant microbes, so that where vehicles have been employed in the transport of infected cattle, patients suffering from enteric fever, and in warfare of soldiers with discharging wounds, disinfection should be resorted to immediately after discharge of the cargo.

(For further remarks on disinfection, see article “Anthrax,” p. 642).

_Drivers of Public Vehicles._

Drivers of public vehicles suffer and become prematurely old in consequence of their exposure to inclement weather, late hours, and irregularity in getting their meals. Alcoholism and exposure to cold are responsible for their tendency to develop gout and rheumatism, and through these disorders to secondary affections of the kidneys, heart, and respiratory organs. They die at the rate of 1482 to 1000 of the male population generally.

_Cooks._

The average age at death of cooks is fifty-four years. Heat affects cooks differently; some become extremely stout and unhealthy looking, while others, in consequence of the heat, working in cellar kitchens by artificial light, and deprived of the fresh air, become pale, suffer from headache, lose their appetite, and have occasional bleedings at the nose. Many of them suffer, too, from varicose veins, owing to standing so long on their feet. Others suffer from eczema of the hands. Subterranean kitchens are bad from a hygienic point of view. Every kitchen should be well ventilated and have good daylight. The introduction of gas stoves into kitchens has not improved matters. They are very convenient, but ventilation is interfered with, and the atmosphere is liable to be contaminated when the gas stoves are not provided with adequate means for carrying off the products of combustion. Often, too, the indiarubber tube that carries the gas emits an unpleasant odour. The tube may become cracked, allowing coal-gas to escape, and as arsenic has been found in some indiarubber tubes, this substance may enter into combination with the gases that are of themselves harmful, and thus further help to undermine the health of those working in the kitchen.

_Confection Makers._

Confection makers suffer from caries of the teeth, and from ophthalmia and headache, and from the effects of great heat.

_Domestic Servants and Housemaids, etc._

Domestic servants in well-to-do and upper middle-class families are not unhealthy. They are well fed, but either do not get or take as much open air exercise as they ought. It is in the maid-of-all-work, and in servants employed in the smaller houses where there are large families, and in lodging-houses, that we find the worst indications of the effects of domestic service. The sleeping accommodation for servants, even in large houses, is not always as good as it should be. Their rooms, which are at the top of the house, are small, badly lit, often without a fireplace, and therefore badly ventilated. Their hours of toil are long, and the demands made upon domestic servants are numerous, often exacting, and frequently protracted well on into the evening. Small wonder that, owing to their deprivation of fresh air, the monotony of their work in many instances, the conflict of tempers, and the imperfect food obtainable in poorer families and lodging-houses, many young women break down in health, become anæmic, suffer from headache and derangement of the digestive and pelvic organs. There is one illness domestic servants seem to be very prone to, and that is ulcer of the stomach. It used to be stated in medical text-books that cooks were more liable than any other class of female servants to ulcer of the stomach, a circumstance that was attributed to their frequently tasting very hot foods. My own experience at the Newcastle Infirmary is that housemaids suffer in at least as large a proportion as cooks do from ulcer of the stomach, but why I cannot say, unless it be that as a class they are more anæmic, and anæmia is a predisposing cause to gastric ulcer. It is an opinion held by several asylum physicians and others, that domestic servants form a very large percentage of the inmates of asylums. I have taken pains to ascertain the facts upon which this opinion rests, by applying to Dr McDowall, of the Northumberland County Asylum, and to Dr Calcott, of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Asylum at Cox Lodge. The total admissions of women into the Northumberland County Asylum for five years, 1886 to 1890 inclusive, were 415. Of these, 48, or 11.3 per cent., were domestic servants, 15 were housekeepers, and 189 housewives, by which is usually meant married women. The area from which these patients are drawn is agricultural and mining. Taking outdoor work as a healthy but often badly paid occupation as a contrast, I find that 11 field-workers were admitted as against 48 domestic servants. Dr McDowall does not think “there is an excessive amount of insanity among domestic servants.” It is only right to add that in addition to the above there were 101 females admitted classed under “no occupation,” and that many of these were young women who were at home and helped in housework.

The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Asylum, on the other hand, draws its patients from the city, where the typical domestic servant is more likely to be found than in the districts that supply the County Asylum. Dr Calcott has been good enough to send me a table showing the occupation of female patients received into the Newcastle City Asylum during the past twenty years, and embracing 1000 cases. The following is the percentages:--Housewives, _i.e._ married women, widows, and daughters acting as housekeepers to fathers, brothers, and relatives, 47.7 per cent.; domestic servants, 14.60, or, including women keeping house for artisans, 2.03, a total percentage of 16.63. This is a large percentage for domestic servants compared with 0.46 for shop girls. The Whittingham Asylum, near Preston, Lancashire, draws patients from a different class of occupations to those in Newcastle. I find in the Report of that Asylum of 1899, that there were 196 females admitted during the year. Of these, 26 were domestic servants; housekeepers and housewives numbered 102, contrasted with 24 mill hands and factory operatives. Next to housekeepers, which includes married women, domestic servants stood highest in the list of admission.

“Housemaids’ Knee” is an inflammation of the bursa in front of the knee-cap, and is caused by pressure and friction.

_Barmen and Dealers in Alcoholic Drinks._

Publicans and licensed victuallers are notoriously a short-lived class. The modern tendency of brewers to buy out the smaller publicans and to form “tied” houses is causing the older type of landlords to disappear, and is replacing them by men often drawn from an inferior rank of life. In large industrial centres the men who are placed in charge of bars or who take over public-houses for themselves have frequently been previously engaged in the ordinary trades of the district. As subsequent events too often show, the life adopted, however gilded it may appear, is attended with considerable danger. The occupation of the publican is sedentary. Without any exercise in the open air, his long day is too often spent in an atmosphere reeking with the odour of spirits, tobacco smoke, and emanations from the men and women who lounge at the bar; and this, coupled with the numerous temptations to drink, and his irregular meals, sooner or later induces structural alterations in the liver, lungs, and heart, that bring life to a premature close. According to Ogle, innkeepers and publicans have a comparative mortality figure of 1521 as against 1000 of the general population, an unenviable position, which is corroborated by the statistics of the Scottish Amicable Insurance Society, which show that dealers in intoxicating drinks have a mortality of 68 per cent. in excess of the Actuaries’ or healthy Male Tables, and 49 per cent. in excess of the English Life Tables. The mortality is 51 per cent., roughly speaking, above that for all males. In no other class of men, as might be expected from the opportunities offered, is the mortality from _alcoholism_ so high as in innkeepers and publicans. It is from five to seven times higher than the average. The only occupation that approximates to it from a mortality point of view is that of cabmen. There is a belief that the mortality among publicans from alcohol is diminishing, but Dr Tatham’s statistics for 1890–92, which appeared in the _British Medical Journal_ for January 1898, do not confirm this. Some barmen, it is true, are teetotallers, and many are extremely temperate, but all are living under conditions of great temptation. The dangerous nature of the occupation lies not so much in the fact that barmen may get repeatedly drunk and run the risk of delirium tremens, but in the opportunities that are offered of continually nipping. It is the frequent nipping, begun early in the day and continued through it, often without food and an increasing distaste for it, that slowly undermines the physical and mental health of the publicans, is the cause of the large number of suicides among them, and of the large number of barmen that are carried off by cirrhosis of the liver and kidney disease before they reach the age of forty.

Working brewers are also unhealthy. They have, according to Ogle, a mortality figure of 1361 as against 1521 for publicans, but while they present a lower mortality figure and greater freedom from alcoholism, they have a higher mortality from heart and lung diseases, especially consumption, a circumstance which is attributed to their greater exposure to varying temperatures and to wet, their figures for phthisis being 334 as against 295 for publicans. Brewers and their assistants are more liable to accidents; these, like all alcoholic subjects, they bear badly. Dr Tatham’s statistics are more recent than Ogle’s, and they show that all occupations connected with the liquor traffic have even a higher mortality rate than those furnished by previous decennial reports. The figures are for brewers 1427, innkeepers and publicans 1642, and for inn and hotel servants, 1725. Taking 100 as representing the mean mortality among all occupied males for each of the subjoined causes of death, the comparative mortality figures for publicans, innkeepers, and their servants are 723 from alcoholism, 600 from gout, 271 from diabetes, 644 from diseases of the liver, 210 from urinary diseases, and 207 from suicide.

_Sewing-Machine Workers._

If seamstresses and tailors in days gone by suffered, in consequence of plying the needle for many hours a day, from contracted fingers and rheumatic swellings of the joints; and tailors, owing to their cross-legged position when at work, from atrophy of the muscles of the limbs, bandy-legs, and deformities of the chest, the introduction of the sewing-machine about 1855, while removing these evils, was at first believed to have introduced others of its own. To sit working a sewing-machine, as thousands of anæmic women in this country are doing six days in every week, is to aggravate the physical conditions upon which their bloodlessness depends, to court neuralgia, and to encourage lethargy of some of the eliminating organs, but beyond exaggerating certain functional disorders, I do not think that to working the sewing-machine can be traced any real organic disease. It has been asserted that the vibration to which the spine is subjected is a cause of spinal-cord disease, and of such a disorder as locomotor ataxia. There is no truth in this statement. I know of no instances, nor is it likely that the jolting of the spine could cause locomotor ataxia any more than the movements of the knees induce disorders of the genital organs and encourage immoral practices, which some medical men claimed for the sewing-machine on its introduction. The one statement is just as unfounded as the other. Working the sewing-machine too long may be followed by muscular cramps, and even by loss of power in the limbs, due to irritation of the flexor and extensor muscles of the legs. The principal effects, however, are vague muscular pains in the limbs and loins, and a sense of fatigue, but I question whether these pains are more pronounced in sewing-machine workers than in shop girls and women who are doing other kinds of work. It is a sedentary occupation, but given a good constitution to start with, well-ventilated workrooms, and not too prolonged hours of toil, coupled with such open air exercise as a reasonable walk twice a day, between the home and the workroom, provides, along with good wages to get sufficient food, it cannot be said to be unhealthy. Women, recognising that the work is sedentary, ought themselves to take the necessary means to keep the bowels open, for obstinate constipation is not only a cause of anæmia, it ladens the blood with impurities that induce headache, the too frequent recurrence of which obliges the individual to give up her employment.

_Label-licking._

In thread mills young girls are often employed to put labels on the bobbins. This they do by licking the labels, and as a consequence children are known to have suffered from swollen submaxillary glands, as reported in 1895 by Miss Anderson,[181] Principal Lady Inspector of Factories. This unwholesome practice is not confined to thread mills, it prevails in many industries in which small packets are being labelled for sale. The work is generally given to young persons and children. It is undertaken, therefore, at an age when growth is active, and the system is in need of all its digestive juices. The practice entails an enormous loss of saliva daily. Quite apart from this circumstance weakening the digestive functions, there is always the risk of the coloured labels containing, as Professor Thorpe’s[181] analysis showed, copper and lead. Besides, there is the risk that the adhesive part of the label owes its sticking properties not to gum, but to substances of an animal nature, such as serum, to the presence of which have been traced some minor forms of blood poisoning, and the painful affection known as “stamp-lickers’ tongue.” As a consequence ulcers in the mouth sometimes develop, and from these ulcers poisonous material is absorbed and carried by the lymphatics to the glands underneath the jaw, setting up an acute inflammation or adenitis.

Stamp-lickers’ tongue is an infective process which generally yields to antiseptic treatment, such as a weak carbolic, boric, or hyposulphite of soda mouth-wash. It is not so generally known as it ought to be, that the licking of stamps may be followed by tubercular disease. The following fact is therefore worthy of being more publicly recorded. Dr Busquet,[182] a surgeon-major in the French army, and engaged in the Bacteriological Laboratory attached to the military hospital at Dey, in Algiers, received into the hospital a young soldier far advanced in tubercular disease of the lungs. He was a collector of foreign stamps. Unused stamps he generally fixed in his album by licking them. In order to test some stamps, Dr Busquet bought three hundred for his patient, many of which were for the purpose of exchange. These stamps were placed in sterilised water. At the end of twenty-four hours, Busquet inoculated guinea-pigs with the water. Of eight animals thus treated all became tuberculous, and at the post-mortem examination they showed various tubercular lesions in their internal organs. School boys and girls form the larger number of philatelists, and as they often wet the stamps with their tongue the danger incidental to this practice is apparent. What has been said of foreign stamps may not apply equally to label-licking, and yet labels are often lying about in a factory exposed to the dusty atmosphere of the workroom in which microbes of disease are known to abound. We cannot always be sure too that the solution of gum was sterile to commence with, and that it was spread upon the labels by healthy persons. There is no wish to exaggerate the importance of microbes in causing disease; all that is here insisted upon is that label-licking is an unhealthy and an unpleasant occupation, one that can be better and just as cheaply done by mechanical contrivances than by wasting children’s saliva. That large quantities of saliva are used up in the process is shown by the fact that half-timers will lick as many as forty to fifty gross of labels in one day, and an adult woman as many as ninety gross. Where factory owners have introduced the use of dampers, they have found that by such artificial means the fixing of labels on bobbins can be just as expeditiously performed.

_Glass Manufacture: Glass-Blowing._

The manufacture of glass is a very old industry. The Egyptians made glass more than 4000 years ago. Probably they learned the art from the Phœnicians or Jews. When Rome was at its zenith the number of Jewish glass-makers was so great that a special quarter of the city was set apart for them. These men turned out beautiful works of art, as the specimens in the Vatican and the British and French Museums show. Glass is supposed to have been introduced into England in the year 676 A.D., but the first glass works in London were not established until 1557. Two centuries ago Lancashire led the way in making plate glass. British sheet glass began to be made in Birmingham in 1832. So far as plate glass for mirrors and windows is concerned the British-made article is bad to beat. St Helens in Lancashire is the home of the manufacture of this particular kind of glass, which is composed of sand, soda salt, lime, felspar (quartz), and occasionally red lead and black oxide of manganese. These when melted together form a silicate, the sand supplying the silicic acid. Boric can be substituted for silicic acid. These substances are all fused together at an extremely high temperature in circular furnaces, with several small openings through which the workmen, wearing blue-tinted spectacles, can view the molten mass. Boys dip the end of a long hollow iron tube into the lake of molten material and, removing a _blob_ on the end of the tube, take it to the men standing close by, who blow down the iron tube and cause the glowing mass to become globular. They fix and regulate the shape of the globe by occasionally rolling it on a small iron table. As the mass at the end of the iron tube cools further expansion of the glass by blowing becomes impossible, and so it becomes necessary to again replace the unfinished product at the end of the rod in the furnace. This is in time removed and again blown, restored to the furnace and manipulated until a completely finished article is evolved. This has still to undergo a process of annealing or toughening so as to prevent it cracking or breaking readily. The process consists in again exposing the glass to a high temperature, gradually raised and just as gradually lowered. Frosted glass is made by forcing a jet of sand under very great pressure upon particular parts of the glass. Sheet glass, on the other hand, is formed from a large mass of molten material adherent to the end of a blow-pipe, which, when it becomes large enough, is swung round and round in the air until it becomes oblong. It is then cut and the mass is allowed to fall flat. In order to flatten it still more the sheet is put into an oven; when rendered pliable by the heat it is removed and smoothed out by wood. In the manufacture of plate glass no blowing is required. A pot of molten glass is carried by a travelling crane to the casting-table, which is made of smooth iron with an elevated rim. Upon this table the liquid is poured. By means of rollers the workmen spread the layer out equally until it is of uniform thickness. After cooling, the glass is annealed in the manner already described. It is subsequently ground with sand and water, and afterwards polished with emery or putty powder.

The risks to health incurred by makers of glass are mainly those due to exposure to excessively high temperatures, _e.g._ bronchial and pulmonary affections; many of the men die from phthisis. They bear pneumonia badly owing to their intemperate habits. Dr Scheele, in the _Berlin. Klinische Wochenschrift_, March 1900, has drawn attention to what is known as “glass-blowers’ mouth.” Large swellings like air-cushions can be seen and felt in some glass-blowers, extending from the angle of the mouth to below the ears. The swellings look like mumps. They involve the parotid gland only. They crepitate under the finger, and by pressure can be made to disappear. It is only recently that these swellings in the cheeks of glass-blowers have attracted attention, and especially in France. The relaxation of the cheeks, the _joues casées_ of French glass-blowers, is by some attributed to a faulty method of blowing. From glass-blowers under my care in the Newcastle Infirmary I have ascertained that the malady is not unknown among the men in the works on Tyneside. Dr Scheele found that it was present in only 2.5 per cent. of blowers, some of whom had worked for years. In those who had thus suffered the duct that leads from the interior of the mouth to the parotid gland had become dilated owing to the repeated entrance of air into it under considerable pressure: the mucous membrane of the inside of the cheek, too, showed thick pale patches, _plaques opalines_, which Guinard regarded as the result of the great pressure and straining the buccal mucous membrane was exposed to during the act of blowing. Under ordinary forced expiration the pressure inside the closed mouth is equivalent to from 6 to 9 millimetres of mercury, but in glassblowing it may rise to 90 and even as high as 110 mm. In the course of an ordinary day a good workman will blow as many as from 600 to 700 bottles.

In consequence of the strain experienced by glass-blowers other defects are occasionally observed; one is deafness due to increased internal pressure in the middle ear, and the other is a painless deformity of the fingers (_main en crochet_) due to the manner in which the blow-pipe is grasped.

Glass-workers are exposed to other dangers. Dr Pröbsting,[183] an oculist in Cologne, has found that in 12 per cent. of the factory operatives in Ehrenfield who are upwards of forty years of age, the crystalline lens of the eye becomes opaque. One of the most frequent causes of this form of cataract is exposure to the intense heat on the part of glass-makers, especially the workmen who remove the molten material from the furnace. Owing to the manner in which they handle their implements these men generally stand with the left side of their face towards the furnace. It is generally the left eye that becomes the seat of cataract. Meyhöfer believes that the excessive perspiration of glass-makers plays an important part in producing this change in the lens. A third cause may be the brilliant white light that dazzles workers in glass, and which, by fatiguing the retina of the eye, reflexly influences the lens. Mr Simeon Snell’s experience does not quite corroborate that of Dr Pröbsting.[184]

A new method of making hollow glass ware, _e.g._ tumblers, etc., has lately been introduced. The blowing is no longer done by men exhaling air from their lungs, but by driving in compressed air by means of machinery. One machine managed by four men and seven boys can turn out 500 tumblers in an hour, or 5000 in a day, whereas the same number of operatives working under old methods can only throw off 40 tumblers in an hour. In large glass factories the work often goes on night and day in double shifts, particularly on the Continent. The use of compressed air in glassblowing is very desirable, for by its use many of the ill effects consequent upon the present methods of blowing would soon disappear. The more frequent wearing of blue-tinted spectacles by the workmen, too, would tend to lessen the frequency of cataract.

_Glazed Ware Poisonous from other Causes than Lead.--Cyanide of
Potassium._

The United States Consul at Mayence, in December 1900, uttered a word of warning to purchasers of silvered glass and porcelain, which is deserving of notice. In order to apply the silver by the galvano-caustic method in use, the ware has to be dipped in a bath highly charged with cyanide of potassium. However carefully treated, the surface is never perfectly smooth, but conceals innumerable fine cracks. The cyanide lies in the minute fissures and cannot be removed during manufacture. As a consequence both the use and the handling of the ware may be followed by poisonous effects. Cyanide of potassium contains the well-known poison, prussic acid. Owing to the danger to health incurred by the workmen and the public, some large firms have abandoned the manufacture of goods by this process, but the ware is still exported from Frankfort, Stuttgart, and Berlin. Attempts are being made to devise non-poisonous methods of plating these goods.

_Coal-heaving, Coal-trimming, and Chimney-sweeping._

Men employed in the first two of the above occupations are much exposed to the weather and to dust given off during the tipping of coal, while in the case of chimney-cleaning the sweep is exposed to the effects of soot that has been formed during the combustion of coal. The men who perform the rough, heavy labour on quays and staithes, loading and unloading ships with coal, or who fill sacks with the fuel, are called coal-heavers, while the men who are in the holds of vessels, shovelling and distributing the coal therein, are known as coal-trimmers. Usually the men are well developed and of good physique, but as a class they are extremely intemperate. On Tyneside they earn good wages, but a large part of them goes in drink. Owing to the many delays to which steamers are exposed the work of these men is rather irregular, a circumstance which does not conduce to steady habits. Beyond the risk of accidents, and the hard and exposed nature of the calling of the coal-heaver, there is nothing that is particularly dangerous in it, if the men themselves are careful. The trimmers when in the further recesses of the holds of vessels work in a dusty atmosphere, but the dust readily escapes. On coming out of the holds they often bring up a black spit, but this is mostly pigmented mucus from the bronchi. Phthisis and pulmonary disease carry off a large percentage of coal-heavers and trimmers. It must be admitted that neglect of common colds, and the indifference to health created by intemperate habits, are to a large extent responsible for these maladies.

_Chimney sweeps_ form pretty well a social class by themselves. Their occupation cannot be regarded as a healthy one. To pulmonary, cardiac, and kidney diseases sweeps are particularly liable. Soot has a peculiarly irritating effect on the skin. It induces eczema, and is apt to cause inflammation of the eyelids, hence the “blear” eye exhibited by many sweeps. Occasionally the soot enters the skin, and is transported by the cells along the lymphatic vessels to distant parts of the body. A short while ago the question was raised in the pages of the _Lancet_, Do coal miners suffer from cancer? In a paper which I read at the Sanitary Congress in Newcastle-on-Tyne five years ago, I showed, from statistics of admissions into the Newcastle and Sunderland Infirmaries and the Durham County Hospital, that coal miners were anything but exempted from cancer. It is interesting to note, too, that while coal dust when inhaled is followed only by an inflammatory reaction in the pulmonary tissue surrounding the entangled particles of dust, coal when burnt undergoes some peculiar chemical change, whereby soot has conferred upon it properties of a specially irritating nature, for only thus can we explain the prevalence of cancer in chimney sweeps, a disease with which hospital surgeons at home, particularly in London, have been long familiar. Taking Dr Ogle’s statistics of the deaths of 242 chimney sweeps, 49 were due to malignant disease. Expressed in other words, Ogle found that while among all males in England and Wales between twenty-five and sixty-five years of age the proportion of deaths from malignant disease was in the ratio of 36 per 1000 deaths from all causes, it was in sweeps 202. Reference may here be made to the opinions expressed by Dr Tatham in this book, _vide_ “Dust-Producing Occupations,” upon the mortality of sweeps from cancer. His statistics, which are more recent than Ogle’s, indicate that the mortality from different forms of cancer amounts to 156, compared with 44, the figure for occupied males in the aggregate. Chimney sweeps have a liability to cancer eight times greater than other persons. The disease tends to locate itself in the scrotum more than in other organs. To this subject Mr Henry T. Butlin, F.R.C.S., Surgeon to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, has given considerable attention, and has embodied his experience in a series of lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons.[185] There is a widespread opinion that chimney sweeps’ cancer is seldom met with in any other part of the civilised world than in Great Britain; also, that during recent years, in this country, it is becoming rarer. Statistics show that it occurs very infrequently on the Continent. Many French hospital surgeons say they have never seen a case of cancer of the scrotum in a chimney sweep. In Vienna during eleven years, 1874 to 1884 inclusive, only one case of scrotal cancer was reported, and in that instance the patient was not a chimney sweep. During the years 1878 to 1885 not one case occurred in the large town hospitals of Berlin, and yet in four of the large London hospitals in one year, 1884, there were five cases of chimney sweeps’ cancer admitted; during 1881, into a similar number of Metropolitan hospitals there were received four patients suffering from this affection. It is sometimes stated that cancer in chimney sweeps has practically disappeared in Britain. This is not so. As Dr Tatham has shown in his article on “Dust-Producing Occupations,” there has been within the last twenty years a considerable decrease in the mortality of sweeps from this cause; but that it still claims annually a large number of victims in this trade is, unfortunately, too true. During a recent period of twenty years, there were admitted into St Bartholomew’s Hospital alone 39 cases of cancer of the scrotum, and of these patients 29 were chimney sweeps. So far, then, as London is concerned, there are every year in its hospitals one or two cases of chimney sweeps’ cancer in the wards. In Newcastle it is only rarely met with.

There is a theory that the supposed decline of sweeps’ cancer is due to the prohibition of “climbing boys,” to the use of machinery, cleaner habits of sweeps, and the abolition of passing soot through sieves for agricultural purposes. That the disease we are alluding to is cancer there is no doubt. It often commences in the form of a wart or warts on the scrotum, and as these are very frequently followed by cancer, what is called the “soot wart” becomes the “soot cancer.” These warts may exist for years. In many instances they never take on malignant action at all. The warts are liable to be rubbed and irritated by the dirty clothes of the sweep and by soot, and in consequence they become larger and ulcerate, the ulceration extending superficially along the skin or penetrating deeper into the testicle. The glands in the groin become enlarged at first from irritation, but ultimately they assume the malignant characters of the original ulcer. Under any circumstance, even when the disease is far advanced, death comes but slowly; emaciation does not progress rapidly, strength is gradually lost, and the general health is undermined by the profuse and sickening discharges from the open sores. On post-mortem examination of the body secondary disease, as might be expected, is frequently found in the peritoneal cavity, liver, and lungs. On microscopical examination of the scrotal ulcer the appearances presented are those met with in epithelioma or squamous cell cancer.

Although the dirty clothes of chimney sweeps and their want of personal cleanliness have been regarded as causes of the cancer, there is a feeling that the real cause resides in the soot itself, for there are many trades that are as dirty as chimney sweeping, and yet the men engaged therein do not suffer from scrotal cancer. Gardeners, who have been in the habit of using soot for the protection of plants from slugs (see paper by Mr D’Arcy Power, page 237), are known to have developed cancer in the hand. How soot causes cancer it is difficult to say. By some pathologists the sulphurous acid present in soot is blamed, by others, the ammonia compounds. The parasitic causation of cancer is still only a theory and requires confirmation. At any rate there is no proof of the existence in soot of a cancerous element. Soot when repeatedly applied to the skin causes it to become thickened, or harsh and dry, and just to the extent that it is capable of altering the structure of the skin, so may it predispose to cancer. The disease is most rife in chimney sweeps between the ages of forty-five and fifty. Whether the soot from one particular kind of coal has a greater influence compared with another it is not easy to say. The coal that is used for heating dwellings is of four kinds: (1) anthracite or smokeless coal; (2) hard coal or stone coal; (3) brown coal; (4) coke, wood, peat, and charcoal are also used. There is very little soot formed during the burning of anthracite. In England the fireplaces are open, but on the Continent stoves for heating purposes are more in evidence. At home there is a much larger quantity of hard or stone coal burnt in the dwellings than on the Continent, and to this fact has been attributed the greater freedom of chimney sweeps from cancer across the Channel. Butlin made extensive inquiries into the question of chimney sweeps’ cancer abroad, and elicited a good deal of information as to the personal habits of the men who follow this particular calling. In Belgium, for example, sweeps are in the habit of washing themselves to the waist daily, and of washing the whole body from head to foot once or twice a week. The chimney sweeps of Hanover wear special kinds of clothes, and after each day’s work they wash themselves with soap and warm water. In the North German towns several of the sweeps have baths fitted up in their own houses, and where this is not the case the fraternity own a bath-house, fitted up with all the necessary requirements, and to which the sweeps pay a daily visit. They also wear special garments, and a handkerchief over their mouth. Swiss chimney sweeps take a bath every evening. In some of the towns of France the precautions taken in regard to preventing the contact of soot with the body are not so good. It was found, however, that in Amiens, Lille, Rouen, etc., the sweeps wore blouses, and that they washed themselves thoroughly all over once a week. In Paris, sweeps’ cancer is practically unknown. Chimney-sweeping in Paris is relegated to companies known as _fumistes_ (stove makers, menders, etc.). One establishment employs 100 men; these men dress in a linen blouse or jacket buttoned in front, trousers made from the same material, a coarse shirt and boots. After a day’s work the men take off their clothes in the workshop, wash, and on reaching home wash themselves again. Their working clothes are washed once a week.

“Climbing boys” are still employed by sweeps on the Continent for cleaning chimneys. It is several decades since they were prohibited in Britain. In the north of Germany, boys from seven to fourteen years of age are employed for this purpose, and in Belgium Mr Butlin found that even still younger boys were engaged to do the work.

Workers in tar and paraffin are also liable to cancer of the scrotum, and men employed in the production of anthracene, which is the last product of the distillation of gas-coal tar, are specially prone to suffer from warts and skin eruptions. Distillers of benzine and creosote suffer in a similar but slighter degree from warts. Tillmanns[186] of Leipzig, who made an inquiry into the health conditions of the men employed in the tar manufactories, stone coal tar distilleries, pine soot, or lampblack factories in Saxony, Hanover, and Holland, etc., states that “in lampblack factories, and in stone coal tar factories cancer of the skin and severe dermatitis do not appear to have been hitherto observed, as in the workers in the brown coal tar and paraffin industries.”

Having reviewed this subject at considerable length, I reproduce the conclusions that Butlin arrived at--(1) That it is possible to prepare the skin for the occurrence of cancer by the constant or repeated application to it of certain substances during a period of years; (2) that the nocuous substances in this relation of which we have the most information are hard or stone coal soot, brown coal tar, and crude paraffin; (3) that there is evidence to cast grave suspicion on certain other substances, such as stone coal tar, but that those are far less to be feared.

In order to prevent the occurrence of this malady in chimney sweeps, the individual should have his skin protected as far as possible against contact with the soot, and he ought to have a warm bath daily after his work. In the special clothing worn by Dutch, Belgian, and German sweeps, and in their practice of covering the mouth with a handkerchief, may possibly lie one explanation of their freedom from the disease compared with English sweeps, while in the use of the daily bath there assuredly lies protection.

* * * * *

Acts of Parliament relating to the Employment of Boys in the Sweeping of Chimneys in England:--

_George III._, 28, _chap._ 48 (1788).--To compel the
masters to provide proper clothes for the climbing boys and to
cause the boys to be washed and cleaned from the soot and dirt
at least once a week. Also that the boys shall attend public
worship on the Lord’s Day, on which day they are not to wear
their sweeping clothes. The masters are not permitted to take
more than six apprentices at one time, and no apprentice of less
than eight years of age.

_William IV._, 4 and 5, _chap._ 34–35 (1834).--The age of the
apprentices is not to be less than ten years.

_Victoria_, 3 and 4, _chap._ 85 (1840).--To provide that from
and after July 1, 1842, no sweep under the age of twenty-one
years shall climb a chimney, and that no apprentice of less than
sixteen years shall be taken.

_Manufacture and Use of Emery Wheels._

Emery wheels are used for grinding steel goods, knife and fork smoothing, etc. A large proportion of the wheels run in this country are imported from the Continent and from America, but many are made at home. When serving on the Dangerous Trades Committee I had the opportunity of inspecting their manufacture in Manchester and elsewhere. The Departmental Committee was invited to report upon emery wheels,[187] less on account of danger to health in their manufacture than their breakage when running at great speed, and of their splinters, which are hurled with great force, dealing sad havoc in a crowded factory. The wheels are made from crushed emery stone. Emery rock,[188] which is imported from Smyrna or from the Island of Naxos, is an anhydrous oxide of aluminium with a large percentage of flint, silica, and iron. In Canada a similar kind of wheel is made from a stone called corundum, which, while quite as hard as emery, is also an oxide of aluminium. The rock in either instance is crushed by means of heavy rollers into a very fine powder, which is sifted and then blown by a fan into a dust chamber, where it is collected. A considerable amount of dust is generated at this particular stage, but as the processes are conducted in encased machinery there is little or no risk to the workmen who superintend the crushing of the rock. Nor did it appear to me that any risk to health was incurred by the men who built up the emery wheels. These are made of crushed emery rock, with such binding substances as shellac, indiarubber, oil, sulphur, and silicate of soda, all pressed together in a mould under great hydraulic power. Into some of the wheels brass wire webbing is inserted, so that in the event of one of them breaking when running there would be less chance of the whole wheel sundering.

The danger commences during the running of emery wheels, a circumstance that can be readily imagined when it is known that a small wheel of 3 inches in diameter will often make as many as 7400 revolutions in a minute, and a large one, 3 feet in diameter, 600.

The Departmental Committee recommended that guards should be used in connection with the running of emery and corundum wheels. These should cover as much of the wheel as possible without interfering with the operations of the workman. During grinding a considerable amount of dust is given off. A suction pipe and fan should therefore be provided to draw the dust away from the face of the workman. Mr Archibald Newlands, H.M. Inspector of Factories, has invented a guard which not only protects the workmen from portions of broken emery wheel, should such an accident happen, but is so arranged as to aspirate and remove by suction the dust that is generated. In addition to the mineral and metallic dust that is given off during the operation of grinding, sparks are sometimes thrown off which might injure the eyes of the workman, hence the necessity for powerful suction.

THOMAS OLIVER.