A. A. Brooke

Economic Importance of Health—Causes of Ill-health—Textile Trades—Cotton: Steaming, Sizing, and Fluff—Children: Dr. Tarrop’s Report—Linen: Dr. Purdon’s Report—Deaths of Belfast Mill-workers—Mortality among Women—Shoddy, Silk, and Lace—Other Trades—Pottery Manufacture—White Lead: Examples of Injurious Effects—Effect on Offspring—Greater Susceptibility of Women—White Lead in other Manufactures—Lucifer Match Trade—Ventilation in Factories.

§ Economic Importance of Health.—The economics of industry from the point of view of wealth have quite a literature of their own; but the more vital standpoint of health has been almost entirely overlooked by the economist, the sociologist, and the physiologist. It is a singular oversight, for one would have thought that the conservation of industrial energy was a tolerably important element in the field of production. But, along with certain other large assumptions, we seem to have reckoned upon an inexhaustible supply of labour. It may be considered somewhat fanciful to assume anything else when in most trades the supply of labour exceeds the demand, and machinery increasingly takes the place of physical labour. The number of the labourers who present themselves is not, however, the only matter for consideration, the quality of their labour is of the most material importance. It is a matter of the greatest moment to secure well-developed and healthy people for the industrial army.

§ Causes of Ill-health.—The main causes of industrial ill-health, which apply equally to men and women, though with even greater intensity to the latter, may be classified under two heads;—causes which are incidental to the nature of the work itself, and injurious circumstances connected with its surroundings. Under the first head would come cases of poisoning from handling or breathing or absorbing in some way the poisonous matter given off from material that was being worked up; the inhalation of “dust”—a generic term which may suffice to express an almost infinite variety of particles of a more or less injurious character generated in working up textile fabrics and in the various processes of manufacturing and finishing metallic commodities; and, thirdly, the contact with noxious gases and vapours which are encountered in not a few industries. Under the second head would come all matters connected with the surroundings of the mill or workshop, such as the extent to which fresh air is admitted and foul air driven out, the cleanliness of the workrooms, the extent to which gas is burned, the heat that has to be faced, whether from exposure to furnaces, to the hot, moist atmosphere produced by hot water apparatus, or by machinery, or from over-crowding. We should have to range more or less under both heads such incidents of occupation as sedentariness, or strain and pressure, as these may be partly inherent in the occupation, and partly the result of custom, and therefore not necessarily connected with the processes of the work to be performed.

But in considering women’s work we have to take into account not only the immediate effect upon the worker, but the indirect consequences that may follow from injury to the system; and here we are brought almost at once into contact with all the grave questions connected with the subject of married women’s labour. As to the extent and gravity of the injuries to health arising from the general causes indicated, there is no question whatever. The reader who wishes to ascertain for himself full particulars as to diseases of occupation cannot do better than read the work by Dr. Arlidge, in which he breaks the ground on this immense subject. He will find no less than ninety occupations specified as dangerous because of the amount of dust disseminated, and an equally large category of trades in which the women employed suffer in one way or another from contact with harmful materials, from emanations, or from muscular or nervous troubles contracted in connection with their work.

§ Textile Trades. Cotton.—If we glance at some of the processes connected with the textile trades, we shall be able to form some idea of what their effects are upon the operatives. The manufacturer in Burnley or Blackburn who steams his cotton in the weaving of it produces a given result not only upon the fabric but upon the operative, and the same statement applies to the process of sizing, of which steaming is a subsidiary function. Both processes are entered into for the purpose of weighting the cotton-cloth, which is sold by the pound. The compound known as size is made up of chloride and sulphate of zinc in conjunction with tallow and china clay, and this size dust gets powdered over the operatives and finds its way into their lungs. The temperature often exceeds 90° F. in the weaving sheds, and the moist heat generated by the jets of steam is excessively trying. In many weaving sheds the damp accumulates on the floor and induces rheumatism and other troubles, and the clothes of the women employed become saturated. So the adulteration of cotton cloth carries with it the adulteration of human health and the break-up of constitutions, and results in consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, and general depression of vital force. Again, in other branches of the textile trades quantities of fluff and fine fibrous dust are generated, and the workers must take their chance of its getting into their lungs. This is especially true of the jute manufacturing and rope making industries. It is not necessary here to enter very closely into the technicalities of manufacturing; everyone will understand that the preliminary processes of textile work, the “combing” and “carding,” as it is called, are bound to set free quantities of dust, whilst, later on, the heat and damp which prevail in much of the spinning and weaving are the main health factors to be considered. For those who live out of sight of this great industry, never hearing the rattle of the clogs over the roads in the early morning, at the dinner hour, and again when the bell rings for ceasing work; who only know from passing them in the train the look of the huge and brilliantly lighted mills, it may require some effort of imagination to realise the importance of these matters to the operatives, who for 56½ hours every week are to a greater or lesser extent working under trying conditions.

§ Children.—We must not forget too that for half a week many thousands of young children are working in these places exposed to precisely the same conditions; and besides the half-timers who gravitate between the mill and the school many children of very tender years spend the time when their whole future depends upon healthy conditions from six o’clock in the morning till five o’clock at night in the mills. If the work is trying for adults, what must it be for the half-timers and young whole-timers? On this point Dr. Tarrop, one of the certifying surgeons, has made some valuable researches, and I give below his diagnosis of two thousand factory children examined by him.

§ Dr. Tarrop’s Report.—“Of the first two thousand cases noted 1771 may be described as specimens of the ordinary factory child, and I separate them into three classes—341 superior, 1106 medium, and 324 distinctly below average. [Lancashire average, nota bene.] As to the rest of the 2000, 151 were really fine children, of whom twenty-one were excellent examples of humanity, weighing 130 lbs., 126 lbs., and 120 lbs. respectively. The balance of the 2000—78 in number—were a feeble folk, amongst whom were some eight veritable pigmies, ten to thirteen years old, and not scaling fifty pound a piece. It must be borne in mind that the medium average of Lancashire factory children is not equal to the average elsewhere. The latter standard is hardly reached by the 341 children described as superior, while the medium division is greatly below the standard of good health. This is much more distinctly marked amongst children of thirteen, ‘full-timers,’ who have passed some years in the factory, than it is in those of ten years of age. Of sixty healthy children, averaging thirteen and a half years, and taken as they came (thirty-one girls and twenty-nine boys), the average weight was seventy-four pound, or eighteen pound below the average of good health elsewhere. The lower division of 324 included many defective and diseased cases, and of course the seventy-eight residuum were poor indeed. The cases of defective or diseased children numbered 198.” He appends to these numerical particulars the observation that “Factory work is not so excessively laborious, it is the heat, impurity, and dust-laden state of the atmosphere that injures health. The promising child of ten degenerates into the lean and sallow person of thirteen, and this progress is continued until a whole population becomes stunted, and thus the conditions of life in factory towns become a real source of danger to England’s future. In addition to the loss of physique it is instructive to note the deterioration in personal appearance. Out of the 2000 children under notice only sixteen could be described as handsome, and of these the larger portion were girls from Ireland.”

§ Linen. Dr. Purdon’s Report.—The conditions in the linen trade, the head-quarters of which are at Belfast, are similar in kind to those in the cotton trade. Careful inquiries were made nearly twenty years ago by the late Dr. Purdon, certifying surgeon of Belfast, who has devoted many years of his life to this investigation. He states that—

§ Deaths of Belfast Mill Workers.—Matters are substantially the same to-day in Belfast as they were when Dr. Purdon wrote. The factories were under the Act then as they are now, and, with the exception of raising the age of half-timers and fixing the limit of a month after confinement as the period during which a mother may not be legally employed—amendments which apply to every branch of textile and non-textile industries—no changes of any importance have been made. I am enabled to give here the mortality returns extracted from the Belfast register of the deaths of mill-workers during the year 1891, and they will show in the most convincing manner the effect of this occupation upon health.

Mortality among Women.—It will be seen that of 413 women who died in the course of the year, no fewer than 210, or more than one-half, died of phthisis, and 125 of these were under the age of 25. Again, there were 71 women who died from respiratory diseases, so that we get a grand total of 281 deaths amongst the women from pulmonary disorders. How closely this terrible state of things is connected with the nature of the occupation may be judged from the following extract from the report of the Medical Officer of Health for Belfast for the year 1892. Commenting on the fact that of the 6,537 deaths registered during 1891, 1,017 were attributable to phthisis, and 1,784 to disease of the respiratory organs, Dr. Whitaker remarks:

The sickness in the linen and cotton trade is attributable to various causes. There is the dust which rises from the material; the heat and watery vapour; the dust from the Cornish clay which is used in the weaving departments for sizing; the long standing; and the stooping position which has to be maintained in some departments. And if we add to these the strain on the attention throughout all the hours of monotonous work, the great noise, and the bad air poisoned with over-crowding and poor ventilation, we shall agree with Dr. Arlidge that we have cause enough here for disease. Accidents abound in these great mills, where the machines in rapid motion are placed so closely together that the workers are constantly in danger from loose gearing, and flying shuttles from the looms in motion often cause the loss of an eye and sometimes even of life.

Shoddy, Silk, and Lace.—The manufacture of shoddy is attended by the production of an amount of dust that is injurious to the operatives’ health, and the effluvium given off from the rags is another excessively trying feature of this trade. Those who are engaged in it almost invariably have to pass through the ordeal of what is known as “shoddy fever,” a disagreeable though not dangerous illness, the symptoms of which usually last for at least a week, and disappear as the worker grows accustomed to the presence of the dust. Silk weaving is on the whole the healthiest of the textile trades, though here we find a process, which is resorted to also in some departments of the cotton trade and largely in lace-making, which is most prejudicial to health; it is known as “gassing.” This process consists in passing the threads very rapidly through gas jets, the object being to burn away any slight irregularities. Medical evidence shews strongly the evils which befall the operatives who have to spend their time in an atmosphere highly charged with the products of gas combustion, full of fluff and exceedingly hot. The operatives in the lace trade, which is carried on mostly at Nottingham, suffer in an especial degree from “gassing.” There is not sufficient space at my disposal to go into the numerous family of trades in which the worker is liable to suffer from dust given off; but amongst them are carpet-making, hair-dressing, the flock trade, and those departments of the upholstery trade in which fluffy material is used. Unfortunately the drawback noticed by Dr. Arlidge of the lack of precise medical evidence in the cotton trade exists also in these industries.

The Potteries.—So far we have been considering dust of vegetable origin; but this forms only one group, although it is with this group especially that women are concerned. In the pottery trade, however, the workers are exposed to mineral dust, and in this trade women are very largely engaged. Experts differ somewhat in their view of the relative injury caused by organic and inorganic dusts, though it seems to be agreed that where the material is chiefly of a gelatinous character the harm done is comparatively trivial. But we need not examine closely into these matters, for the statistics of death and disease furnished by the Pottery District are conclusive as to the injuries inflicted. To a lesser degree women are employed in the subsidiary branches of the Sheffield trades, but in this case it is the men who bear the full brunt of the injury. Men and women work in the pottery trade, and the dust given off is of such a fine character that it finds its way into every corner of the factory. Thus women who may not be immediately employed in the finishing processes which are attended to by men, may still receive their share of the fine white penetrating powder. But in certain parts of the work, and those the most dangerous, women only are employed. Such are the china-scourers and the towers. It is the towers’ business to put a smooth surface on the dry ware, which is set in rapid rotation whilst sand paper or some other medium of the kind is applied. The result is that in the course of the day the workers get powdered all over with the dust that is given off, besides inhaling a considerable quantity. Where no fans are at work to draw off this dust the consequences are terribly destructive, and the tower, unless she happens to be a person of exceptionally fine constitution, succumbs in the course of a few years, sometimes of a few months, to the accumulation of fine particles in the pulmonary passages. Even where a fan is at work the presence of the white powder may be detected on the person of the worker, and as the dust is constantly blown by her from the ware, some portion of it is inevitably inhaled by the act of inspiration. Dr. Greenhow, who was sent by Sir John Simon, the medical officer of health for the Privy Council in 1861, to report on the potters’ diseases, wrote as follows about the china scourers, and the conditions to-day are precisely the same as they were then:

The evils caused by the dust are aggravated by the very close and stuffy atmosphere in which much of the work is carried on.

White Lead.—We come now to consider some of the effects caused by working poisonous materials. Foremost among these come the trades into which lead enters. By some strange and perverse fate the manufacture of this deadly commodity is, so far as this country is concerned, undertaken largely by women. This is due in a great part to the fact that their labour can be procured more cheaply than that of men, and that the operations in which they are engaged require but little skill or training. In the white lead works of Newcastle, Sheffield, and East London the women are employed in carrying heavy weights on their heads, climbing ladders while loaded in the same way, and in fact in performing those operations which are usually done by means of trucks and hoists and other mechanical appliances. Anyone who has watched the white-lead women passing backwards and forwards in their long, weary trampings under their heavy loads, clambering up and down the ladders, or passing the lead from hand to hand up a staging beside the stoves where it has to be heated, must realise how thoroughly retrograde in its tendency, as well as mischievous in its physical and moral effects, is the existence of a class of cheap and unresisting labour which the manufacturer can bend into any shape, or turn to any purpose that he chooses. The most ardent advocates of perfect freedom for women in matters industrial will scarcely defend the system of transport, and transport of a highly poisonous material, which depends upon the cheap supply of women’s heads, or the system of elevators which is kept up in the same fashion.

But the physically exacting and degrading conditions of the work, though unmatched in this and probably any other European country, are as nothing compared with the action of the lead poison upon the health of the women. No woman working in the dangerous processes of a white lead mill can escape attack, for the subtle poison permeates the system, resulting in the slighter cases in faintness, sickness, and weakness; in the graver instances in lead colic, epilepsy, paralysis, blindness, madness, or death. After all the precautions that have been adopted so far under the Factory Act, it has been demonstrated too clearly that the lead poison retains the upper hand and finds its way into the system in the form of dust, which is either swallowed, absorbed through the pores of the skin, or works in under the finger and toe nails in defiance of baths and nail brushes and the swallowing of sulphuric acid drinks. In spite of the establishment of a sort of hygienic police, which is maintained in the best works with a view to enforcing regularity in the matter of baths, lead poisoning remains to-day a common feature in white lead works. During five years 145 cases have been treated in the Newcastle Infirmary, in addition to many others at the Newcastle Union and Gateshead Union, and whilst in Poplar Workhouse 30 cases were treated in 1882, there were 28 cases in 1892. From Newcastle comes the report that the greatest human wrecks which pass under the notice of the medical charities are workers from the lead mills, and when we examine the following biographies of lead workers we shall hardly marvel at Dr. Oliver’s emphatic view as to the pernicious character of this trade for women.

Injurious Effects of White Lead.—Barbara R——, a married woman, aged thirty-three years, was admitted to the infirmary on December 4th, 1890, and died the following day from lead poisoning. She had never worked in the lead more than a few days at a time. Eliza H——, aged twenty-five, after five months working in the “stacks” was seized with colic and was ill for seven weeks. On recovery she worked for two years in the stoves, and then had another attack of colic. On getting better she was seized with a fit on her way to work at six o’clock in the morning, and was unconscious for fifteen minutes. Her comrades then helped her into the factory, where she worked all day, feeling very shaky. During the two months that followed she was better, but at the end of that time was seized with convulsions while at work. She became unconscious, and was taken to the workhouse hospital, where she had a succession of fits, followed by total blindness, and death was narrowly escaped.

Effect on Offspring.—Although the law prescribes eighteen years as the minimum age at which women may follow this occupation, two cases have occurred recently in which girls have died from lead poisoning who were under the age. Nor does the suffering cease with the men and women who work in the lead mills; they bequeath an awful legacy of sickness to their children—an amount of suffering which is almost disproportionate to their own. I came not long ago in contact with a woman who had worked for the fifteen years of her married life on the “pans” in a lead mill, a process which is considered to be non-dangerous; during her employment she had suffered little, yet this woman had never borne a living child. I give another dismal chronicle in support of my remarks.[17] “C. E., twenty-seven years of age. There was first a living child, then one miscarriage. She left the lead works and went into the country, where a second child was born. She then returned to the lead works and had two miscarriages. M. W., aged thirty-nine, a lead worker for eighteen years, has had twelve children, of whom four are now living. The remaining eight died at ages varying from five days to four, six, and fourteen months, in convulsions. She has had in addition five miscarriages, three in succession. In the case of Mary A——, aged forty years, whose mother too had been a lead worker, we have a history of eight children, all of whom died in convulsions.” In one form or another paralysis too is common among the workers. It is sometimes acute and sometimes chronic, and its commonest manifestation is in “wrist-drop,”—loss of power in the wrist. The victim of “wrist-drop” is incapacitated from lifting or moving anything or in any way using the hands, and this crippled condition sometimes lasts for life.

Greater Susceptibility of Women.—The greatest authorities on the subject of lead-poisoning, notably Dr. Oliver, lay stress on the greater liability to lead-poisoning which women show over men. Not only do we find that women are more susceptible, but they are susceptible earlier in life. Girls from 18 to 23 years of age are at the most susceptible age, while with men the dangers of lead-poisoning are greatest between 41 and 48. The fashion in which men and women suffer differs also, for we note that, while young women suffer very readily from “saturnian poison”—fall quickly victims to colic, and recover to be again and more severely attacked—men may work for long terms of years, suffering slightly and seldom, till they fall victims, at the end of long service, to paralysis. It must be borne in mind, however, that those women who have been the subject of Dr. Oliver’s investigation have been brought more directly and constantly into contact with the peculiarly dangerous processes of lead manufacture than the men.

White Lead in other Manufactures.—But the actual manufacture of white lead is only one and the first of the stages in this commodity’s devastating course. We may trace its steps in the potteries, where men and women in large numbers fall victims to the lead which is used in the glazes; in the black country, where we find it applied to the tin-sheet enamelling trade, which is now covering the railway stations and other places with advertisements; and in the colour trade and many other industries, to say nothing of that of painters and decorators. Nearly 100 cases of lead-poisoning were treated in the Wolverhampton Infirmary in 1892, the majority of which consisted of young girls who were employed in the sheet-iron enamelling trade, and there have been several cases of deaths in this industry of recent years.

Lucifer Match Trade.—Necrosis of the jaw is a disease of a peculiarly horrible character, to be found in the match-making trade. It is due to the use of phosphorus, and first attacks the jaw-bone, working its way through the teeth and gums. Owing, however, to the adoption of greater precautions and the substitution of other materials for “white” phosphorus necrosis now counts fewer victims than formerly.

Ventilation.—But great as are the evils of trade diseases, these are not general, and exist only in particular trades; whereas when we turn to the question of factory ventilation and heating, and the worker’s general environment, we find that in all directions health is being undermined, and in nearly every occupation there is something wrong. One of the worst evils of factory and workshop arrangements is the absence of proper ventilation, and the consequent lack of a supply of pure air. We may be met by the reply that the opposition of the employÉs is to a large extent responsible for the discomforts under which they work, and that it is impossible to ventilate rooms properly while the workpeople fill the ventilators with rags as soon as the manager’s back is turned. Such stories as these belong to the same class of anecdotes as those which detail the objection of the worker to wearing some species of gag for keeping out dust, or to the incessant repetition of the act of washing the hands or brushing the hair for the removal of injurious particles, and they do not really affect the general question. The fact is, that we are all creatures of habit more or less, and if we are accustomed to working under certain conditions the majority of us would be something more than human if ready to preserve a high hygienic standard in face of constant daily exposure to prejudicial surroundings. The sensible policy, therefore, is surely not to neglect practicable remedies because of cases of individual carelessness, but to recognise at once that the only effectual course is to make the conditions on which the worker is so largely dependent as healthy as possible. Besides, after all points of view have been considered, there is a good deal to be said for workers’ objections. Clumsy attempts at ventilation are largely responsible for the dislike to fresh air which is to be found in many workshops; just as ill-made respirators, which only succeed in checking free breathing without excluding the dust or whatever it may be that is to be kept out, may have induced a certain recklessness of precautions on the part of the operatives in certain trades. But however that may be, until we come to recognise that the hygienic condition of the factory and workshop is a matter for the scientist and the community in precisely the same way that the hygienic condition of the town is, it will be hopeless to expect the maintenance or even the recognition of any industrial standard of health. Employers are as much creatures of circumstances as their workpeople, and it would be fatuous to the last degree to hope for very much from the “moralisation of workshop environment.” If there is to be any effective safeguard it must be found in the regulations prescribed by the community as a whole, to which the enfeebling and crippling of its workers represents a very real danger.