EFFECT OF FACTORIES, ETC.

309

and happiness, and usefulness of man, to the fullest degree.

The deteriorating influence of employments on the health, may be referred to the confinement to the house, to the insufficient ventilation, to the sedentary habits, to the constrained and unnatural character of the position in which the workman sits or stands, to the degree of heated atmosphere in which he has to pass his working hours, and to the poisonous influence of the metals, &c., used in his occupation.

The collecting large numbers of work-people into the same apartment, or into the same building, is necessarily disadvantageous to their health, even if the drainage of the building, and the ventilation of the rooms, be attended to in the best manner: it need hardly be said, even much more disadvantageous to their health, if such means are not fully attended to. In workshops and workrooms, in factories, and in mines; among tailors and milliners, among weavers, spinners, &c., either in silk, cotton, or wool, among calico-printers, among lace-makers, or net-makers, among founders and smelters, among smiths, among glass-blowers, among potters and pipe-makers, among gilders, &c., &c., the evils of collecting people together, and confining them in a common building during a large portion of every twenty-four hours, are great, and in some degree, irremediable.

Generally speaking, the hotter the places of work have to be kept, for the special purpose of manufacture, or as a consequence of its processes, the greater the evil effects on the health, and the greater the

care that should be bestowed on the ventilation of the places of work, and the greater the attention necessary to the clothing and habits of life of the work-people.

But, however great may be the care bestowed, so far as the results hitherto obtained from it, the health of those who work together in the same building in large numbers, is never on a par with that of those who work in detached dwellings. The weaver, or the stockinger, or the lace-maker, or the embroiderer,―miserable as may be the weekly pittance they can earn, and poor and close their dwellings, and undrained and filthy the surrounding lanes and courts, if following their several occupations in their own houses, may very generally be distinguished from the factory operatives, by their firmer frames and less worn countenances. When the degree of ventilation is made equal to the numbers of workpeople collected together, and when the labour of young children is entirely forbidden by the legislature, the evils of the factory system may be reduced to a less important position. I write of things as they still exist; notwithstanding all that mastermanufacturers have endeavoured to effect for their work-people; and notwithstanding the occasional interposition of commissions of inquiry, and acts of parliament.

The evils that attend the employment of children in the various manufactures, can only be removed by prohibiting the practice altogether. The years of growth, when so much of the vital force is needed

EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN.

311

to further the increasing size and development of all the organs and tissues, will not bear the wear and tear of mechanical employment, however little laborious may be its character, if continued day by day during a sufficiently long time, to be of importance to any manufacture, without laying the train for future evils, of no secondary degree, to the healthiness of the life, and its probable duration. Even in the instances of children, following such employment by the side, and under the eye and control of their parents, their strength has been found and proved to be severely, and injuriously, and pitilessly expended; and if such cases do not afford a sufficient guarantee against cruelty and wrong, it may be safely urged that there can be no possible circumstances in which the labour of children can be justifiably made use of. It need not be added, how wisely these precious years of the young life might be spent, in sowing the seeds of a religious and moral and intellectual education, in affording the surest safeguards against future depravity, the best preservatives against crime, and the only means of elevating the character, and lessening the dependence on sensual indulgence for the means of happiness. In the case of girls, these invaluable years, now worse than thrown away in factory-labour, or some routine manipulation, might be further occupied in teaching the future woman, wife, and mother, the great domestic arts; making her fit to fulfil her needful duties as a poor man's wife and help-mate; instructing her to eke out the little earnings in the best ways,-familiarising her with the

principles and practice of cottage-cookery, and all the duties of good housewifery. At or after the age of puberty, both boys and girls may be properly expected to earn their own living; and, when socially cared for by proper sanatory regulations, however humble their lot, however small their earnings, however hard their toil, however poor and meagre their food, however poor their dwellings, legislation will have done very much on their behalf, and they will be safely said to have placed before them more than a chance for happiness.

The tailor, the shoemaker, the weaver, the sempstress, the compositor, the engraver, and all the more sedentary occupations involve more or less injury to the health, from the constrained position required for the employment. In the younger and more delicate, and on this account particularly in young females, the physical evils include deformity of the spine, and possibly of the chest; in the older and stronger, they are confined usually in the first instance to the various kinds, degrees, and consequences of indigestion. Eventually, in a very large proportion of those who become victimised to neglect of the organic laws, whether such neglect proceeds from wilful inattention, ignorance, or an imperious necessity, the disordered action becomes extended to the respiratory organs; and the fatal issue may be most usually referred, more or less directly, to the supervention of phthisis.

Confinement and sedentary occupation are the principal causes of the diseases of artisans; but

EFFECT OF UNDUE EXERCISE.

313

they are not the sole causes of such diseases. A cause which sometimes obtains, but in an infinitely less degree of frequency, and in a less degree than may have been commonly supposed, is over-exertion; the undue use of a part or the whole of the muscles of voluntary motion. For, if over-exertion should include the undue wear and tear of the physique, by unwisely prolonged labours, by a long and virtually unbroken day-by-day work, of twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours, there can be no doubt that it has been proved to be a fertile cause of broken health and shortened life; especially among the poor milliners, dress-makers, shirt-makers, &c., of London, and the larger towns of this country. Even in the much more limited and less important sense, however, of unduly violent muscular effort being required in the occupation, there is, no doubt, injury to the lifeprobability incurred by those who work at some of the more laborious employments, such as smiths, ballasters, miners, &c. This may be referable to such strains as may induce herniæ, or aneurisms,or to the laborious efforts so far and so frequently interrupting the circulation, as to superinduce disease of the heart, or to the immediate consequences of violent exertions in causing displacements of the vertebræ.

The undue use of the voice, whether in singing or public speaking, and the undue exercise of the lungs in blowing wind-instruments, &c., are said to be not unfrequently productive of disease. If the chest be constitutionally delicate, whether from congenital