IN A POISON FACTORY.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 38, 7 May 1907, Page 6

IN A POISON FACTORY.

WORKMEN'S STRONG DESIRE TO TASTE PRODUCT OF THEIR LABOURS. * “Slip on this glass mask,” said the foreman. ‘‘You will need it.” The Visitor donned the uncanny mask of glass, and the foreman led the way to the cyanide of potassium department. “We make 1,000 tons of cyanide a year,” he said. “A dose of five grains is a fatal one. Thus our annual product is enough to kill 2,500000 people.” He opened a door, and a room filled with writhing flames, dense shadows, sparks, smoke, and weird figures in glass masks was revealed. In the centre of the room, in a great cauldron, 100!b, of molten cyanide of potassium bubbled and seethed. The flames glinted strangely on the glass masks. The foreman coughed. “These fumes,” he said, “are wholesome. The men, you see, are all robust. I have known weakly chaps, working here among these strange fumes, to pick up health and strength. In another clean, cool, room the the finished cyanide was stored. It looked like crystalized white sugar, good enough to eat. “Good enough to eat,” said the foreman, gravely. “well, we have had men eat it. Four men committed suicide in that way. The fumes seem to create in our men. a desire to taste the drug. They fight this desire, most of them, successfully, but they feel it, the same as workers in coffee plants want to chew the coffee beans, and some feel it so strongly as to succumb.”