THE DEMON OF GREED. 355 



Dangerous and Unhealthy Trades. 



Equally terrible with the amount of want and misery, 

 due mainly to insufficient earnings, want of work, or ill- 

 ness, are the enormous injury to health and shortening of 

 life due to unhealthy and dangerous trades, almost all 

 of which could be made healthy and safe if human life 

 were estimated as of equal value with the acquisition of 

 wealth by individuals. 



In Mrs. C. Mallet's tract on " Dangerous Trades for 

 Women," we find it stated that girls who do the carding 

 in the linen trade lost their health in about twelve years ; 

 the very strongest picked men in the alkali works as a 

 rule do not live to be fifty; glass-blowers become pre- 

 maturely old at forty, and sometimes become blind; in 

 the Potteries deaths from phthisis are three times as 

 numerous as among other workers. But all these trades 

 are inferior in deadliness to the white-lead manufactures, 

 in which numbers of girls and women are employed. 

 Some work on for several years without appreciable in- 

 jury, but the majority suffer greatly in a year or two, 

 many die in a few months, and some in a few weeks or 

 even days. In this trade the percentage of deaths is 

 higher than in any other, and the real amount is never 

 known, because, when the workers become ill, they are 

 usually discharged. They then perhaps work for a time 

 at some other employment, perhaps in another place, and 

 if they ultimately die of lead-poisoning or its conse- 

 quences, their connection with the dangerous trade is 

 lost. The children born of lead-workers usually die of 

 convulsions, and one woman lost eight children in this 

 way. Mr. Robert Sherrard, in his " White Slaves of 



