"4th. They might be more careful not to leave the grindstone in water. I have traced three broken stones in one wheel to that abominable piece of carelessness.
"5th. They ought never to fix an undersized pulley wheel. Simmons killed himself by that, and by grudging the few hours of labor required to hang and race a sound stone.
6th. If files can only be cut on lead, the file-cutters might anoint the lead over night with a hard-drying ointment, soluble in turps, and this ointment might even be medicated with an antidote to the salt of lead.
7th. If files can only be cut on BARE lead, the men ought to cut their hair close, and wear a light cap at work. They ought to have a canvas suit in the adjoining place (see above); don it when they come, and doff it when they go. They ought to leave off their insane habit of licking the thumb and finger of the left hand--which is the leaded hand--with their tongues. This beastly trick takes the poison direct to the stomach. They might surely leave it to get there through the pores; it is slow, but sure. I have also repeatedly seen a file-cutter eat his dinner with his filthy poisoned fingers, and so send the poison home by way of salt to a fool's bacon. Finally, they ought to wash off the poison every two hours at the taps.
"8th. Since they abuse the masters and justly, for their greediness, they ought not to imitate their greediness by driving their poor little children into unhealthy trades, and so destroying them body and soul. This practice robs the children of education at the very seed-time of life, and literally murders many of them; for their soft and porous skins, and growing organs, take in all poisons and disorders quicker than an adult.
C. What the Legislature might do.
"It might issue a commission to examine the Hillsborough trades, and, when accurately informed, might put some practical restraints both on the murder and the suicide that are going on at present. A few of the suggestions I have thrown out might, I think, be made law.
"For instance, the master who should set a dry-grinder to a trough without a fan, or put his wet-grinders on a mud floor and no fire, or his file-cutters in a room without taps and basins, or who should be convicted of willfully buying a faulty grindstone, might be made subject to a severe penalty; and the municipal authorities invested with rights of inspection, and encouraged to report.
"In restraint of the workmen, the Legislature ought to extend the Factory Acts to Hillsborough trades, and so check the heartless avarice of the parents. At present, no class of her Majesty's subjects cries so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and the humanity of Parliament as these poor little children; their parents, the lowest and most degraded set of brutes in England, teach them swearing and indecency at home, and rob them of all decent education, and drive them to their death, in order to squeeze a few shillings out of their young lives; for what?--to waste in drink and debauchery. Count the public houses in this town.
"As to the fork-grinding trade, the Legislature might assist the masters to extinguish it. It numbers only about one hundred and fifty persons, all much poisoned, and little paid. The work could all be done by fifteen machines and thirty hands, and, in my opinion, without the expense of grindstones. The thirty men would get double wages: the odd hundred and twenty would, of course, be driven into other trades, after suffering much distress. And, on this account, I would call in Parliament, because then there would be a temporary compensation offered to the temporary sufferers by a far-sighted and, beneficent measure. Besides, without Parliament, I am afraid the masters could not do it. The fork-grinders would blow up the machines, and the men who worked them, and their wives and their children, and their lodgers, and their lodgers' visitors.
"For all that, if your theory of Life, Labor, and Capital is true, all incurably destructive handicrafts ought to give way to machinery, and will, as Man advances."
