Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — Uncomfortable Workshops. [ARTICLE]

Uncomfortable Workshops.

With some rare exceptions workshops are not built for the comfort of the operatives ; most of them have inadequate provisions for heating in winter and many also have defective ventilation, which » even worse in winter than in summer. Most shops cannot be kept at an equal, comfortable temperature, and thus the workmen suffer, especially from cold; while the fact is that if they were primitively well constructed the same amount or even less fuel would keep them sufficiently warm in cold weather, and judicious ventilation would promote the general health of all in the shop as well in the summer as in the winter. We maintain that if the owner of any industrial establishment understands his own interest he will do a great deal for the comfort of his employes, as an operative, when working in tolerably comfortable surroundings, will do more and better work than when he suffers from heat or cold, or, what is worse than all in the long run, an impure atmosphere. AJI practical men know the utter discomfort of working on a hot day in an illy-venti-lated place, even the impossibility of doing much labor or turning out a quantity of work at all in keeping with their capacity at other times. They also know the influence of icy feet and frosty tools, cold to the touch, benumbing the fingers and hands which use them and thus causing the production of a kind of work far inferior to what they could otherwise do. This is the first effect; the next effect is he suffers, gets a cold, does less work and finally becomes sick, when all work ceases.

Very few people are aware that morn than half the diseases of the laboring classes proceed from exposure to cold. We must not forget that in our climate we have only three summer months; that at least for four months artificial heat is absolutely necessary, while the remaining five spring and fall months are so uncertain that careful precaution is required, especially in dress, to avoid being caught by sudden changes in temperature and thus pay for the. least imprudence by coughs, catarrhs, bronchitis, indigestion, rheumatic attacks, diarrhoeas, etc. There are indeed few persons of such perfect constitution that will not from time to time suffer by taking cold in some form or other, and careful observation and inquiry has convinced us that in the great majority of cases the cold has not exerted its baneful influence in the open air but when in the house or shop where the body was exposed for a long time to a temperature so low as to cause the animal heat to descend below the normal temperature ; then the check upon the otherwise always active perspiration causes substances to remain in the system which should be continually eliminated; the blood becomes in this way, as it were, poisoned with undesirable material, and the results are various, according to the constitution of the individual; the weakest parts will then suffer, either the throat, head, lungs, joints, muscles, stomach, intestines, etc., hence the various results which the same exposure to cold will have on different persons. An employer who thus exposes his employes to causes of disarranged health by the defectiveness of his workshop not only commits an offense against man, but he causes looses in his own behalf which he could prevent. The expense of having things of this kind arranged in the right way is indeed so small when compared with the results to be attained that even aside from humanitarian principles, which make it a duty, it fe surprising to see so much neglect in this respect, and that even in quarters where it should be least expected .—Manufacturer and Builder.