42 WORKMEN AND AMELIORATIONS. 



the London bakers, points out that thirty-one of them per hun- 

 dred are consumptive, a fact, which he ascribes to their ill-venti- 

 lated workshops. You are now in a position, from what I have 

 already stated, to modify these views of Dr E. Smith and Dr 

 Guy, as to the degree of mortality and its causes prevailing 

 among the tailors and bakers. Eeferring to a London printing 

 office, in which, only two hundred and two cubic feet of breathing 

 space were allowed to each man, the same authority remarks that 

 the deaths from consumption followed as fast on each other as- 

 deaths from some contagious fever. 



It was no doubt this frequency of death from that disease, 

 occurring in ill-ventilated workrooms, that first led to the belief 

 that consumption was an infectious malady. 



I do not say for I cannot speak from personal knowledge of the 

 fact that, in our great manufacturing workshops, the statutory 

 amount of space is not given, but I do affirm, that, it would be an 

 altogether inadequate space in an atmosphere constantly re- 

 plenished with pernicious materials derived from the manufactur- 

 ing operations. 



It must be obvious that their requirements are of a different 

 kind from those of a dormitory or dwelling, or the wards of an 

 hospital, and that the question of the proper ventilation of these 

 places cannot be settled by the off-hand rule of so much space to 

 so many individuals. The problem to be solved is this : how 

 to environ each worker in the prosecution of his work with a pure 

 atmosphere 1 It is not for me to undertake the solution of this 

 problem, because I hold that to be a matter for which the responsi- 

 bility rests upon the Legislature. I am nevertheless free to express 

 my confident conviction that this result appears to me to be only 

 a question of certain, simple, practical, mechanical adjustments, 

 requiring no effort of genius, or even outlay, where there is so 

 much already existing machinery. 



Let us pause and ask here : how do those who have most to gain 

 or lose regard those proposed ameliorations which we have been 

 considering 1 It would appear, that in some instances, they are not 

 viewed with favour, and, owing to this want of unanimity, it is to 

 be regretted, that they have not been generally adopted. Any 



