but it forms a paste in the lungs and air-passages, which brings on deadly disease at last. The miller early begins to wheeze: and too commonly he spits blood, after a few years, and dies consumptive. His skin is clogged in the same way; and unless he is extremely careful to relieve it by frequent washing, he is subject to the inflammatory complaints which are caused by a loaded skin. Nobody knows more of the symptoms of asthma and consumption than the widows of the millers of twenty or thirty years ago. One of the greatest facts in the history of steam-flour mills is that they have put a stop to this sickness and mortality. Such a draught is made, and it is so directed, as to carry up the meal dust, in covered ways, and to throw it out into the upper air.
This particular danger is shared by the bakers: and it is only one of many; so that, as a body, they must be very unhealthy. Are they not visibly so? If we think over the bakers we have known, or observe them in their shops, or when distributing the bread, we shall find that they are a pale-faced, flabby, anxious-looking race. They are a nervous set of men, too, owing to the irregularity and deficiency of their sleep, as well as to their uneasy condition of body. From the accounts given by themselves and their friends of their liabilities, it might seem wonderful that any bakers are to be hired, but that we know there is no occupation, however unwholesome or disgusting, that is not pursued, almost as eagerly as the most agreeable. In some crafts the pay is in proportion to the risk or the noisomeness. It is not so with the bakers; and this is clear evidence that there is no lack of hands, however serious are the disadvantages of the employment.
A dozen years ago these disadvantages engaged so much attention that efforts were made (which have since been renewed) to obtain legislative protection for the health of bakers. We should have had cause for shame if the attempt had succeeded; but we need not be sorry that it was made, because it has stimulated the master-bakers to do their best for the welfare of their journeymen; it has taught the men that they must not look to the legislature for a kind of protection which they ought not to need, and which could never be secured by Act of Parliament; and it has afforded assurance to all thoughtful persons that the time is at hand when improvements in art will cure many mischiefs not otherwise curable. As the millers are now relieved of the deadly evil of meal dust, the bakers will be relieved of the causes of their bad health and early death. As there are plenty of healthy bakers in bread mills at this moment, we may be sure that there will not long be in private establishments 31 per cent. of journeymen bakers spitting blood, or 80 percent. ailing in the chest in one way or another.
What, then, is the baker’s state of health? What is his chance of life? What ought he to do in his particular circumstances?
The tables of Friendly Societies tell us that the bakers stand fifth on their lists. There are four trades that are more sickly, and nineteen that are less so. During the period of relief in sickness, in other words, from 20 to 70 years of age, the bakers claim for 178 weeks of sickness; that is, nearly three years and a half of such illness as renders them unable to work. The very most burdensome class is that of the potters, who are ill for 333 weeks of the same period; and the best are the clerks and schoolmasters, who claim for 48 weeks, or less than a year. But these figures do not show the full strength of the case. The clerks and schoolmasters are, in large proportion, living at nearly or quite the end of the term; whereas the potters were, for the most part, dead in a few years from the outset, and the bakers disappear, on an average, before the middle of the term. Those who live for 10 years of the time have fewer weeks of chargeable sickness; and those who live 30 have more; and the computation made is the average; but if the term were not from 20 to 70, but from 20 to 50, the bad case of the potters and bakers would be seen to be very much worse than it now appears.
The bakers do not suffer from fever so much as several other trades. Fever invariably proceeds from bad air; and bad air cannot therefore be the most prominent grievance of the bakers, though we hear much of the closeness and bad smells of the places in which they work. There was naturally a good deal of exaggeration and partiality in the reports made on behalf of the journeymen at first; and it is probable that the employers have been roused to do their best for their men. At all events, here is the fact that fever does not prevail among them: and we have the testimony of medical officers of health who have examined the London bakehouses, to the good ventilation of most of them, and the really admirable management of many in this respect, and to the readiness and anxiety of the master-bakers to consider the health of their men. If the men were equally wise, there would be such a contrast between healthy and unhealthy bakehouses, that no legislation would be demanded by the most superficial or ignorant friend of the bakers.
Their particular liability is to diseases of the chest. The men grow hoarse; they lose voice; they become short of breath; they spit blood, and die consumptive. They suffer extremes of temperature, and have ailments from that cause. They carry heavy weights when exhausted with labour; and they work at night, and have cruelly long hours; and hence the nervous diseases which attend protracted wakefulness. It was a striking fact to foreigners, as well as to many people at home, that while the London builders were striking for ten hours’ wages for nine hours’ work, the bakers were agitating for twelve hours’ work—which was a reduction very startling to the masters. Under the circumstances, nobody can be surprised that the chance of life is so low as it is. The average life of a journeyman baker ends at 42: some say at 40. They do not talk, as the steel-grinders do, of a short life and a merry one. It may be that they are apt to seek, like the needle-pointers and razor-grinders, a pernicious solace under the depression of ill-health; but they are a less reckless and audacious order of craftsmen; and one cannot but wonder why they choose that trade, if they are really convinced that it is the lot of the baker to die at 42.
