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 92 that men are prevented by hundreds from saving their lives in dangerous occupations avowedly because their places are wanted for new-comers who had reckoned on their not living beyond a certain short term of years.

Did any of my readers ever happen to see the forging and finishing of a sail-maker’s needle? After the steel is cut into lengths, each bit is separately treated—flattened at the head, and guttered, and filed, and punched with repeated strokes for the eye. Each needle is separately hammered into its three-sided form; and, what is most to my present purpose, each is separately pointed by being held to a gritstone cylinder. There was a time when every needle of every size was made in the same way, costing an infinity of time and trouble which is now saved by the use of improved mechanical methods. Every one of these needles, in the making, helped to shorten a man’s life. The grinding of the points gave out a never-ceasing dust, composed of gritstone and steel particles, which infested the workmen’s eyes, nostrils, mouth, and lungs, so that no one of them lived to forty years of age. This is the peril which makes life so short among the Sheffield cutlers, and which renders the grinders of steel everywhere, whether for needles, or razors, or scissors, or skates, or sickles, a peculiar class of men.

Going back a generation, the career of, say, a Redditch needle-maker was this.

A boy in any family of that craft heard from his infancy upwards of wages of from two guineas a week to a guinea a day; and he was accustomed to the ideas which belonged to such pay under the peculiar circumstances. He saw his father drunk very often; and he knew that he would be tippling for a week together, after which he would go to work for two or three weeks when he could get credit no longer; and those were the times when there were capital suppers at home—the first delicacies of the season being upon the table. His father used to come home much out of breath, and he would be heard coughing in the night. When it was time for the boy to go to work, it seemed to be taken for granted on all hands that he should follow his father’s trade. If any friend remonstrated on the ground that the occupation was an unhealthy one, and, for some reason or other, not reputable, there was a family chorus of opposition. The father would not live long; nobody in his business lived to much beyond his present age; and then the good wages would be wanted. There were no such wages to be had in any other branch of manufacture in the place, and the boy could not think of taking up with less. He was not to sit at the grindstone, however, till he was near twenty. That sacrifice to prudence was agreed to because it was a rule of experience that no boys employed in needle-pointing lived to be twenty.

At twenty, or somewhat earlier, the lad married, and sat down on his “horse,” before his wheel. There, as he stooped over his work, hot atoms of steel and stone dust filled the air he breathed, and were driven into his eyes, nose, and throat. His employer was a humane man, we may suppose; for most of them were so, as well as they knew how. There were as many doors as possible in the workshop, and supposed to be always standing open, in order that the dust might be blown away, to a certain extent. The men shut the doors whenever they had an opportunity, complaining of constant colds from the draughts. They were strictly ordered to go and rinse their mouths and throats once every hour: but when they were interested in their work, and, yet more, when they grew short of breath on moving, they were lazy about leaving their wheels for this rinsing. Moreover, they objected to it in itself. If it did no good, it was a needless trouble and loss of time: and if it did remove any of the dust, the men would be unwilling to take the benefit. No man in the business desired to lengthen his own life, or chose that his neighbour should have any advantage over him, or should keep the rising generation waiting too long.

The employers entirely disapproved this view of things; but they were actually afraid of the debauched set of fellows who pronounced for “a short life and a merry one,” and threatened vengeance against any one who should lower their wages by prolonging their lives. A mask of magnetised wire was recommended by Mr. Abraham, who pointed out how the wires were studded with particles of steel, after a morning at the wheel; particles which would have entered the mouth and nose of the grinder, if not thus intercepted. But not a man would wear the mask. The employers used every effort to get it adopted: but the men said, as on all such occasions, that to make the work safer was to lower the wages. Thus the lad who was a beginner had no chance of wearing this safeguard. The eyes of older men were upon him. He fancied, too, that recklessness was a mark of spirit and good fellowship. He told his little wife, however, that the mask was no good, as it did not dispose of the stone-dust.

To dispose of this stone-dust, some employers tried an experiment of fitting the wheels with canvas cylinders, up which a good deal of the dust might be carried by a proper draught. In one night every cylinder in Redditch was cut into strips, and every workman in that branch informed his employer that the craft would never allow either cylinder or mask. The lads were told that their employers had seen two, three, or four generations of needle-pointers to their graves, and were advised and entreated to take with good-will to a long succession of improvements, all directed to keeping their lungs clear of the fatal dust. It was no use. Ventilators, screens, fans,—all devices were destroyed or neglected.

In a few months, the young workman found he never was well. In a few years, he had a habitual cough. Mother and wife urged him to eat; as the hearty eaters bear the work longest. Much of the money went to keep an expensive table. Then drink followed; and then rows, riots, midnight vengeance for trade quarrels, a soured temper when every breath was drawn with pain; an anxious mind when there was a long score at the public-house, and several hungry children at home; and finally the poor fellow, old at five-and-thirty, and sinking under “the grinders’ rot,”