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.
CHAPTER VII.
INFANT MORTALITY.
The Registrar-General’s Returns—Town versus Country—Selected Districts—Age-periods and Mortality—Causes of Death—Preston, Leicester, Blackburn—Relation of Married Women’s Labour to Infant Mortality—Dr. Tatham’s Evidence—Dr. Farr’s Tables—Recent Statistics—Deterioration of Survivors.
The Registrar-General’s Returns.—It is obvious that the influence of occupation upon the health of married women cannot be adequately considered without some inquiry as to its effects upon the life and health of their children. As is the case with so many other vitally important branches of industrial life, there is but scanty information of a statistical kind here to guide us, though there is enough local information, taken in conjunction with the general statistics which are published from time to time by the Registrar-General, to establish a close relation between the employment of married women and a high infantile rate of mortality. In his annual report, the Registrar-General goes into the subject in some detail. He begins by pointing out that the year 1891 showed that the proportion of deaths of infants under one year to a thousand registered births was 149 per thousand, a proportion which was equalled in 1886, and slightly exceeded in 1890, but was otherwise higher than in any year of the preceding decennium. He remarks upon the wide differences to be found between the rates in the various counties, and the persistence of these differences from year to year; “the general rule being that the rate is lowest in the purely agricultural, and highest in the mining counties and those of the textile industries. It is in the towns of these latter counties that the infantile mortality assumes the highest proportion; the three towns which are invariably, or almost invariably, the worst in this respect being Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn.”
This is highly significant, and but for the fact that statistics have been successful in isolating several towns associated with certain industries in which married women are very largely employed, it might have been urged that the high rate of mortality in the towns was simply due to density of population, lack of fresh air, space, and sunlight. But the Registrar-General, by the tables which he has compiled in his last report, enables us to judge as to the effect upon child life, first, of country air and conditions; secondly, of the average urban conditions; and thirdly, of urban conditions plus the employment of women in factory labour. Seeing that Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn had the highest infantile death-rates of all the towns included in the weekly returns from 1881 to 1891, he has selected them for what we will call Group III. Then he has taken five mining or industrial counties, namely, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Lancashire, West Riding, and Durham; and three agricultural counties, namely, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire. With the help of the death registers of the various counties and towns for the years 1889, 1890, and 1891, tables have been prepared showing the causes of death and the exact ages of infants under a year old who had died, out of one hundred thousand born in each of the various districts.
| Age. | Of 100,000 born, the numbers surviving at each age. | Annual Death Rates per 1000 living in each successive interval of age. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three Rural Counties. | Five Mining and Manuf’g Counties. | Three Selected Towns. | Three Rural Counties. | Five Mining & Manuf’g Counties. | Three Selected Towns. | |
| At Birth | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 213 | 331 | 382 |
| 3 mths. | 94,820 | 92,051 | 90,874 | 75 | 154 | 240 |
| 6 ” | 93,068 | 88,574 | 85,574 | 61 | 128 | 180 |
| 12 ” | 90,283 | 83,081 | 78,197 | — | — | — |