An 1880 article in Harper's entitled "Working Women in New York" discussed in part some occupational hazards of the work place.
"Some of these occupations, and others to which we have not yet referred, are dangerous to the operatives, not merely from the long hours of toil, the insufficient food, and the lack of proper ventilation in the workshops, but from the nature of the materials and the manner of fabrication.
"'Behind our tinted Salviati glass, our painted Sevres china, our Minton majolica, and shining silver plate,' a brilliant write once said in this Magazine,' are low rows of pallid faces breathing death that they may live.' The artificial-flower makers, the gold-leaf workers, the button-gilders, the cigar-makers, and the lucifer-match makers also suffer from the nature of their occupation.
"In large manufactories of artificial flowers the ventilation is usually sufficient, and precautions are taken to prevent the inhalation of poisonous colors." The article describes the final manufacturing process for artificial flowers which involves, "immersion in warm wax, and the removal of any loose color upon them. The detached particles float in the air, and are inevitably inhaled by the workers, whose handkerchiefs are speckled with dots of green blown out through the nose. Another operation, technically known as "grass-work," consists in the fastening of small glass beads or "dew-drops" to the artificial blades, which dislodges portions of the color, and leads to its inhalation. The consequences are variable. When the persons employed are cleanly in their habits, and keep their windows open, an occasional headache or an attack of dyspepsia is the most they suffer; but in other cases all the symptoms of arsenical poisoning are revealed in eruptions of the skin, nausea, colic, and general debility.
"In gilding metal buttons, mercury and nitric acid are used, producing their characteristic diseases; and in making lucifer-matches the work women sometimes contract the terrible disease which is technically described as necrosis of the maxillary bones, many cases of which have been treated at Bellevue Hospital. In the preparation of gold-leaf the substance is so fragile and buoyant that the doors and windows are necessarily kept closed, and the air of the work-rooms becomes very impure."
The article further states:
"It is pleasant to retreat from the stifling atmosphere of the workshops that we have seen, and the wretched attics, into those fields where women are occupied under normal conditions, where they are neither beasts of burden nor half-starved slaves, where the surroundings are not detrimental, and their natural abilities are exercised."
