General Joiner," which by its marvellous action performs almost every operation in which the cabinetmaker, joiner, and carpenter are skilled, will before long introduce more monotony, less craft, and diminished bodily activity into these trades.

By the sub-division of labour and use of machinery, the term craft or handicraft, denoting a certain craftiness, cunning, or intelligence the tradesman and mechanic has to apply to the performance of his work, has now almost entirely lost its meaning, and is ill-suited to the unvarying and machine-like work required in nearly all the trades and manufactures of modern times.

To what degree the monotony of labour must descend in the manufacture of needles, pins, and steel pens may be guessed from the number of operations each of these articles has to undergo, and from the circumstance that each operation is assigned to a different set of persons.

Social reformers admit and even advocate a still further subdivision of labour, to which society, in its regenerated state will, inevitably, be compelled to have recourse; but they also suggest that the monotony necessarily connected with minutely sub-divided labour might be, to a great extent, obviated by a rotatory transfer of every set of persons through all the sub-divided operations required for the production of a certain article of manufacture. The knowledge acquired by this rotatory work would not fail to impart a most varied skill to the hands so engaged, and to initiate the mechanic and operative with the whole process of manufacture, and to suggest to them ideas of improvement and even invention which they could not have conceived at all without having, previously, become acquainted with the details of the manufacture.

Moreover, it must be taken into account that, in an improved state of society, the inevitable amount of monotonous labour will be shared by all the members of the community, by which its burden and pain will be reduced for each individual work

* Michelet complained that by sub-dividing labour we sub-divided manhood. Where in the Gothic era there would have been a whole man, well balanced in his faculties, self-reliant, and self-controlled, we have often in the nineteenth century the tenth part of a man-nervous, fantastical, and dependent on the capitalist that sweats him to death.

man; and that even this common participation in monotony will be rendered less irksome to every one, because it will occur between long intervals of rest, amusement, and recreation, and will actually cease at that period of life when every member of the future social state passes from active and productive labour to the comparatively easy and varied occupation of the supervision and distribution of produce.

No prospects, however, should be held out of total exemption from labour and its monotony; and the author lays down the following principle (already announced in his pamphlet, "The Democratic Charter of the Future") as a safe guide for the distribution of labour:-" Physical labour is to be equally distributed; for if it is attractive there will be no difficulty in its distribution, and if it is repugnant we have no right to assign its performance to the working classes alone, as is the case in the present state of society."

Although monotony is one of the greatest hardships of labour under which the working classes are oppressed, it is, however, not the most serious one, for being only irksome* but not dangerous, it is surpassed by many other hardships, and especially by those innumerable agencies and circumstances that imperil the life of working men, maim their limbs, and injure their health.

CHAPTER XIX.-INJURY TO HEALTH.

NO trade is exempt from those deleterious influences which,

in the long run, produce injury to health, and a predisposition to the development of certain diseases, which bring in their course long suffering and premature death.

The stonemason, the journeyman miller, and the baker have

* Sailors hate nothing so much as the incessant monotonous toil at the pumps. As the rickety craft strains and labours heavily in the trough of the sea, the leak increases, until a spell has to be taken at the pumps every hour throughout the day and night. How Jack hates the shrill whistle of the bo'sun, telling him that the time for his recreation has again arrived! Up and down go the long levers of the pump; cling, clang, cling, clang, echoes through the ship; and Captain Scuttler, stretching out of his hammock to get the bottle of rum standing within convenient reach on a swing tray, thinks he never heard sweeter music.

their lungs choked with the dust from stone and flour, and rarely escape pulmonary consumption and premature death.

The injury to the lungs by minute particles of hard stone is especially of a most deadly character in the occupation of that unhappy, but happily small, number of working men engaged in the dressing of millstones, who scarcely ever attain the age of thirty before they succumb to the hardship of their calling.

The colliers suffer of a phthisis, attributable to the year-long inhalation of coal dust, which so thoroughly permeates and penetrates the substance of the lungs that they are as black as coal when taken from the chest of the collier. This impregnation of the lungs with coal dust is sooner or later accompanied with cough and shortness of breath, with attacks of bronchitis and asthma; and Dr. Arlidge, of Stoke-uponTrent, states that the sputum expectorated by patients suffering from collier's phthisis is exactly like black paint. The same medical authority states further that the lungs of the workers of other minerals are found to be coloured according to the colour of the mineral. Thus the inhalation of the red oxide of iron in very fine powder would give an intense red tile colour to the lungs.

The dissection and microscopic inspection of the lungs of copper miners found them full of minute metallic granules, and of a deep black colour, exuding a black fluid resembling Indian ink.

Pulmonary complaints are also of frequent occurrence in all the textile manufactures; and Doctor Thackray, of Leeds, speaks of the cotton phthisis permanently raging in the cotton manufacturing districts, and Dr. Arlidge states the same to be the case in the flax manufacture. In how far the use of respirators can prevent the inhalation of deleterious substances must be ascertained by more extensive experiments, but if even found to be effective preventives, they will always remain a cause of inconvenience to those who are obliged to wear them; for they cannot but impede the free passage of air through the mouth and nose to the lungs.

Printers and compositors are greatly subject to consumptive complaints.

The house-painter, coach-painter, and plumber inhale the poisonous smell of lead and colours, and no respirator could

probably protect them against the deadly influence of these substances; which, in nearly every workman who has to use them, produce the so-called lead-cholic, frequently causing obstruction of the bowels, and often ends in death preceded by the most excruciating pains.

In all the dark places of industry, no more unwholesome employment can scarcely be conceived than ship-painting in the Devonport dockyard. Cases of frequent fainting and illness occur in the men who are engaged in painting between the double bottoms of the iron ships. Many parts of the iron ships between the double bottoms being most difficult of access, can only be reached by crawling on the belly and dragging the body forwards by the hands. The air being most scanty in the spaces remote from manholes, men are frequently hauled up in a state of insensibility by a rope slipped over their feet. Often a feeling of faintness comes over them, and sometimes when they begin to feel sleepy, as they express it, if still capable of the effort they make the best of their way out. The symptoms usually presented by men after three or four weeks of this work are compounded of blood poisoning from the repeated and prolonged breathing of impure air, and of lead poisoning. The only consolation the men have in their sufferings is a certain kind of blood-money: they get higher wages when thus employed, and half-pay when on the sick

list.

The engineer and machinist, who works in an atmosphere impregnated with the fine particles of iron and steel dust, has the capillary vessels of his lungs filled with these substances, which, if they are not directly causing pulmonary consumption, impart to the texture of the lungs a strong disposition to inflammation.

Locomotive engine-drivers become often totally blind, or have their sight hopelessly injured, through the rush of wind against their eyes, or the frequent entrance of particles of dust and coal.

But of all the trades suffering from injury to health, none unites so many evil causes as that of the baker; for not only is the inhalation of the dust from the flour hurtful to his lungs, but he has also to spend most of his time in unwholesome rooms, and in an intensely heated atmosphere charged with carbonic

acid gas, which escapes from the fomenting dough. His physical exertions in kneading the dough are also very exhaustive, causing excessive perspiration, palpitation of the heart and predisposition to apoplexy. Swelling and inflammation of the skin in the palms of the hands by the continual pressure of the dough against them, are also a common evil of the trade.

THE

CHAPTER XX.-OTHER DISCOMFORTS.

HE physical exertion a working man has to apply to his work is also very great in many employments, and becomes injurious to his health in consequence of the exhaustion of muscular power. The puddling of iron and other metals, for instance, is one of these occupations requiring the heaviest work that the arms and hands of a man can perform; and it is sad to think that the puddler has to do this heavy and exhausting work in face of the glaring blast and scorching heat of the burning furnace.*

In the glass works the heat of the smelting oven is, generally, so great that the skin is burned off the men's faces, and their cheeks, foreheads, and chins become covered with hideous large red scars.

In the stove of a pottery the work people have generally to endure a temperature of 120 degrees, and in many rooms of a cotton manufactory the heat is kept at similar height.

The labour of the blacksmith is also of a very heavy kind, and the swinging of the ponderous hammer produces, in the lifelong exercise of the trade, a deformity in the position of the shoulders of the man by considerably raising the shoulder in which are inserted the muscles of the arm that lifts the heavy implement.

The shoemaker becomes afflicted with hydrocele, from sitting in a curved and compressed position, and from the concussion

* "The working men of this country keep on toiling and toiling, working in the mine, at the loom, or being found drawing masses of fire from the burning iron blast. Still they do not complain. What other class of society, I ask, has ever endured the throes and embarrassments of an outraged situation as have the working classes?"-MR. GEORGE Odger.