}

In the Cornish mines about 19,000 men, and 11,000 women and children are
employed, in part above and in part below ground. Within the mines below
ground, men and boys above twelve years old are employed almost
exclusively. The condition of these workers seems, according to the
Children's Employment Commission's Reports, to be comparatively
endurable, materially, and the English often enough boast of their
strong, bold miners, who follow the veins of mineral below the bottom of
the very sea. But in the matter of the health of these workers, this
same Children's Employment Commission's Report judges differently. It
shows in Dr. Barham's intelligent report how the inhalation of an
atmosphere containing little oxygen, and mixed with dust and the smoke of
blasting powder, such as prevails in the mines, seriously affects the
lungs, disturbs the action of the heart, and diminishes the activity of
the digestive organs; that wearing toil, and especially the climbing up
and down of ladders, upon which even vigorous young men have to spend in
some mines more than an hour a day, and which precedes and follows daily
work, contributes greatly to the development of these evils, so that men
who begin this work in early youth are far from reaching the stature of
women who work above ground; that many die young of galloping
consumption, and most miners at middle age of slow consumption, that they
age prematurely and become unfit for work between the thirty-fifth and
forty-fifth years, that many are attacked by acute inflammations of the
respiratory organs when exposed to the sudden change from the warm air of
the shaft (after climbing the ladder in profuse perspiration), to the
cold wind above ground, and that these acute inflammations are very
frequently fatal. Work above ground, breaking and sorting the ore, is
done by girls and children, and is described as very wholesome, being
done in the open air.

In the North of England, on the borders of Northumberland and Durham, are
the extensive lead mines of Alston Moor. The reports from this district
{242} agree almost wholly with those from Cornwall. Here, too, there are
complaints of want of oxygen, excessive dust, powder smoke, carbonic acid
gas, and sulphur, in the atmosphere of the workings. In consequence, the
miners here, as in Cornwall, are small of stature, and nearly all suffer
from the thirtieth year throughout life from chest affections, which end,
especially when th