OCEANS OF VITRIOL.
The Heeoio Workers of Widneb, and j Their Fight for Life. The whole world is laid to owe gratitude to Widnes, that strange little town on the banks of the Mersey. It is the home of the trade in chemicals. In Widnes men spend their lives under the most terrible conditions that many of the chemical compounds familiar in commerce may be produced, and a chemical factory is simply an inferno on a small scale. In some of the workshops the fames are RwfuL Tl>v, ,iv» tha nostrils and throat of the intrude' ! he feels that he is being choked and Uo Turefl; yet in such atmospheres. the; daily tasks of thousands of men are carried out. Fox instance, in the manufacture of muriatic acid, which ia prodnced by mixing common salt and solphurlo acid, the vapours produced are almost unendurable. The acid' teizes the soda in the talt and liberates the muriatic gaaj this flies np gla«, tubes into water tanks, where. it b dissolved
into acid. It is then distilled in platinum retorts, worth thousands of pounds ; platinum alone will serve for such a purpose, as earthenware would break and other metals dissolve.
Vitriol is made there by burning sulphur and saltpetre together in long brick furnaces ; the weird bluish flames dart out of the doors when they are opened, and it is the duty of the men to face the awful heat and breathe the vapours while attending these fires. Vitriol, carbonate of lime, coal-dust, and. common salt are mixed and burnt for some hours, and the white glare given off is almost blinding. The stuff has to be raked frequently- while it burns, and the workmen have to control the process of burning continually. And what is the result ? Merely carbonate of j soda, the stuff your seidlitz powder is partly i made of ; the material, also, which is used in soap-making, glass-making, and other trades. When it has been burnt it is put in a bath, andflame is blown on it fiercely, so that the impurities are carried up a flue, and the soda j la thrown down in crystals. But one of the most fearful of all the processes in the conditions it produces is the making of beaching powder.' You see a lot of men, indifferent, apparently, to thebiti.ig, suffocating atmosphere, and neither gasping nor blinking as the visitor does, stir up a mixture of hydrochloric acid and manganese. Trfese materials, operating on one another, produce chloride gas, which is caught and led into chambers partly filled with powdered lime.' ' ■> The gas acts on the matter, and, in course of time transforms it into chloride of lime, or bleaohiog powder. The enormous quantities of chemical products issuing from Widnes are scattered to all parts of the globe, and there is always enough vitriol stored in the town to swallow up and consume it.
It in kept in great leaden vats — large enough, as it seems, to make a mansion of ; and the cheerful person who may, as a great favour, expound the mysteries of the works will certainly remind you that to remain in the neighbourhood of these receptacles is to be in constant danger of death, and that to be bnrned to death by vitriol is very horrible. One little crack in a vat, or the yielding of a weak place, and the awful liquor would find an exit, and gradually f oroe its way out, until as a torrent it flooded the neighbourhood, burning and corroding all it touched. There is a theory that- all the fames produced at Widnes are deodorised and made innocuous before they leave the flaes. But trees find it hard to grow round the town still, and the odour of a Widnes fog is perceptible at G-arston, several miles away. And at that, after a hasty Intrusion into the vapour-filled torture chambers, no one need wonder.
The life of the soldier on active service is one of safety and luxurious ease compared with that of the Widnes working man ; yet the latter goes about hia work cheerfully and uncomplainingly.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2201, 7 May 1896, Page 50
Word Count
686OCEANS OF VITRIOL. Otago Witness, Issue 2201, 7 May 1896, Page 50
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