Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1860-03-27
M ISCELL AN
The Slaves of Civilization.

M is ELL AN Y.
The Slaves of Civilization.
The Edinburgh Review for January has an
interesting article suggested by an examination
of various works, relating to mortality in the
trades and professions from which the New
York Commercial has extracted in the subjoined
synopsis many important facts. The result of
made in England, into the condi-
tion of tue laboring classes-not merely those
who labor in the dark places under the earth,
but those who are engaged in the processes by
which articles of taste and luxury are prepared
will be- startling to all, who surrounded by the
appointments of easy life, have given no atten-
ton to the multiform perils which environ
those by whom these appointments are supplied.
The mirror which reflects our features, and the
glazed cards which we leave on our friends,
give no token of the trembling form of the arti-
ficer, poisoned by mercurial fumes, or paralyzed
by the hazardous toll by which he sought to
earn his livelihood. The porcelain vase on the
mantle is OF rare beauty, but it has infected the
Clippers hand with disease which viii de-
stroy its cunning All this suffering proceeds,
the workman falls out of the ranks and another
rises to take his place, reckless of the fate that
awaits him, and gratifed with the increased
compensation awarded to his abors.
In this day of ''silver forks" it will be sur
prisng to know that more steel forks than ever
before, are now manufactured at Sheffield -
These forks, and needles also, are ground upon
dry stones, the grinder necessarily sitting in the
posture best adapted to fill his lungs with the
fine dust, and to wound his sensitive eyes with
the steel sparks. The dry fork grinder averages
29 years, and thus exemplifies at an early day,
the solemn ritual, ''dust to dust" Some dry
grinders wear spectacles, and these are often
found fecked with bits Of steel, which, when red
hot, penetrate the glass. This same dry grinder,
in order to give the smoothly rounded back to
razor or scissor blade, sacrifices his health
and life to the unimportant difference between
the straight and the curved line which he FORMS
The statistics of Sheffield show that the ascend
ing grade of longevity is in direct proportion to
the amount of water used on the stone, the
strength and age of the grinder being consid-
cred. Yet, we are informed, that matters are
not SO bad as formerly. The introduction of
fans to blow the dust away from the stone, OF
magnetized wire-screens for the face, and the
general adoption of the ''beard movement" by
workmen mature enough to raise these hirsute
appendages, have added to the length of life
Still the grinders say ''the trade is bad enough
as it is, and if the men lived longer, it would be
getting a living"
Now as to the miner-one of the 10000 per-
sons in Great Britain who enter the bowels of
the earth at morning and emerge at evening"
Beneath the soil he works-the very industrial
Atlas of Notwithstanding the wealth and
greatness of that country, which without its
coal and iron, its copper and tin, and its giant
machinery feeding upon them and reducing them
to new forms, would not enjoy its present proud
pre-erninence. Here, in these cold dark mines,
the miner tolls, cramped in position, till "the
Apollo like form of man becomes permanently
twisted and bent, like the gnarled root of an
oak. which has been doubled up in the issure of
a rock.'' In these galleries two feet high, pur-
suing the vein OF metal or coal, and picking at
the side and top the collier lives his life of toll
some constraint, knotting himself till an erect
position is punishment to him. Foul air sur
rounds him; fire-damp blasts him to cinder,
or choke damp noiselessly blots out his life. A
single blow of the pick may let in upon the
collier an invasion of either one of these damps,
and the pit mouth may be crowded with q
"waiting multitude of newly made widows and
orphans" Thus 1900 lives, and 10000 acct
dents annually attest the dangerous nature of
this vocation.
In all England the mortality among miners
from accidents alone, is 4.5 to the thousand; in
Staffordshire alone rs while in Prussia it is
only g, and in Belgium 2.S. Then add the
diseases caused by deprivation of light and air,
by the foul breath of the caverns and of the de-
caying timbers in them, and by the volumes of
coal dust taken into the lungs. When the col
lier dies, his lungs look as if dipped in black
ink. The dry grinder has similar lung. The
average of sickness among colliers between the
ages Of 90 and 60, is 67 per cent. more than the
general average. Yet the coal mines can be
ventilated at a cost of penny per man per day.
This ventilation will save ten fold its cost, in
the increased labor done by the colliers, and the
preservation of the wood battrices in the mines.
In the Cornwall mines, the workmen, after a
day IF toll, are obliged to climb ladders for
many hundreds Of feet to reach the raouth of the
pit. This is equal to the labor of ascending
mountain.
All trades that are carried on in dust are
more or less Immediately productive of disease.
Millers, masons, brick ers, snuff makers, pearl
button makers, preparers of hair, fax beaters
and many others, all suffer from diseases pecu-
liar in many of their symptoms and effects to
the special trade, but bearing general family
resent blance.
Strangely enough, one of these curious and
patient investigators Of health finds that scay-
engers and chiffonniers are remarkably healthy.
Human life meets filth nowhere more closely,
yet the Investigation finds them "a healthy look
ing, ruddy complexioned race" wearing their
natural rouge under their artificial tint. The
Impurities with which these people come in
contact are, however, in the open air, and more
over, the power of ashes to absorb noxious en-
anations must be considered. But scavengers
are usually exempt from febrile complaints. It
is known, too that the occupation of tanners
and workers in oil, and of butchers, has GER
tain exemption from pulmonary COMPLAINTS
Some curious facts are mentioned by the Review
in this connexion, which we must omit.
The lucifer matchmaker with his cadaverous
complexion, emaciated form, and necrosis of the
jaw, is another instance of the slavery of civii-
zation. Phosphorus in one form so essential
to bone, is, in the fumes of the match factory,
destructive to it. The chemist brings his results