while in the carding and spinning departments the
fine dust produces lung-disease in the majority of
cases, and the woman who starts carding at seven-
teen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces
at thirty. The chemical laborers, picked from the
strongest and most splendidly built men to be
found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight
years.

Says Dr. Arlidge, of the potter s trade: " Potter s
dust does not kill suddenly, but settles, year after
year, a little more firmly into the lungs, until at
length a case of plaster is formed. Breathing be
comes more and more difficult and depressed, and
finally ceases."

Steel dust, stone dust, clay dust, alkali dust, fluff
dust, fibre dust all these things kill, and they are
more deadly than machine-guns and pom-poms.
Worst of all is the lead dust in the white lead
trades. Here is a description of the typical dissolu
tion of a young, healthy, well-developed girl who
goes to work in a white lead factory:

Here, after a varying degree of exposure, she becomes
anaemic. It may be that her gums show a very faint blue
line, or perchance her teeth and gums are perfectly sound,
and no blue line is discernible. Coincidently with the
anaemia she has been getting thinner, but so gradually as
scarcely to impress itself upon her or her friends. Sick
ness, however, ensues, and headaches, growing in intensity,

[[258]]

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