"Besides this, fine dust of lead is set in motion by the blows that drive the cutting-chisel, and the insidious poison settles on the hair and the face, and is believed to go direct to the lungs, some of it.
"The file-cutter never lives the span of life allotted to man.
After many small warnings his thumb weakens. He neglects that; and he gets touches of paralysis in the thumb, the arm, and the nerves of the stomach; can't digest; can't sweat; at last, can't work; goes to the hospital: there they galvanize him, which does him no harm; and boil him, which does him a deal of good. He comes back to work, resumes his dirty habits, takes in fresh doses of lead, turns dirty white or sallow, gets a blue line round his teeth, a dropped wrist, and to the hospital again or on to the file-cutter's box; and so he goes miserably on and off, till he drops into a premature grave, with as much lead in his body as would lap a hundredweight of tea."
THE REMEDIES.
A. What the masters might do.
"1. Provide every forge with two small fires, eighteen inches from the ground. This would warm the lower limbs of the smiths. At present their bodies suffer by uneven temperature; they perspire down to the waist, and then freeze to the toe.
"2. For the wet-grinders they might supply fires in every wheel, abolish mud floors, and pave with a proper fall and drain.
"To prevent the breaking of heavy grinding-stones, fit them with the large strong circular steel plate--of which I subjoin a drawing--instead of with wedges or insufficient plates. They might have an eye to life, as well as capital, in buying heavy grindstones. I have traced the death of one grinder to the master's avarice: he went to the quarry and bought a stone for thirty-five shillings the quarry-master had set aside as imperfect; its price would have been sixty shillings if it had been fit to trust a man's life to. This master goes to church twice a Sunday, and is much respected by his own sort: yet he committed a murder for twenty-five shillings.
Being Hillsborough, let us hope it was a murderer he murdered.
"For the dry-grinders they might all supply fans and boxes. Some do, and the good effect is very remarkable. Moreover the present fans and boxes could be much improved.
"One trade--the steel-fork grinders--is considerably worse than the rest; and although the fan does much for it, I'm told it must still remain an unhealthy trade. If so, and Dr. Amboyne is right about Life, Labor, and Capital, let the masters co-operate with the Legislature, and extinguish the handicraft.
"For the file-cutters, the masters might--1st. Try a substitute for lead. It is all very well to say a file must rest on lead to be cut. Who has ever employed brains on that question? Who has tried iron, wood, and gutta-percha in layers?
Who has ever tried any thing, least of all the thing called Thought?
"2d. If lead is the only bed--which I doubt, and the lead must be bare--which I dispute, then the master ought to supply every gang of file-cutters with hooks--taps, and basins and soap, in some place adjoining their work-rooms. Lead is a subtle, but not a swift, poison; and soap and water every two hours is an antidote.
"3d. They ought to forbid the introduction of food into file-cutting rooms. Workmen are a reckless set, and a dirty set; food has no business in any place of theirs, where poison is going.
"B. What the workmen might do.
"1st. Demand from the masters these improvements I have suggested, and, if the demand came through the secretaries of their Unions, the masters would comply.
"2d. They might drink less and wash their bodies with a small part of the money so saved: the price of a gill of gin and a hot bath are exactly the same; only the bath is health to a dry-grinder, or tile-cutter; the gin is worse poison to him than to healthy men.
"3d. The small wet-grinders, who have to buy their grindstones, might buy sound ones, instead of making bargains at the quarry, which prove double bad bargains when the stone breaks, since then a new stone is required, and sometimes a new man, too.