The only relief to be gathered from this dismal picture of wasted life, is the fact that things are not so bad as of old. By means of greater speed being given to the stone, many articles, such as pen and pocket-knives, are now ground with a wet stone that formerly were ground with the dry; and happily much of the dust has been abolished in the best shops, such as that of Messrs. Rodgers, by the introduction of fans on the principle of a winnowing-machine, which blows the dust and grit as it comes from the grindstone clear away through a flue placed in connection with the chimney. This fan is, however, only partially used; the grinders themselves, whom they are intended to benefit, complaining that the “trade is bad enough as it is, and if men lived longer, it would be so over-full that there would be no such a thing as getting a living:” the same spirit rejected Mr. Abraham’s mask of magnetized wire, invented many years ago for the same object. There can be no doubt, however, that intelligence should rule in this matter, and that the Legislature should make it a fineable offence to work a dry stone without a fan, just as it is to work dangerous machinery without guards; for where one life is lost by neglect in the latter case, thousands sink into a premature grave in the former. Grinders, wet or dry, may also protect their lungs, in a most remarkable manner, by simply allowing the beard and moustache to grow. The hirsute appendages of the upper lip and chin are Nature’s respirators, and it has been observed that those men who have allowed her in this respect to have her way, have discovered that she is somewhat wiser than fashion or popular usage.

Of those artisans exposed to irritating dust, probably miners take the second place after the miserable dry grinders. If we investigate the condition of these men, we are immediately struck with the lamentable conditions under which they labour, and astonished at the endurance and patience with which they submit to toil to which that of the well-fed, well-housed felon is pleasant pastime. There are at present upwards of 300,000 human beings acting the part of gnomes for the good of the community at large, entering day by day into the bowels of the earth, and emerging in the evening. Of human life they see as little as the train of black ants we watch emerging from their holes in the ground. Yet the miner is the industrial Atlas of England. Were he to cease to labour, this busy hive of men would speedily be hushed, and the giant limbs of machinery, which now do the drudgery of the world, become as still as the enchanted garden of the fairy tale ere the advent of the prince. Without the coal and the iron, the copper and the tin, they toilfully evolve from vast depths, England would be but a third-rate power. A life so cheerless, and yet so useful—nay, essential, to our national existence—should at least receive at the hands of the Government every protection that can be thrown around it; yet, if we follow the miner into his gallery and working cell, we are amazed at the dangers and the difficulties which are needlessly thrust upon him in the black realm in which he moves and has his being. Let us take the collier, for example. In many pits in the West of England, the seams of coal are not more than twenty or twenty-five inches thick; and inasmuch as the object of the worker is to remove the coal with as little as possible of the surrounding soil, he often drives his working to a considerable distance through an aperture not more than, and often not so much as, two feet high. If our adult male reader will condescend to squat himself on the floor, à la Turque, say under the dining-table, for instance, and then picture to himself the inconvenience of picking with an axe the under side of the prandial mahogany for twelve hours, he will obtain some slight idea of the muscular knot into which the poor collier has to tie himself, for the whole term of his working life, having to use violent exercise throughout. Can it be wondered at that, under such circumstances, the Apollo-like form of man becomes permanently twisted and bent, like the gnarled root of an oak that has been doubled up in the fissure of some rock? If we look at a collier, we see instantly that his back is curved, his legs bowed, and the extensor muscles of his calves withered through long disease. He has knotted himself so long, that the erect position of his race becomes a punishment to him. It is credibly related that a number of colliers, having been sentenced to imprisonment in Wakefield jail, with hard labour, the only complaint they made was, that they were obliged, whilst at work, to keep the ordinary posture of rational creatures. But confined space is only one of the many evil conditions under which they labour. In the majority of cases the collier works in foul air; for, notwithstanding all the official inspection, the ventilation of mines is still execrable. The fire-damp either blasts him into a cinder, or the choke-damp noiselessly blots out his life. However good, moreover, the general system of ventilation in a mine, unforeseen accidents will happen at any moment. The pick of the collier strikes into the gallery of an old pit, where carbonic acid gas has been gathering perhaps for a century; and the poisoned air rushes in and does its work in an instant; or a sudden invasion of carburetted hydrogen, disengaged by the fall of a mass of coal, meets the miner, who is working, perhaps imprudently, with a naked candle;—and an explosion follows which crowds the pit’s mouth with a wailing multitude of newly-made widows and orphans.

Upwards of 1,500 lives are annually lost, principally through these causes, and not less than 10,000 accidents in the same period testify to the dangerous nature of the miner’s occupation, notwithstanding the strict Government inspection.[50] It is humiliating to know that England is yet far behind continental nations in her methods of preventing these dreadful catastrophes. Mr. Mackworth, in his lecture at the Society of Arts, stated that the mortality from accidents was, in the coal mines of

Killed Persons.
Prussia 1·89per1000per annum.
Belgium 2·8 "
England 4·5 "
Staffordshire 7·3 "

This comparison, so humiliating to England, cannot be explained by the superior adventure of our countrymen, inasmuch as the production of coal in Belgium is half as much again per acre of the coal-field as in England. It is not, however, to the dramatic accidents of coal mines which every now and then startle the community, to which we wish to draw attention; but rather to the silent progress of disease, which makes his death so premature, and his life so miserable. In addition to his cramped condition, whilst at work, his supply of oxygen is small; for in all probability the air supplied to him has to circulate many miles through the mine, and to pass over the excrementitious deposits of man and horse, and the decaying woodwork of the mine, ere it finally reaches him, in enfeebled streams, in his solitary working cell. Long deprivation of solar light, again, tends to impoverish his blood, to blanch him, in short, like vegetable products similarly deprived of the light of day. It is through the lungs, however, that the health of the miner is principally attacked. The air of a coal mine (such as it is) holds a vast amount of coal-dust in mechanical suspension, and this, as a matter of course, is constantly passing into the lungs of the miner. The proof of this is the so-called “black spit” of the collier, which, on being subjected to the microscope, is found to consist of mucus, filled with finely divided particles of coal. The permanent inhalation of such an atmosphere results in what is termed the “black lung.” The breathing apparatus of the collier becomes clogged, in short, with coal-dust, and after death it has the appearance of being dipped in ink. A writer,[51] who has lately investigated this singular pathological condition, thus gives his experience of two post-mortem examinations:—

“In each case, the black treacly fluid obtained by thus cutting the various portions of the lung (more especially the posterior and inferior portions of the lower lobes), and by slitting up the bronchial tubes, was evaporated to dryness, and the residuum being broken up and subjected to a red heat in a porcelain tube retort, behaved precisely as coal under similar circumstances, i.e. it evolved a smoke-like gaseous product, which, on being slightly condensed, deposited hydro-sulphide of ammonium and coal tar, and being thus purified, burnt in all respects like the well-known compounds of the two carbides of hydrogen (common gas).”

Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, many years since, by destructive analysis, came to the same conclusion respecting the carbonaceous nature of this deposit. The presence of this foreign body in the lungs leads to the whole train of pulmonary diseases. Asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia are but too frequent, and we are consequently not surprised to hear that the aggregate amount of sickness experienced by this class, for the period of life from twenty to sixty, is 95 weeks, or 67 per cent, more than the general average.

Rheumatism, leading to heart disease, is another very common complaint of the miner. Indeed, all the conditions of ill-managed mines seem ready prepared for the propagation of this disease. When mines are driven to any considerable depth, the temperature proportionably increases, and 80 degrees of Fahrenheit is a common temperature at the end of workings, all the year round. After exposure to this oppressive atmosphere during the whole day, the collier perhaps suddenly emerges into the open air at the pit’s mouth, vitally depressed by his prolonged exertion, when the bitter wind is shaving the surface of the earth at a temperature much below freezing point. In the coal-field stretching from Valenciennes to Aix-la-Chapelle, the mines are made conspicuous a long way off by the presence of huge buildings, which enclose the machinery and the top of the pit. In these buildings apartments are prepared in which the colliers change their clothes before and after labour, and wash themselves in baths filled with hot water from the steam waste-pipe. The importance of this sanitary precaution is very great, inasmuch as colliers, like chimney-sweeps, are subject to a skin disease, in consequence of the begrimed condition of their skins. Lady Bassett has established these baths, we understand, at her mines at Camborne, in Cornwall; but we think that the enforcement of a sanitary act of such importance should not be left to the philanthropic tendencies of individuals, but should be required by the Government. If a provision of this kind were made compulsory, and stricter legislation with respect to ventilating mines were established, no doubt a vast amount of disease could be eliminated. It is estimated that the worst coal mines can be ventilated thoroughly at a cost of one penny per man per day, and that in well-constructed furnaces the consumption of one ton of coals per day at the bottom of an up-cast shaft will enable each collier to cut one ton of coals more per day with the same amount of exertion. Such being the case, there can be no excuse for asphyxiating the miners wholesale. Those proprietors of mines, who are only open to these breeches-pocket appeals, should know that it is their interest, in a pecuniary sense, to ventilate well, inasmuch as the preservative effect of pure air upon the wood brattrices, which form so expensive an item in mining, effects a saving of 80 per cent.

Our remarks hitherto have been directed entirely to coal mines and colliers, as these are by far the most extensive industrial occupations of the kind. The metalliferous mines, such as the tin and copper mines of Cornwall, and lead mines of Derbyshire, are in pretty much the same pestiferous condition, but in one particular they are still more destructive of life than coal mines. In the latter the tired workman is lifted from the depths of the mines to the surface by a rope. The Cornwall miner, on the other hand, has to carry his exhausted body in some cases thousands of feet up a series of steep ladders to the mouth of the mine. It has been estimated that many miners have thus to make an exertion every night equal to climbing to the summit of Cader Idris, and this in an up-cast shaft used for the extraction of the foul air! The disastrous effect upon the already weary miner has long been known, yet in only a few of the great mines of Cornwall has the tireless arm of the steam-engine been called in to save him from this unnecessary labour. The machinery used is called a man-machine, and differs entirely from that employed in coal-pits. In place of a rope, a beam of wood or iron descends through the whole length of the shaft; this beam, at regular intervals of ten feet, has little platforms attached to it, sufficient to afford standing-room to a miner; at the sides of the shaft are similar platforms, at the same intervals. At every stroke of the engine the beam ascends or descends through the space of ten feet, consequently the miner has only to step from the fixed platform to the moving one to be lifted ten feet every time it ascends. In this manner as many as a hundred men are lifted at the same time several thousand feet in a few minutes, without any more exertion than is necessary to make a few score steps. This curious invention has materially benefited the miner, and where it is used there is a manifest absence of the heart disease, induced by the climbing of interminable ladders placed in an almost vertical position.

Dr. Greenhow, in his report on the prevalence of certain diseases in different districts of England and Wales, very clearly proves the deleterious nature of the lead-miner’s employment by the comparisons he makes between the death-rates of the men and women of Reeth and Alston, which are purely lead-mining districts. In the former, the lead-miners die at the rate of 2,037 per 100,000 of all ages, whilst their wives, sisters, and daughters, who are variously employed, die at the reduced rate of 1,711 per 100,000; in other words, lead-mining in this one typical district caused an excess of no less than 3·26 deaths in every 100,000 inhabitants; and if we make a comparison relative to the prevalence of pulmonary disease between the two sexes, above the age of twenty, we find the death-rate of the men is double that of the women. The evil influence of copper-mining on the male population is not quite so marked, but still it is apparent enough. Thus, in Redruth, in which this kind of labour is exclusively carried on, we find that in every 100,000 of population, 220 males die from pulmonary disease more than females; and in Penzance, which is exclusively a tin-mining district, the superior waste of male over female life, in the same population, of all ages, is 104.