degenerate. A woman's body is unable to withstand strains, fatigues, and privations as well as a man's. This makes her condition all the worse, because her earnings are correspondingly smaller. The diseases which most frequently afflict the working class are disturbances of the nutritive and blood-forming processes. Weavers, spinners, and workmen employed in branches of industry, where work is done in close, poorly ventilated, cold, or hot rooms, are especially subject to such diseases. Among the diseases to which workmen in such occupations are most often subject are the so-called inanition, scrofula, rachitis, pulmonary consumption, dropsy, also rheumatic troubles, pleurisy, typhoid fever, gangrene, and the various skin diseases. Every epidemic, be it typhoid, smallpox, scarlet fever, dysentery, cholera, etc., draws its greatest army of victims from this class. For every death that occurs among the richer and higher classes there are many in the working class. It is the workmen engaged in unhealthy factories first of all who fill the hospitals and their death chambers. Again it is more often the working woman who suffers from female troubles, and even cancer. The reasons for the high mortality and shortness of life among the working class can easily be perceived from the foregoing facts. These two evils are always proportionate to the danger and the insanitary conditions existing in the industry. Loss of health and the shortening of life are looked upon as the severest evils that can be inflicted upon the individual. The working classes themselves often call their condition white slavery, and their factories and workshops slaughterhouses. All the harmful influences which affect the workingman in his various callings must therefore be thoroughly studied and earnest effort made toward their amelioration or removal, not only that the interests and the health of the weaker members of society may be protected, but also because the bealth of society in general is both directly and indirectly menaced by insanitary conditions in any industry. When we go back to those causes to which the nations of the present day owe their advance in culture and social conditions, we find that one of the most important and essential causes of this undeniable advance lies in the deeper recognition of those natural conditions upon which depend the life and well-being of the individual and the prosperous development of society. The sciences alone would have aided but little in any real elevation of the general conditions of well-being. Science, at times, had to descend from its lofty regions to meet the necessary demands of daily life. It had to make the laws and needs of human existence the object of its most comprehensive researches. It had to bring to light their relation to and connection with the external conditions of life. It is only by means of these that more rational rules of life can be formu lated. It is in the manifold transgressions of these laws, in the unreasonable gratifications of certain needs, in the almost criminal ignorance and disregard of injurious influences, that the causes and sources of many evils are to be found. Such evils are especially prevalent in the conditions which surround industrial establishments and their workers. To understand the evils which threaten the industrial classes and to search for their remedy, is one of the pressing needs of the day. To obtain the correct point of view for the solution of these important questions, an unprejudiced and searching investigation is first of all necessary. The attention of foreign countries has been for a long time directed to the economic traits of character of the American people, and especially to those industrial traits which aim at the improvement and extension of the methods of production. Nothing is neglected which may protect and raise the interests of industry. But hitherto too little attention has been given to those insanitary factory conditions which imperil the lives and health of the workers. These conditions have arisen largely as the result of the continuous increase of population in manufacturing towns, and they affect not only the workingmen, but also the manufacturers and the whole nation. The present concentration of population in large manufacturing cities is not in the interest of public hygienic and economic principles in such a measure as might easily be assumed. The characteristic increase. of the industries in American cities is nothing if not remarkable. The factory is the symbol of the day, and steam and electricity are the rulers of the present. Our age has learned to utilize the forces of nature and thus has made gigantic steps forward. The more attention is paid to the improvement of the conditions of health of the working class the more surely will those favorable economic results be obtained for which the American strives. The successful development of factory sanitation and the protection of the workers in factories require 1. Systematic education in respect to the many dangers which, in certain industries, threaten the workman and the public. 2. The institution of technical preventive measures based upon a sound practical as well as theoretical foundation, and whose aim shall be to remove the causes of all existing evils that injure the health. Public sentiment is more favorably inclined toward such a problem than at any previous time. There is now in the industrial occupations little of that medieval seclusion which made the discovery of natural laws the closely kept secret of a guild or school, and which always strongly opposed the adoption of new discoveries. The great value of open intercommunication and instruction, in so far as they concern factory sanitation, labor protection, and the preservation of life, is recognized. The exertions and attainments of the individual under these conditions are thus of greater value to the country at large. They smooth the way for those who aim at similar results and make their attainment more certain. The inhalation of pure, moderately warm air containing a certain amount of moisture must be considered one of the first conditions for the preservation of the health of the human body. Even the external air varies in its temperature and degree of humidity according to the season of the year and atmospheric conditions. In factory rooms the air suffers many alterations injurious to the workingman. Sometimes these alterations are due to the peculiarity of the industry and the materials consumed. Usually, however, they coincide with the deterioration caused by the exhalations and expectoration of the workmen, and, in winter especially, are hastened by the gas or petroleum illumination. But the air is vitiated not only by the above-mentioned factors, but also by the dust which develops in the various industries and methods of manufacture. The latter may seriously impair the health of the workman and directly or indirectly endanger or shorten his life. The list below shows the great number of varieties of dust having a more or less injurious influence upon the health. Just as numerous are the gases, which exert their dangerous influence upon the workman, especially in the chemical industry. The elimination of these dangers involves many very important technical problems. The manner in which these may be best dealt with will be more clearly presented by describing for certain selected industries the preventive measures which should be established and which are representative of the best methods of preventing or overcoming the dangers in other industries. These, with the recognition of the technical variations in the different plants, can easily be applied and adapted to other industries. In the first place, we must concern ourselves with (a) the knowledge of the essence and injurious properties of the dust particles from various sources; (b) the arrangements for the removal of these varieties of dust; (c) the arrangements for the removal of noxious gases; (d) the arrangements for a complete prevention of the generation or diffusion of noxious gases. This must be carried out in quite a different and more practical manner than has hitherto been done either at home or abroad. An explanatory description of the industry should also be given, so that not only the manufacturer, but the workman as well, may understand the import of these attempts and propositions and see how the defects can be practically removed. The injurious varieties of dust are the following: 1. Needle-grinding dust (pure steel). 2. Carding dust: (a) From a carding factory; (b) from a cotton mill. 3. Iron dust arising in emery grinding. 4. Needle-grinding dust (steel and emery). 5. Casting-cleaning dust (taken from the air). 6. Dust from a foundry. 7. Dust rubbed off from the lead weights of Jacquard looms. 8. Bronze dust from lithographic establishments. 9. Granite dust. 10. Marble dust from a sculptor's studio. 11. Syenite dust from a sculptor's studio. 12. Sandstone dust from a stonecutter's establishment. 13. Sandstone dust produced by scraping. 14. Stone dust produced in the construction of millstones. 15. Limestone dust from a stone quarry. 16. Meerschaum dust. 17. Slate dust. 18. Quartose-sand dust in the blast of an enamelled sheet-glass factory. 19. Glass dust in wood-turning dust. 20. Glass and flint dust in a sand-paper factory. 21. Brick dust or crockery dust. 22. Cement dust. 23. Gypsum dust. 24. Basic-slag dust. 25. Mineral-wool dust. 26. Linden-wood dust from a band saw. 27. Cutter's dust from thoroughly dried oak wood. 28. Grinding dust from pine wood. 29. Grinding dust from beech wood. 30. Grinding dust from boxwood. 31. Coal dust. 32. Charcoal dust. 33. Dust from a flax-heckling factory. 34. Hemp-carding dust. 35. Dust from the slubs in hemp spinning. 36. Horsehair dust in balling. 37. Horsehair dust from the mixing machine. 38. Horsehair dust from the air. Injurious varieties of gas are met with in all chemical and in other industries but it is possible to remove them easily and practically. Of the manifold arrangements for the removal of noxious gases that, for instance, in the etching room of a European metal-ware factory is especially efficient. Openings are made in the walls behind the kettles at a level with the latter's surface and lead to a perpendicular canal from which the noxious gases are sucked by means of a strong fan. Those arrangements whose purpose is to avoid completely the generation and diffusion of noxious gases do not really belong to the subject of ventilation, for they make special ventilation unnecessary. However, in respect to their effects they can be placed side by side with the improvements which are to be obtained by the way of ventilation. Among these belongs the substitution of plates, heated by a mixture of air and illuminating gas, for the coal arrangement in silk finishing. The generation of carbon monoxide in the coal scuttles used in drying the foundry form is prevented and diminished by the introduction of air through a system of pipes. This brings about at the same time a complete combustion and a diminution of the smoke. Abroad, extensive studies have been made in the ventilation and humidification of air in cotton mills. The system employed is probably one of the best that has been introduced in this industry. It makes it possible both in summer and in winter to keep the temperature of the air at the desired point-59° to 63° F. It removes the dust, makes the degree of humidity from 55 to 66 per cent, and completely renews the air of all the working rooms at least three times per hour. The facts above given indicate how some of the injurious conditions can be removed. The task is to make known and available the experience which has already been gained. A scheme for the systematic treatment and elaboration of technical preventive measures against the vitiation of the air in any industry should consider: A. The sources of the contamination of air (1) Human transelementation of matter; (2) The development of carbon dioxide; (3) The development of aqueous vapor; (4) Gas illumination; (5) Other impurities. B. Quantities of admixtures in air (1) Carbon dioxide; (2) Aqueous vapor; (3) Dust-forming admixtures. C. The remedying of the contaminations of the air First. By the elimination of noxious gases, fumes, and dust before they can mingle with the respired air; Second. By rarefaction (a) Requisite rarefaction; (b) The amount of the interchange of air-(1) the ascertainment of the necessary interchange of air, (2) determination of the air supply, (3) necessary quantities of air; (c) Influence of ventilation upon the humidity-(1) aqueous vapor contents, (2) sweating of the walls, etc., (3) humidification and dehumidification of the air; (d) Measures for humidifying the air-(1) regulation of the humidification, (2) apparatus for humidification, (3) self-regulating humidification apparatus; (e) Measures for drying the air. |