Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/26

confined and without ventilation; the atmosphere is steamy and smells of glue; ascending, it is seen that all the doors shut with springs. In the first room looked into forty young women and girls were sorting and stitching books. . . . Poor creatures so placed are being slowly slain." Dr. Symes Thompson, writing on the "Influence of Occupation on Health and Life," points out the death-bringing circumstances under which too many of our wealth-producers toil; if there were fewer of them their lives would be more valuable than they are; horses and cattle are cared for and protected; the very machinery used is oiled and polished; only the human machines are worked under life-ruining conditions, and are left to struggle on as best they may. Dr. Thompson gives cases of printers—which every one connected with journalism can supplement by his own experience—where unwholesome atmosphere and preposterously long hours destroy the constitution. He tells us how the shoddy-grinders, the cocoa-matting weavers, the chaff-cutters, the workers in flax, woollen, and cotton factories, suffer from a "peculiar kind of bronchitis, arising from the irritation of the dust" and other matters inhaled, and the cough "is followed by expectoration, and, if the occupation is continued, emphysema, or, in those predisposed to phthisis, tubercle, is developed." At Sheffield the "inhalation of metal filings" is "destructive" to the knife and fork grinders, and although this might be prevented by the use of respirators the men's lives are not sufficiently valuable to be thus saved. If grit got into the works of a machine and ruined them the works would be covered over, but it may pass into men's lungs and kill them, and no one troubles. Brass-finishers and stonemasons labour under the same disadvantages; lead poisoning is common among plumbers, painters, &c.; "women employed in lead works rarely bear healthy children; in a large number of cases miscarriage occurs at the fifth or seventh month, and if the children are born alive they rarely survive long. Lead exerts a similar influence on the reproductive powers in the male sex; men with lead affections seldom produce healthy children." Many of these diseases might be prevented, if the excessive number of workers did not make the prevention a matter of indifference to those concerned. Dr. Thompson says: "Let over-crowding and over-heating be avoided. There should be an abundant supply of pure air. The hours of work should be moderate, with fair intervals for meals. If there is much dust or other