y are obliged to inhale dust and filings
from steel and brass and iron, the dust in coal mines, and dust from
threshing machines. Stone-cutters, miners, and steel grinders are
short lived, the sharp particles of dust irritating and inflaming the
tender lining of the lung cells. The knife and fork grinders in
Manchester, England, rarely live beyond thirty-two years. Those who
work in grain elevators and those who are compelled to breathe chemical
poisons are short lived.

Deep breathing in dusty places sends the particles of dust into the
upper and less used lobes of the lungs, and these become a constant
irritant, until they finally excite an inflammation, which may end in
consumption. All occupations in which arsenic is used shorten life.

Dr. William Ogle, who is authority upon this subject, says, "Of all the
various influences that tend to produce differences of mortality in any
community, none is more potent than the character of the prevailing
occupations." Finding that clergymen and priests have the lowest
death-rate, he represented it as one hundred, and by comparison found
that the rate for inn and hotel servants was three hundred and
ninety-seven; miners, three hundred and thirty-one; earthenware makers,
three hundred and seventeen; file makers, three hundred; innkeepers,
two hundred and seventy-four; gardeners, farmers, and agricultural
laborers closely approximating the clerical standard. He gave as the
causes of high mortality, first, working in a cramped or constrained
attitude; second, exposure to the action of poisonous or irritating
substances; third, excessive work, mental or physical; fourth, working
in confined or foul air; fifth, the use of strong drink; sixth,
differences in liability to fatal accidents; seventh, exposure to the
inhalation of dust. The deaths of those engaged in alcoholic
industries were as one thousand five hundred and twenty-one to one
thousand of the average of all trades.

It is very important that occupations should be congenial. Whenever
our work galls us, whenever we feel it to be a drudgery and
uncongenial, the friction grinds life away at a terrible rate.

Health can be accumulated, invested, and made to yield its compound
interest, and thus be doubled and redoubled. The capital of health
may, indeed, be forfeited by one misdemeanor, as a rich man may sink
all his property in one bad speculation; but it is as capable of being
increased as any other kind of capi