There are more cases of ill-health among men of the night than of the day shift, but the reason of this will be obvious to any. It is evident that the unnatural conditions of all-night toil must weaken and wear down the body and render it unfit to bear the strain put upon it, and especially to withstand the cold draughts from the doors and roof, which are the most fruitful source of sickness among the workmen--a large number is always absent with chills and influenza. Small regard for a man’s health is had at any time in the factory. It is nothing to the officials that he is out on the sick list, unless he happens to be drawing compensation for an injury. I remember once, when work was slack in the shed, the day overseer left orders for the night boss to send the men outside in the yard and keep them there for two or three hours shifting scrap iron, in order that they might “catch cold and stop at home, and give the others a chance.”
Accidents, too, are frequent on the night shift; the greater part of the more serious ones happen on that turn. Then the men, by reason of the fatigue and dulness, are unable to take sufficient care of themselves; they lack the quick presentiment of danger common to those of the day shift. There is also the matter of defective light and carelessness in the use of tools, and, very often, the mad hurry to get on in the first part of the night--the wild rush and tear of the piecework system. It was not long ago that “Smamer’s” brother was killed at the drop-stamps with a blow on the head, shortly after starting work. A jagged piece of steel, ten or twelve pounds in weight, flew from the die and struck him between the eye and ear knocking out half his brains. As things go, no one was to blame. The men were all hurrying together to get the work forward, but he was murdered, all the same, done to death by the system that is responsible for the rash haste and frenzy such as is common on the night shift.
Nearly all whitewashing and painting out the interiors of the sheds is done by night, when the machinery is still. This is performed by unskilled hands--youths, for the most part; from one year’s end to another they are employed at it, taking the workshops by turn. The work is very unhealthy and extremely dangerous. The men construct a little scaffolding and work upon single, narrow planks, or crawl like flies along the network of girders in and out among the shafting, with a single gas-jet to afford them light. One false step or overbalancing would bring them down to the ground, thirty feet below, amid the machinery; death would be swift and certain for them if they should miss their footing on the planks. Their wages, considering the risks they take, are very low; 18s. or 19s. a week is the amount they commonly receive. Several of the men, whom I know personally--steady fellows and good time-keepers--had been getting 18s. a week for twenty years till recently; then, after persistent applications for an advance, they were granted the substantial rise of 1s. a week! One sturdy fellow, braver than the rest, on meeting the manager one day, complained to him of the low wages, but was unsuccessful. His overseer, upon hearing of it, promptly told him to clear out, which he afterwards did, and went to Canada and saved £150 in less than a year. When the small boys asked Bill Richards, the old smiths’ foreman, for a rise, he used jokingly to tell them to “Get up a-top o’ the anvul.”