opinion in this country, in the direction of giving expression to the view that we cannot for all time carry this burden on our shoulders."

In this way, by insisting that the Colonies shall bear their fair share of Imperial expenses, or in the last resort by the United Kingdom withdrawing from the burden of protecting them, taxation may be greatly reduced among us, but the reorganisation of our finances cannot wait for this.

EVELYN ANSELL

JULY

THE CLOUD OVER ENGLISH LIFE.

FOR many years past the question of the smoke nuisance has excited from time to time a rather too languid interest amongst various classes in England. Probably were the evils connected with it more generally understood, the necessity of grappling with the difficulty would be fully appreciated. In a general sense I may sum up these bad influences as follows:

1. Wastefulness, thereby entailing unnecessary outlay.

2. Injury to the national health, thereby inducing physical deterioration.

3. Injury to our agricultural industry, thereby favouring food importation.

4. Interference with the comfort and beauty of social life by creating dirt, injuring property, and entailing much extra work.

Thus the indictment against the present system of coal consumption is a very heavy one; but, when science, which is now doing so much to make the wheels of life run more smoothly, offers her assistance, is it wise for us to reject it? The innate dislike to change evinced by Englishmen even of the educated classes is in some respects a rather unfortunate characteristic. We are apt to bear with a long-standing abuse until it becomes intolerable it is only then we look for a remedy, and consequently, in some directions, our national movements are slow. The smoke nuisance has now reached a pitch which urgently demands a remedy, and the more so because the attendant evils, if not checked, bid fair to become much more serious. In the following pages I aim at placing the precise nature of those evils and their extent before the reader.

It has been calculated that in the case of the ordinary domestic grate at least four-fifths of the heat goes up the chimney, and is therefore wasted fuel. According to this a householder purchases, say, five hundredweight of coal for cooking, heating purposes, &c., but he only gains the heating power of one hundredweight; he pays for the balance, but receives absolutely nothing for his money. At the same time he and his neighbours incur a very palpable injury, as will be seen later on, from the pollution of the atmosphere.

The extra expense representing outlay without benefit or reproduction figures as a large item in the expenditure of masses of

people who have very small incomes, but to whom coal consumption is a matter of daily necessity. The householder individually is a direct sufferer, but, in addition to this, it is clear that we are annually wasting a vast amount of a most valuable national product of which we have only a limited but rapidly diminishing quantity in reserve. Yet it is on this very product that our national supremacy largely depends.

In every thousand pounds of coal there are on an average about eight pounds of sulphur, and when the coal is burned this escapes into the atmosphere as sulphurous acid. A portion of this sulphurous acid combines with the oxygen of the air, and then forms sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol), which falls to the ground, and is always destructive to vegetation or living tissues of any kind, in proportion to the quantity present. The air we breathe is, therefore, according to locality, more or less charged with sulphuric acid, which, always injurious to the general health, is most pernicious in cases of lung complaint. Mr. Estcourt, the city analyst of Manchester, as quoted by Mr. Wm. Thompson, states that out of every hundred tons of coal burned in the factories of Manchester, one ton remains in the air as soot from black smoke.1 Chest affections are naturally much aggravated by this, especially as soot is not by any means simple carbon, but is laden with the acids formed by combustion. Not only our factory towns themselves but large adjacent areas are subject to this noxious influence. It may be said that over the whole of Staffordshire, Cheshire, and large portions of Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Nottinghamshire, a great pall of smoke hangs, vitiating the atmosphere, and partially obscuring the sun's rays. In London the inhabitants while resident there never breathe really pure air; and for many miles around, according to direction of the wind, the noxious influence is felt. The fact that the air is continually charged with a superabundance of coal-smoke is undoubtedly one of the causes owing to which life in London is rarely, if ever, perpetuated beyond the third generation, unless reinforced by fresh blood from the country.2

For several years past the alarming increase of cancer in proportion to the population has occasioned natural anxiety and stimulated scientific research into the causes of the dire complaint, some medical opinion seeming to consider it of fungoid growth. It is also a scientific fact that fungoid growths are nourished by carbon, and coal-smoke is unconsumed carbon mingled with other unwholesome gases. There is a special complaint known as sweep's cancer, produced by contact of soot with the skin, and soot is unconsumed

1 Some Common Sources of Air Pollution. By William Thompson, F.R.S.

2 Life and Labour of People of London. By Charles Booth. 1st Series. Vol. III.

p. 65,

The air we

carbon in a more condensed form than as smoke. breathe night and day is charged, sometimes heavily charged, with this unconsumed carbon, which has been proved to be productive of cancer when there may be a predisposition to it. Indeed, I have seen in a medical work a case cited of a gardener who contracted the complaint in his right hand from continually scattering soot on flower beds. The above facts are surely somewhat suggestive of the increase of the malady being associated with the increase of coal smoke, though of course there may be various other contributory causes.

Dr. Leigh, formerly Medical Officer for Manchester, in a report to the Corporation of that city, stated that, with much more which was detrimental, ordinary coal-smoke contained, as gaseous constituents, carbonic oxide, carburetted hydrogen, and sulphuretted hydrogea. These are all more or less deadly, they are the results of imperfect combustion, and therefore their existence in the atmosphere is wholly unnecessary. It is also a fact that post-mortem examination on persons who have lived for long periods in our large towns shows considerable accumulation of black matter in the bronchial glands and lungs. In some cases this foreign matter causes a lesion of the lung itself. In the same report Dr. Leigh presents some very conclusive statistics as to the difference between the numbers of deaths owing to complaints of the respiratory organs in localities when the air was charged with coal-smoke, and when it was comparatively free from it. In Cheshire and Lancashire, where volumes of sulphurous acid and other properties from factory chimneys poison the air, the deaths from complaints of the above nature were 4381 per million of the inhabitants, and for London 4365; but for Sussex, Hants, Berks, and parts of Surrey and Kent, 2835. Perhaps enough proof has been given, though more could be adduced, to demonstrate the ill effects of coal-smoke on health, but ample medical testimony is forthcoming to prove that the poisonous gases which the town inhabitants are continually breathing lower the nervous system, and the irritant gases excite disease of the respiratory organs. In fact, it is easy to realise the difference of hygienic conditions between those living in a smoke-covered town and in healthy country air by comparing the stunted, palefaced factory population, and especially the flabby unwholesome children, with the stalwart fresh-complexioned inhabitants of an agricultural district.

Probably the evils springing from living in a dense smoke-laden atmosphere are not confined to mere physical deterioration. In Switzerland cretinism, in different degrees varying from feeblemindedness to absolute and hopeless idiocy, is so common that from time to time searching inquiries have been made to ascertain the cause of its prevalence. The result of the investigation shows

that cretinism exists in the mountain regions of Switzerland and Italy, also in the Pyrenees and the Himalayas, but it is always more prevalent in valleys surrounded by steep walls of rock, which exclude the light and prevent the free circulation of air. In Switzerland especially there are certain deep narrow valleys which are only exposed to the sun's rays for a few hours in the day, and it is these which produce the largest number of feeble-minded children. Experience amply proves that animal life suffers from want of the healthy, vivifying influence of sunshine, and by a parity of reasoning it is evident that in proportion as a dense pall of smoke intercepts the sun's rays, mischief as to mentality and physical development in some degree must ensue. It is calculated that in England and Wales there are about 42,000 feeble-minded children, and Mr. Dickinson, D.L., L.C.C., states that the number of these of all ages whose minds are not strong enough to enable them to take care of themselves would be about 100,000.1 The causes for such a deplorable state of things are various, being naturally due to unhealthy conditions of some kind, but amongst them must be reckoned the continual breathing of a vitiated atmosphere and the deprivation to a large extent of health-inspiring sunlight.

In London alone there are in round numbers 600,000 inhabited houses; consequently the output of coal-smoke from domestic chimneys alone must be enormous, and Sir William Richmond 2 states that the cost therefrom to the Metropolis must be about £4,000,000 annually. He also calculates that during the winter months London must lose about 50 per cent. of the sunlight which, so necessary to health, is enjoyed by those living in the country. As this gentleman truly remarks, "The injuries to health and property resulting from the excessive emission of coal-smoke are so numerous and apparent that it is difficult to account for the indifference displayed by the public in general in so vital a question."

As population is augmenting rapidly in England, the number of houses, and consequently of chimneys, must be increasing in about like proportion. The injurious effects on vegetation however of so much coal-smoke being spread over the land, though very great, has never been realised to its full extent. The injury springs from two causes, viz., the partial interception of the sun's heat and light rays which are required to vivify the growing plant, and the noxious gases which tend to poison it. In a pamphlet published by Mr. Holland on air pollution,3 he gives it as his opinion that the air of the whole of England is polluted to a degree perhaps imperceptible to our senses, but sufficient to prevent trees from ever again 1 The Treatment of the Feeble-Minded. A Paper read by him at the Central PoorLaw Conference held at the Guildhall, March 11, 1903.

2 President of the Coal-Smoke Abatement Society.

3 Air Pollution as affecting Plant Life. By Robert Holland, Esq., M.R.A.C., Consulting Botanist to the Royal Manchester, Liverpool, and North Lancashire Agricultural Society.

VOL. 162.-No. 1.

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