which the frequently repeated blows on the last exercise on the lower part of his body.

To all these injurious and inconvenient influences must yet be added the discomforts arising from the repulsive nature of many employments.

In some trades the men work in an atmosphere filled with the most horrible stench. The work of the nightman, of the tanner and skinner, of the gas-stokers, and of those who work in sewers, is of this repulsive nature; and the odour inhaled by the men employed in these and similar trades is so thoroughly imparted to the lungs, transmitted to the blood, and absorbed by the skin, that their breath, perspiration, and secretions will continue to emit it long after the time they have left their employment altogether, and have endeavoured to rid themselves of it by repeated ablutions and change of linen.

In many occupations men have to work in suffocating clouds of dust, as, for instance, the labourers who are engaged in the demolition of old buildings, those who have to remove the ashes from the dustbins of private houses, and those who have to sift them.

Many persons work in factories amidst the deafening noise and rattle of machinery, and others are, like the engine driver on railways and the brickmaker in the brickfields, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and become what is called "weather-beaten," and liable to be attacked with chronic rheu

matism.

The miners, who work beneath the surface of the earth, are deprived of the bright daylight and merry sunshine, and pass their lives in subterranean abodes, which the pitman's song depicts, with great truth, as a place where—

"Day never glimmered, and plants never bloomed,
Where sweet-scented zephyrs a leaf never stirred,
And the voice of the warbler never was heard ;
But where many horrors midst darkness abound,
And thick stifling vapours flow deadly around."

Coal-heavers and chimney-sweepers have their skin besmeared with a coating of black matter consisting of coal-dust and soot liquified by sweat, which naturally must impede the functions of the skin, and cause a person great trouble by the

daily ablutions and cleansing to which he must resort in order to put his body into that state of cleanliness which will secure it a comfortable night's rest in a clean bed.

That coal miners are exposed to similar inconveniences, and have, moreover, to suffer excessive heat in deep mines, may be gathered from a description of Mr. Lloyd Jones's descent into one of Earl Granville's coal pits, 575 yards deep:-"When we reached the heading," said he, "there was a man naked from his waist up, labouring with a pickaxe to liberate the coal. The heat was intolerable, and the man's blows were so rapid as to involve great exertion. He was sitting in the coal that had fallen down, or rather was so crouched down as to appear to be sitting, and was begrimed all over with coaldust, which was running down his body in muddy streams. He was earning his bread in the sweat of his brow, it is true, but he was earning it also in the sweat of every pore in his skin, and in such a way as produced wonder and pity to think that any human creature, under any pretence whatever, should have to lead such a life."

:

The Globe newspaper of October 4th, 1873, contained a similar description of the hardships the pitman has to undergo in his avocation. A correspondent of this paper being sent down into the mining districts, reported the following:"The colliery inspected lies some four miles from Mold, just on the break of a well-wooded dell, at the bottom of which ripples a silver trout stream, arched over with branching ferns. A pretty, sylvan spot, sweet-scented, pure-aired, full of idyllic tenderness, contrasting strongly with the suffocating darkness in which the miners work. How perilously the bucket sways as we go down the dank, dripping shaft, at the bottom of which glistens, like some strayed sixpence, a shining surface of still water! Not sorry are we when, our conveyance being deftly hooked into a side tunnel by a brawny-armed miner, we stand on firm ground once more. Then, lighting tapers stuck in balls of clay, we follow old John Hughes, the captain of the mine, and listen somewhat deferentially as the grizzled veteran explains the manner of working. 'It's nasty, tiresome stuff to work, this Brassy vein-makes a deal of slack, it does.' Seeing that the vein is little more than a yard thick, and the drift of corresponding height, we opine that working in Brassy must

beget broken backs after a day or two. Stooping double, we grope our way through the dim darkness, with cold clay slush nearly sucking off our boots, our heads touching against the shaly roof, and chilly drops of black water finding their way down our backs, until the drift end is reached, and we come upon a miner at work. Naked to the waist, amidst a white steam of perspiration, that lies thick and heavy in the dank atmosphere, with no other light than the sickly glimmer of a dimly-burning taper, a creature like some gigantic kind of antediluvian toad is squatted in a narrow hole, hewing with might and main at the splintering Brassy. In such a cramped position the work would be sufficiently trying even if pursued in the open air; how infinitely more distressing in a suffocatingly hot atmosphere, damp and stifling as that of a Turkish bath, but rendered still more unbreathable by rank coal gas and the sulphurous fumes of blasting powder! To us standing inactively there, in that dismal archway, there is a terrible difficulty in drawing breath, whilst our tapers, unable to burn without oxygen, have to be reversed every now and then to keep them alight."

In a touching but somewhat sarcastic vein, the "Pitman's Lay" refers to the hardships of the colliers in these lines:

"Think on us, hinnies, if ye please,

An' it were but to show yer pity;
For a' the toils and tears it gi'es,

To warm the shins o' Lunnon city."

All these inconveniences and discomforts are, however, only the lesser hardships of labour. Evils of a far greater magnitude are detailed in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XXI.-Loss OF LIFE AND BODILY INJURY.

T these nearly all handicrafts and employments are more

or less exposed. The most skilful workman is liable to inflict injury upon himself by the very tools the safe use of which seems at all times to be so thoroughly under his com

mand. The tailor will occasionally injure himself with the needle, the carpenter with the axe, the joiner with the chisel. Numberless amputations of fingers, hands, and arms are the consequence of these bodily injuries, arising from mishaps in the use and handling of tools and materials.

Still more numerous, and also more fatal, are those accidents to limb and life over which the working-man has little or no control. The bursting of steam-boilers, the explosion of firedamp in coal mines, the flooding of mines, the wrecking of vessels,* the falling of scaffoldings, the accidents by machinery and on railways, destroy every year hundreds of lives, and maim the bodies of many thousands of the working classes.

To what fearful amount accidents in factories are still taking place, in spite of the legally required fencing in of machinery, is seen from the following table in the Factory Inspector's Report for 1872, containing the number of accidents for six months of the year only :

Another half-yearly return of nearly 4,000 accidents would bring the yearly amount close up to 8,000; † and, if to these is

"The sailor's avocation, so useful to many nations, is but a life-long series of perils and slavery, which a man accepts in exchange for some brilliant but short episode in his career, which but too often ends in the wreck of his splendid constitution."-The Daily News.

In order to display, in an unmistakeable manner, the dangers to which factory operatives were exposed, during their employments, by

added, the loss of 500 British sailors in the 1,500 shipwrecks that yearly happen on the shores of these islands; * and if the number thus obtained is still further increased by 298 deaths caused by railway accidents, and of which 164 befell railway servants; † and if, finally, the grand total is closed by the addition of 1,076 lives lost in 1871 in the coal mines of Great Britain, the statement once made by Lord Shaftesbury, that the number of workmen annually killed and injured by accidents would furnish a complete regiment of soldiers, is by no. means an exaggeration.

That the men who perished within the last ten years in the mines of the United Kingdom would form a strong army corps of many regiments, is to be seen in the following appalling statistics relating to the mortality and risk that the avocation of the miner entails, and which were brought before the conference of the Associated Miners, held at Walsall, October 4th, 1872, by Mr. Pickard, who said, "The average span of the miner's life is twenty-seven years. During the last ten years, twelve thousand miners lost their lives in accidents, and unboxed machinery and other causes, Mr. Philip Grant collected (about the year 1838) an army of factory cripples in Manchester, and, having placed them in military array, six deep, they reached from the bottom of Market Street to Ardwick Green, a distance of about two miles.

* Commander Dawson, R. N., gives the following statistics of the number of sailors who lost their lives at sea in two years :

+ The Executive Council of the Railway Servants' Society allege that on the various railways in Great Britain, one man is killed every day, and several injured, throughout the whole year. Mr. Bass states that in 1873 the number of killed servants rose to 1,200, and of injured to 27,000.

If to these 12,000 lives lost in the mines we add 15,000 lost at sea, (the Wreck Register for 1873-74 gives 31,168 lost in twenty years), and if we further increase these appalling figures by 10,000 relating solely to railway servants killed in ten years, we obtain 37,000 as the fearful amount of the sacrifice of life. To these we may add 3,000 more for loss of life in factories; making a total of 40,000 persons, exclusively members of the working classes, who have to lay their lives down as sacrifices demanded by the exigencies of trade and commerce!