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It has already been pointed out how constant and conspicuous a factor sickness is in bringing persons to apply for relief and compelling them to become inmates of institutions. (112) The incidence of this burden upon those least able to bear it is again illustrated in a table derived from material supplied by Korosi, the eminent statistician of Budapesth.

TABLE XXVIII.
Mortality and morbidity in five occupations. (113)

This table shows that if we start at the age of 25 with 1000 persons of each class, there will be living at the end of 35 years: of the merchants, 587; of the tailors, 421; of the shoemakers, 376; of the servants, 290; and of the day laborers, only 253. During this time the total number of years of life lived by the merchants was 28,501.23, and by the day laborers only 22,317. But worse than this, of the years of life falling to the lot of the day laborer, 1493 will be years of sickness; while of the years of life lived by the merchants, only 824 will be years of sickness. Or to state the same thing in another way, the merchant will have 33 1/2 years in which to provide for one of sickness, while the day laborer will have only 13.9 years of health in which to provide for one of sickness.

More recent figures are afforded by Watson who has carefully investigated the experience of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which is representative of English workingmen generally.

It is seen that after fifty years of age, sickness becomes a very serious economic factor, rising rapidly in the next fifteen years from two to ten weeks per annum. Moreover, it must be remembered that these are probably somewhat superior workmen and that the experience of friendly societies underestimates the amount of prevailing sickness.

TABLE XXIX.
Mortality and sickness rates. (114)
Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Watson, 1893-1897).

Of all the forms of illness to which the laboring classes are liable, tuberculosis is the most devastating. In Hamburg, Germany, the people who pay taxes on an income under 1000 marks have a death-rate from tuberculosis almost four times as great as that of the people with an income over 3500 marks. In Glasgow casual laborers have double the average city death-rate from this disease and between the ages of 45 and 55 their rate is twelve times that of the professional class. In the last census year there were in the United States 110,000 deaths from consumption, and statisticians believe that there are not less than 330,000 living persons affected with the disease. Between the ages of 15 and 30, one-third, and between 30 and 45, one-fourth, of all deaths of American males is from this cause. The close relation between this disease and the different classes of occupations is illustrated in a table collated from English experience.

TABLE XXX.
Mortality from consumption.
In Certain Groups of Occupations, English Experience (1890-1892). (115)

Here the unhealthful trades and common labor show a death-rate more than twice that of the agricultural class on the one hand and the professional class on the other, and this in those years of life when wage-earners are of most value not only to their families but to society. The further loss entailed by the long and costly sickness which precedes death may be demonstrated by the experience of a single trade. President G. W. Perkins of the International Cigar-makers Union reported that 51 per cent of all deaths in that trade in 1888 were due to tuberculosis; and although the per cent of deaths had fallen in 1905 to one-half, a total amount of $73,000 was paid in that year in sick and death benefits on account of consumption. (116) Yet cigar-making is by no means the most unhealthy of trades. Referring again to Table XXV. on p. 129, we see that the worst of the dust-producing occupations -- pottery and earthenware manufacture, cutlery and file-making, glass-blowing, copper-working -- have a mortality from tuberculosis alone, two to four times that of farm-workers; and from respiratory diseases, two to six times as great.