persons could tell us of needle-making in
their young days. Cyclopædias of the present
century—within the last thirty years, even—
give such an account of the formation of a
needle, as appears quite piteous to one who
was at Redditch yesterday. We read of such
hammering, and rolling, such heating and
cooling, such filing and punching, of each
separate needle, that we wonder how any
sempstress ever dared to break an eye, or
turn the point, of a thing which had cost so
much pains. And the needles of thirty,
twenty, ten, five years ago, cost something
much more serious than pains and toil. They
cost human life, too, at a terrible rate. It
never was true, as it is often said to have
been, that needle-makers rarely lived beyond
thirty years of age; but it was, for a long
time, true that every needle that was pointed
helped to shorten some man's life.

The facts were these. Needle-pointers
lived, while at their work, in an atmosphere
thick with stone-dust and steel-dust, generated
by the dry grinding of the needles upon the
wheel just under their noses. Instead of
windows, there were many little doors in the
places where they worked, in order to carry
off as much dust as possible; and one
consequence of this was that the men sat in a
thorough draught. Their only precaution
was to go out about once in an hour, and
rinse their mouths; a poor device enough,
while their noses, throats and windpipes
were infested, like their dress and their skin,
with myriads of sharp points of cruel steel.
They died of consumption in a few years.
If boys tried the work, they were gone before
twenty. If men, with a consolidated frame, and
good appetites, (for the largest eaters lived
longest,) set to this work, they might possibly
hold on to forty,—a case here and there occurring
of a needle-pointer who reached forty-five.
Bad morals always attend a permanent state
of insecurity of life and bad health; and so
it was in this case. Very high wages were
given. Some men earned a guinea a-day;
none less than two guineas a-week. It
became an established fact, that the needle-
pointers (then about forty men, in a population
of one thousand five hundred, in
Redditch; and in a similar proportion, as the
population increased) were a set of debauched
young men, who, tempted by the high wages,
braved their doom, and entered upon the
business at twenty, or soon after,—counting
the years they supposed they might live, and
declaring their desire for "a short life and a
merry one." They married, and always left
their widows and children to the parish.
Following their notion of a merry life, they
would at times drink ale, day and night, for
two or three weeks together. Then, they
would go back to their benches, raise a
prodigious dust, and choke over it, almost without
pause, for three weeks or a month, to clear
off scores; then, they would have another
drinking bout. This was a sight which no
humane employer could endure; and many
were the consultations and attempts entered
upon by the masters to save or prolong life.
All such attempts exasperated the victims
themselves. They insisted upon their right to
die early, if they chose; and they were sure
their employers were in reality wanting to
lower their wages. A good man invented a
wire-gauze mask; which, being magnetised,
must prevent the steel-dust from entering the
mouth. The men would not wear it. This
mask could be little or no protection against
the dust from the grindstone. Another device
was therefore joined with that of the mask;
—a canvas cylinder, brought down close over
the grindstone, up which, it was hoped, the
dust would make its way, and be carried off.
In one night, the canvas cylinders, throughout
Redditch, were cut into strips, and the
needle-pointers declared themselves under
intimidation from their fellow-workers, about
wearing the mask. It was pretty clear at the
time, that the men agreed among themselves
to cut one another's cylinders, and to threaten
each other;—that it was a matter of collusion
from end to end.

Other inventions were devised from time to
time; but were never got into use. The new
generation of needle-pointers (and an
employer of fifty years old has seen four
generations of them) was less ignorant, and
somewhat less vicious than their predecessors; but
still the sacrifice of life went on. It had
become a point of honour, or of self-will, with
the men, besides their dread of a lowering of
wages, not to use any means of self-preservation;
and on they went to their early
graves, as fast as ever, until four years ago.
Then there was a strike among the Redditch
needle-makers. It lasted three months; at
the end of which time the men became very
hungry, very sad, and very humble. They
made no objection to the terms offered by the
employers; and the employers saw that now
was the time to save the needle-pointers from
their own folly; and they made it a prime
condition of renewed connexion between
masters and men, that a certain sanitary
apparatus should be faithfully used. The
promise was given; the trial was made; the
men soon found the comfort and advantage of
it; they seem, now, likely to live as long as
other people; and the stranger observes that
they seem to show off the arrangement
with a certain complacency and pride, which
prove that it works in excellent accordance
with their will. What this arrangement is,
we shall tell hereafter, when we have carried
our commodity up to the need of being
pointed. The number of needle-pointers in
Redditch, now, is about one hundred and ten;
a large company to be saved from an early
and painful death!

It is not so very long since every needle of
every size was made separately, from beginning
to end, as sail-makers' needles and packing
needles are made still. It is hard to say