﻿THE AIR OF TOWNS. 19 



which might by other find better means be prevented, he violates the 

 law. 



The second part of the act relating to chimneys should be unneces- 

 sary if the first were properly carried out. That it is necessary, arises 

 from the fact that convictions are almost impossible, because the smoke 

 maker may always urge in his defense that his liirnace is the best he 

 can procure for the purpose, whi(;h statement the magistrate is usually 

 willing to accept. 



Could it be shown that the complete consumption of smoke would be 

 to the advantage of the smoke maker, as it was in the case of the alkali 

 maker, factory chimneys would soon cease to smoke. Before I go fur- 

 ther, I wish to establish a claim to uiiderstand the smoke maker and 

 to symijathize to some extent with him. I was for a few years assistant 

 manager in a large chemical works. If there is an industry where 

 excuse may be found for smoke it is in a chemical works. Of the five 

 boilers on the works some ay ere used for machinery, others for distilling 

 purposes. Sometimes during the day the boilers were working at low 

 pressure, at other times they had to deliver the maximum amount of 

 steam. Then there were a large number of small furnaces for special 

 products, and here, again, the firing was irregular from the necessity of 

 the case. In additiim to this, noxious vapor had to be treated before 

 the gases escaped into the chimney. One could scarcely expect that 

 with all this intermittent firing, the chimney should make no smoke. 

 Much more might be urged on the part of smelting works, which 

 have even greater difficulties to encounter in the way of fume and the 

 nonobstruction of draft. Yet no works are exempt from the act, and 

 the best practicable means should be enforced everywhere. 



Now, although I think I am able to take a fair view of the manufac- 

 turer's case, my sympathies, I confess, are with the workingman. No 

 doubt some of these men, the firemen, are directly responsible for 

 much unnecessary smoke. This has often been advanced as an excuse 

 for the manufacturer. I do not think it is a legitimate one. A manu- 

 facturer ought to know and appreciate better than his workmen the 

 evils of smoke, and should exercise the authority he possesses to 

 enforce his more enlightened ideas. It is certainly the workman who 

 bears the brunt of the polluted atmosphere. I lived for a time near 

 the works I have described, right in the heart of a manufacturing dis- 

 trict. Of the character of the district you may form some idea from 

 the fact that within almost a stone's throw of my door were three tar 

 works, two other chemical works, an iron foundry, a fire-brick works, a 

 colliery, and an alkali works. Opposite my lodging was a row of cot- 

 tages similar to the row in which I lived and behind it, like a great 

 scaffold, rose the winding gear of the colliery. At the back of the 

 house was the yard of a tar works with its desolate, black beds of pitch, 

 and beyond a mountain of alkali waste, sending forth day and night its 

 fetid odor of sulphuretted hydrogen. This smell, combined with the 



