IN A CHEMICAL WORK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2376, 14 September 1899, Page 55

IN A CHEMICAL WORK.

POWDER-PACKING AT ST. HELENS

Mr Robert Blatchford, in his new book entitled "Dismal England," which has just been published by Mr Walter Scott, gives the following descriiition of life in the neighbourhood of St. Helens : —

" The chemical men work amid foul odours, and in intense heat — the temperature being often as hisjh as 120deg. They sweat and toil in an atmosphere charged with biting acids, or deadly gases, or dense with particles of lime. They have to stand at the scorching portals of the furnaces, manipulating ponderous masses of blazing matter, or to lift heavy Weights, or to wheel burning Fait in iron trucks and barrows, or to plunge into lethal chambers piled with blistering ash and thick with stifling vapour, or to manage huge cauldrons of scalding caustic. "The flying particles of caustic sting them like wasp«. The lime and acids sear and gash their skins, and rot the teeth in their gums. The deadly gases and pungent dust rack and wear their lungs, and often spread them out in helpless agony on the floor. Their shirts rot to tatters on their back, and the clogs burn off their feet in a few days' time. They are obliged to drink to excess, and that of ardent spirits, to keep themselves at work. They undergo immense physical strain ; they suffer severe bodily pain ; they -risk serious dangers ; they are old men at 40 ; and their hours vary from 72 to 84 a week, and their wages" from 3s to 8s a day. " We will begin with the powder-packers. Powder -packing consists in a series of desperate rushes into a chamber where the floor is fire, and the air is death, for the purpose of shovelling bleaching powder into casks.

" The packer has his head tied up in a kind of pudding bag, his eyes covered with hideous soggles, and the lower part of his face swathed in from 20 to 40 thicknesses of flannel. Through this flannel he inhales the air, which, being thinner than the gas,

can penetrate. His nostrils are left free, and through them he exhales the air. Let him take one sniff up through his nose, and he is 'gassed.' It takes a long time .to learn to breathe in this way, and even when learned ! . .

"Even then. I saw a man rigged up in an ordinary room where there was no gas. He was a horrible sight. He locked half strangled. His face, or what was visible of it, was swollen black-red ; his ness- wa? livid. His eyes seemed to bulge up under the hideous spectacles. Yet he had onlj been dressed in that way for five minutest But fancy our brother in the powder-cham-ber for an hour in the heat and in the gas !"