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New Zealand Times, Volume LIV, Issue 9881, 12 April 1893, Page 3

The gradual increase in the longevity of the working class which the historian of the Queen's reign will have to record as one of its moat splendid triumphs {says the London Daily Chronicle) is a thing of which the country may well be proud; hot for all that we must remember that the death rate‘of the working plass is still far too high, and that their lives are one long agony of ilbheaUb in certain poison-breeding industries. Women' are still stifled in weaving sheds filled with steam. I)uf»t and acrid vapours are still the great enemies of industrial life. Blood poisoning and strange outlandish diseases fclay havoc every now and then in' Yorkshire’ among the wooisorters, who handle fleeces imported from the East. The knife-grinder is still the ghastly‘spectre that Ebeuezer Elliot drew for us in hie indignant rhymes. Of the special peril in places where explosives are made we need not speak. It is too well known to peed comment. But tfe hope that it will be possible to get at places where matches are turned out under conditions which set up the horrible disease known'as necrosis of the jaw. Kor will it be satisfactory if places where the silvering of mirrors goes on are free from special interference, for there yery bad cases of mercurial pofcoqing have beep seep.