two hours is an antidote.

"3d. They ought to forbid the introduction of food into file-cutting
rooms. Workmen are a reckless set, and a dirty set; food has no business
in any place of theirs, where poison is going.

"B. What the workmen might do.

"1st. Demand from the masters these improvements I have suggested, and,
if the demand came through the secretaries of their Unions, the masters
would comply.

"2d. They might drink less and wash their bodies with a small part
of the money so saved: the price of a gill of gin and a hot bath
are exactly the same; only the bath is health to a dry-grinder, or
tile-cutter; the gin is worse poison to him than to healthy men.

"3d. The small wet-grinders, who have to buy their grindstones, might
buy sound ones, instead of making bargains at the quarry, which prove
double bad bargains when the stone breaks, since then a new stone is
required, and sometimes a new man, too.

"4th. They might be more careful not to leave the grindstone in water. I
have traced three broken stones in one wheel to that abominable piece of
carelessness.

"5th. They ought never to fix an undersized pulley wheel. Simmons killed
himself by that, and by grudging the few hours of labor required to hang
and race a sound stone.

"6th. If files can only be cut on lead, the file-cutters might anoint the
lead over night with a hard-drying ointment, soluble in turps, and this
ointment might even be medicated with an antidote to the salt of lead.

"7th. If files can only be cut on BARE lead, the men ought to cut their
hair close, and wear a light cap at work. They ought to have a canvas
suit in the adjoining place (see above); don it when they come, and doff
it when they go. They ought to leave off their insane habit of licking
the thumb and finger of the left hand--which is the leaded hand--with
their tongues. This beastly trick takes the poison direct to the
stomach. They might surely leave it to get there through the pores; it
is slow, but sure. I have also repeatedly seen a file-cutter eat his
dinner with his filthy poisoned fingers, and so send the poison home
by way of salt to a fool's bacon. Finally, they ought to wash off the
poison every two hours at the taps.

"8th. Since they abuse the masters and justly, for their greediness,
they ought not to imitate their greediness by driving their poor little
children into unhealthy trades, and so destroying them body and soul.
This practice robs the childr