DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10030, 2 July 1910, Page 4

DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS.

"Munsey's," while discussing the J attraction of dangerous trades, gives I some grim proofs of hazards run by the ironworker. The Quebec bridge had a death list of ninety-seven; the Blackwell Island bridge cost the lives of some sixty men as the work progressed, and buildings here and there in New York and other cities have proved veritable morgues. As the sky-scraper goes up, a waiting line of a dozen eager applicants stand ready to take the places of injured men; in that hne there is probably not a single man who lias not a*, one time or another himself suffered serious injury, and many have had miraculous escapes from death. But ask the worker who bears the most evident signs of various accidents in the past, whether he still wants to risk such work again, and "Why, sure!" he answers "It's my trade." The submarine diver is placed by insurance companies on the same basis as the bridge worker; "txtra hazardous" is the description for both. But the <'sand hog," or worker in caissons below the riiver-bed, is far more certain to be short-Lved. "One never sees an old sand hog." it is said. A man has: t j be of exceptiotially fine physique to standtheetraiu of the air pressure at all; he is paid for bis physique, just as the bridge worker is paid for his skill, and in this apparently most undesirable occupation, "a vacant pl-jce in the rankß is never empty for long."