78
SEX IN INDUSTRY.
the weaving-rooms, from steam ; the special irritations from the operation of “stripping,” and perhaps, to some extent, from that of “grinding; ” the irritation and noxious influence consequent on the “ sizing ” employed; and the specially evil effects of foul privies.
When to these are added the ills that result from insufficient, unfit, and hastily devoured food, and wet clothing, from the long standing, reaching, and lifting (as of heavy beams), and the depressing tendencies of the monotony and unrelenting exactions of the processes themselves, we have a sum total of causes quite sufficient to wage successful war upon the general health, and to break down and overthrow the special forces Nature would fain establish in those subjected to these repressing agencies.
Of several of these agencies enumerated, the English commission reported last year, to Parliament, as follows : —
“As to ventilation, in almost all cases it was extremely bad, and in a large number of instances there was none whatever. . . . The heat is kept up by