Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/98

70 told the doctor at the clinic that if they remained at home for two days they generally regained some of their ability to hear. If Dante could have visited a cutting room he might have described another torment in his inferno. In looking over a roomful of young girls whose deft fingers never falter in sorting out the fur one is astonished that they can retain their composure in that unspeakable bedlam. And one wonders, after all, if any felt hat is worth years of deafness.

But, deafness is not the only danger, for every one who handles the fur after it has been carroted faces the menace of mercurial poison. Three hundred and fifty employees of the hatters' fur trade were examined through the Occupational Clinic. Of these fourteen per cent. were indisputably suffering from mercurialism. Many have violent tremors of the hands, face and tongue. Unfortunately most of the workers fail to realize the danger of their occupation, and it is exceedingly difficult to get them to observe the first principles of self-protection against the hazards of the trade. In some instances it was found that the employer had to lock the carroting rooms and the drying rooms at noon time to prevent the employees from eating their lunches there.

The constant breathing of dust and fur-laden atmosphere affects the nose, throat and lungs of the workers. This could be obviated by sweeping after hours or by the employment of a vacuum device. But no matter how much may be accomplished through cleaning up the factories and installing safety devices the condition of the workers cannot be very greatly improved until they themselves are made to understand the peculiarly dangerous character of their work.

The use of mercury in the hatters' fur trade causes much suffering among the workers but it is something which must be tolerated until such time as someone invents a felting process which is as good and as cheap as that dependent on mercury. Only mercury can roughen up and flare out the laminae of the fur fibres which causes the fur to snarl readily and to form felt satisfactorily.



HEN you are in Los Angeles, Calif., and Seattle, Wash., and you want to know the location of office buildings, etc., you have only to go to the nearest street corner to find a directory on the side of the building giving the location of business houses, office buildings, and a list of street cars which pass the corners within three blocks from that point, and their routes and destinations. These directories are changed or added to every month. They are large cards covered with glass and in a metal frame.



Over one hundred of them have already been placed and the list is being added to rapidly. This system relieves the traffic policemen stationed at the intersections of the streets, leaving him free to attend to the regulation of the automobiles.