The industry gives employment to about 1,200 persons. Plates are first cast in moulds from a bath containing molten lead or of lead with admixture of antimony. Irregularities in the plates so cast are removed by a saw or knife (trimming), and sometimes filed or brushed with a wire brush. The interstices in the plates are next filled in by means of a spatula with paste of litharge or red lead, as the case may be, which has been previously mixed either by hand at the bench or in a special mechanical mixing machine. After drying, the plates are removed to the formation room to be charged. To allow of the passage of the current, positive elements are connected together, and negative also, by means of a soldering iron or, more frequently, of an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe flame. After formation is complete the plates have to be built into batteries, or “assembled.” Tailpieces, technically known as “lugs,” have to be connected with each plate, effected usually by the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe flame. Finally, a connecting bar of lead is cast on or burnt on to the lugs. _Dangers and Prevention._--In casting, danger is mainly from dust in depositing the skimmings, and from fume also when old accumulator plates are melted down. For these reasons exhaust ventilation over the melting pots should be provided, embracing also (by branch ducts if necessary) the receptacles into which the lead ashes are thrown. In mixing and pasting, the danger is from dust of oxides of lead to be controlled (see Fig. 6) by--(1) Exhaust ventilation by branch ducts protecting (_a_) the barrel from which the material is scooped, (_b_) the mechanical mixer into which the weighed quantity of oxide is discharged, (_c_) the bench at which the mixing by hand is done; (2) dampness of benches and floor to prevent raising of dust either by manipulation of the (often) heavy plates or trampling into powder the paste which may fall on the ground. In assembling or putting together of the formed plates, and in earlier stages of the manufacture also, filing or use of a wire brush causes production of metallic lead dust and of the oxides when the brush touches them--a danger only to be met by exhaust ventilation. How far the poisoning to which the lead burners engaged in assembling plates is attributable to lead fume, produced by the high temperature of the blowpipe flame, and how far to handling (with inevitable dislodgment of dust) has not been satisfactorily settled. Incidence of poisoning on this class of worker in the past has been marked. Generally there is need for impervious floors, solidly built, so as to prevent vibration and the raising of dust from passage of trolleys conveying the heavy plates. Gloves are frequently provided, more to protect the hands from contact with the sulphuric acid used in making the paste and jagged edges of the plates than as a preventive of lead absorption.