=The Potteries.=--So far we have been considering dust of vegetable origin; but this forms only one group, although it is with this group especially that women are concerned. In the pottery trade, however, the workers are exposed to mineral dust, and in this trade women are very largely engaged. Experts differ somewhat in their view of the relative injury caused by organic and inorganic dusts, though it seems to be agreed that where the material is chiefly of a gelatinous character the harm done is comparatively trivial. But we need not examine closely into these matters, for the statistics of death and disease furnished by the Pottery District are conclusive as to the injuries inflicted. To a lesser degree women are employed in the subsidiary branches of the Sheffield trades, but in this case it is the men who bear the full brunt of the injury. Men and women work in the pottery trade, and the dust given off is of such a fine character that it finds its way into every corner of the factory. Thus women who may not be immediately employed in the finishing processes which are attended to by men, may still receive their share of the fine white penetrating powder. But in certain parts of the work, and those the most dangerous, women only are employed. Such are the china-scourers and the towers. It is the towers’ business to put a smooth surface on the dry ware, which is set in rapid rotation whilst sand paper or some other medium of the kind is applied. The result is that in the course of the day the workers get powdered all over with the dust that is given off, besides inhaling a considerable quantity. Where no fans are at work to draw off this dust the consequences are terribly destructive, and the tower, unless she happens to be a person of exceptionally fine constitution, succumbs in the course of a few years, sometimes of a few months, to the accumulation of fine particles in the pulmonary passages. Even where a fan is at work the presence of the white powder may be detected on the person of the worker, and as the dust is constantly blown by her from the ware, some portion of it is inevitably inhaled by the act of inspiration. Dr. Greenhow, who was sent by Sir John Simon, the medical officer of health for the Privy Council in 1861, to report on the potters’ diseases, wrote as follows about the china scourers, and the conditions to-day are precisely the same as they were then: