Among the children whose work is especially injurious
are the mould-runners, who have to carry the moulded
article with the form to the drying-room, and afterwards
bring back the empty form, when the article is properly
dried. Thus they must go to and fro the whole
day, carrying burdens heavy in proportion to their
age, while the high temperature in which they have
to do this increases very considerably the exhaustiveness
of the work. These children, with scarcely a
single exception, are lean, pale, feeble, stunted;
nearly all suffer from stomach troubles, nausea, want
of appetite, and many of them die of consumption.
Almost as delicate are the boys called “jiggers,”
from the “jigger” wheel which they turn.
But by far the most injurious is the work of those
who dip the finished article into a fluid containing
great quantities of lead, and often of arsenic, or
have to take the freshly-dipped article up with the
hand. The hands and clothing of these workers,
adults and children, are always wet with this fluid,
the skin softens and falls off under the constant
contact with rough objects, so that the fingers often
bleed, and are constantly in a state most favourable
for the absorption of this dangerous substance.
The consequence is violent pain, and serious disease
of the stomach and intestines, obstinate constipation,
colic, sometimes consumption, and, most common of
all, epilepsy among children. Among men, partial
paralysis of the hand muscles, colica pictorum, and
paralysis of whole limbs are ordinary phenomena.
One witness relates that two children who worked
with him died of convulsions at their work; another
who had helped with the dipping two years while a boy,
relates that he had violent pains in the bowels at
first, then convulsions, in consequence of which he
was confined to his bed two months, since when the
attacks of convulsions have increased in frequency,
are now daily, accompanied often by ten to twenty
epileptic fits, his right arm is paralysed, and the
physicians tell him that he can never regain the use
of his limbs. In one factory were found in the
dipping-house four men, all epileptic and afflicted
with severe colic, and eleven boys, several of whom
were already epileptic. In short, this frightful
disease follows this occupation universally:
and that, too, to the greater pecuniary profit of
the bourgeoisie! In the rooms in which the stoneware
is scoured, the atmosphere is filled with pulverised
flint, the breathing of which is as injurious as that
of the steel dust among the Sheffield grinders.
The workers lose breath, cannot lie down, suffer from
sore throat and violent coughing, and come to have
so feeble a voice that they can scarcely be heard.
They, too, all die of consumption. In the Potteries
district, the schools are said to be comparatively
numerous, and to offer the children opportunities
for instruction; but as the latter are so early set
to work for twelve hours and often more per day, they
are not in a position to avail themselves of the schools,
so that three-fourths of the children examined by
the commissioner could neither read nor write, while
the whole district is plunged in the deepest ignorance.
Children who have attended Sunday school for years
could not tell one letter from another, and the moral
and religious education, as well as the intellectual,
is on a very low plane. {207}