THERE is illustrated in this career of the explosive maker a splendid fact touching courage, that, once a man has begun to practise it, the habit holds him with stronger and stronger grip, so that hemustbe brave whether he will or no. I think a fireman, for instance, who for years had jumped at the tap of a bell into any peril, would show the same fine courage all alone, let us say, in some crisis on a desert island. He couldn't turn coward if he tried.
It is good to know, too, that these fearless qualities may be transmitted from father to son, so that we have whole families born, as it were, to be brave, and we see the son of a pilot facing the seasick torture for twenty-odd years, as his father faced it before him for thirty. Nor is it possible to be in close relations with a very brave man without yielding in some measure to his personality; heroes produce heroes through a sort of neighborhood influence, just as surely as thieves produce their kind. Thus the brother-in-law of a lion-tamer, though previously a mild enough man, takes to taming lions, and does it well. And wives of acrobats find themselves one day quietly facing perils of the air that would surely have blanched their cheeks had they married, let us say, photographers.
All of which brings me to a remarkable family of explosive makers—the Duponts of Wilmington, who for generations now have had practical monopoly in this country of the powder-making business, including dynamite and nitroglycerin. In this enterprise a great fortune has accumulated, so that the Duponts of to-day are very rich men, far beyond any need of working in the mills themselves, and have been for years. Yet, work in the mills they do, all of them, practically, and direct in detail every process of manufacture, and face continually in their own persons the same terrible dangers that the humblest mixer faces. There has grown in their hearts through the century, along with riches, a great pride of courage, like that of the officer who leads his men into battle—a pride far stronger than any longing for idleness or pleasure. And theycannot, if they would, leave these slow-grinding mills, where any day a spark may bring catastrophe to make the whole land shudder, as it has shuddered many times after the fury of these giant magazines.
There came a day, for instance—this was a long time ago—when a swift flame swept through one of the mixing-rooms, nearly empty of powder at the time, yet so permeated with the stuff in floor and walls that instantly the building was burning fiercely. No man can say what started it. The cause of trouble at a powder-mill is seldom known; it comes too quickly, and usually leaves no witness. A nail overlooked in a workman's heel may have done the harm by striking a stone, though of course there is an imperative rule that all footgear made with nails be left outside the walls; or a heavy box slid along the wooden floor may have brought a flash out of the dry timbers. At any rate, the flash came, and the blaze followed on it so swiftly that the building was wrapped in fire before meninside could reach the door, and they presently burst out blazing themselves, for their clothing, as it must be, was sifted through with explosive dust. Indeed, it is always true in fires at powder-mills that the workmen themselves are a serious menace to the buildings by reason of their own inflammability.
So the next thing was a plunge into the placid Brandywine, which winds across the yards between willow-hung banks. In went the men, in went young Alexis Dupont, and with a little hiss their flaming garments were extinguished. Then, as they struck out into the stream, they looked back and saw that the wind was carrying a shower of sparks from the burning building to the roof of a cutting-mill near by, where tons of powder lay. For one of the sparks to reach the tiniest powder train would mean the blowing up of this mill, and almost certainly the blowing up of another and another by the concussion, for it is in vain that they try to protect powder-mills by scattering them over wide yards in many little buildings. When one explodes, the great shock usually sets off others, as a falling rock turns loose an avalanche.
All this young Dupont realized in a single glance. There would be an awful disaster presently, with many lives imperiled, unless those falling firebrands could somehow be kept off that roof. To know this was to act. Millionaire or not, peril or not, it was his plain duty as a Dupont to fight those sparks, and, without a moment's wavering, he turned back and scrambled up the bank.
YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL.YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL.
"Come on, boys!" he cried; "start the bucket line," and a moment later he was climbing to the roof of the threatened mill, where he did all that a brave man can do—stamped out the falling embers, dashed water again and again upon the kindling fire as themen passed up full buckets, and for a time seemed to conquer. But presently the fire flamed hotter, the sparks came faster, and the water came not fast enough. He saw—he must have seen—that the struggle was hopeless, that the mill beneath him was doomed, that the explosion must come soon. From the ground they shouted, calling on him to save himself. He shouted back an order that they pass up more water, and keep passing water. There was only one thing in the world he wanted—water.
The men below did their best, but it was a vain effort, for in those days the roofs of powder-mills were made of pitch and cement—not of iron, as to-day—and by this time the fire had eaten its way nearly through. Alexis Dupont, working desperately, stood there with flames spreading all around him. It was plain to every one that the minutes of his life were numbered. Again they shouted—and—
The explosion came like an execution, and out of the wreck of it they bore away his crushed and broken body. The last thing he knew was that he had played the game out fairly to the end—he died like a Dupont, said the men.
Such was the spirit of the second generation (Alexis Dupont was a son of old Eleuthere, founder of the line), and later we find the same courage in the third generation, as on March 29, 1884, when La Motte Dupont, one of the grandchildren, took his stand inside the dynamite-mill—his mill—when it was threatened by fire, and stayed there after every man had left it, struggling with hand and brain against the danger until the explosion, coming like a thousand cannon, crashed his body deep into a sand-heap and left it with the life gone out.
I suppose this is only an instance of nature's tendencyto furnish always what is needed, to raise up a hero for each emergency; but it is encouraging to know that the very finest kind of courage may be thus developed by the mere pressure of moral responsibility in a man under no master, but free to be a craven if he will. We have seen something like this in the splendid devotion of fire-department chiefs, who often outshine all their men simply because they cannot resist the gallant spirit in their own hearts.
Now for the exception to this rule of persisting courage, an exception sometimes presented in the lives of explosive makers (and in the other lives, too), and showing that in certain cases courage may suddenly and strangely disappear. A man may be brave for years, and then cease to be brave. The wild-beast tamer may awaken some morning and discover himself afraid of his lions. The steeple-climber who has never flinched at any height may shrink at last. The pilot in the rapids, the acrobat on his swing, the diver sinking to a wreck, may feel a quaking of heart unknown before. Here is apparent contradiction, for how can courage be made by habit and then unmade? I don't know. I merely give the facts as I have found them, and it is quite certain that a sturdy Irishman who has shoveled powder all his life and waded in it knee-deep, as if it were so much coal-dust, may, for no reason he can put finger on, find himself lying awake of nights reflecting on what would happen if a spark should strike under one of the big rollers he feeds so carelessly, or, remembering uneasily that dream of his wife's about a white horse—every powder-man knows the close relation between dreams and explosions, and—well, they will all tell you this, that the only thing for a man to do when his heart feels the cold touch of fear is to quit his job. If he doesn't his knell is sounded, heis marked for sacrifice, his tigers will rend him, the deep waters will overwhelm him, a swift fall will crush him—he will surely die.
EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER.EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER.
The greatest catastrophe in the records of powder-making came because a man ignored such plain warning of his own fear. At least, the workmen at the Dupont mills will tell you this if you can get them to break through their usual reserve. The man was William Green, and, whatever his fault, he paid the fullest price for it. Green was stationed in one of the magazines, with the responsibility of sealing up hexagonal powder, a very powerful kind used by the government in heavy guns. This powder comes pressed into little six-sided cakes of reddish color, which are packed in large wooden boxes lined with tin, and it was Green's duty to solder the tin covers tight with a hot iron. In each box there was enough of this powder to blow up a fortress, and it is no wonder the occupation finally told on Green's nerves. He said to his wife that sooner or later a speck of grit would touch his iron and make a spark, and then— The theory is that a spark is required to explode powder which willonly burn harmlessly at the touch of a hot iron or a flame.
However this may be (and I should add that the theory is disputed), Green felt that he was in danger, and by that fact, say the powder-men, if for no other reason, hewasin danger. And one day—it was October 7, 1890—the spark came; surely that was a most important spark, for it caused the explosion of one hundred and fifty tons of gunpowder, the instant death of thirteen men and one woman, and the serious or fatal injury of twenty-two men and nine women.
Only an earthquake could have wrought such terrible destruction. The city of Wilmington was shaken to its foundations. Great chasms were rent in the solid rock under the exploding magazines. Trees were torn up by the roots. Iron castings, weighing tons, were hurled clean across the Brandywine. Iron columns thick as a man's waist were twisted and bent like copper wire. Horses outside the yards were found with legs missing; men were found stripped clean of their clothes, and this curious fact was developed, that a man or a horse in the region of explosion would have shoes blown from the feet (iron shoes or leather shoes) if the legs were on the ground at the moment of shock, but would keep shoes on if the legs were lifted. Thus poor Green was found with both feet shod, and so identified, although his body had no other stitch of covering, and the explanation was that he probably saw the spark in time to spring away, and was actually in the air when the explosion came.
In my investigations I have heard various stories showing what uncertainty there is as to the behavior of dynamite in the presence of fire. Workmen who handle it constantly in blasting operations say you can put fire to a stick of dynamite without danger,and it will simply burn away in bluish flame. On the other hand, they admit that in every fifty or a hundred sticks there may be one where the touch of firewillbring explosion.
THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL.THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL.
It is quite certain this was the case in New York's recent tunnel accident near One Hundred and Eightieth Street, and I have some facts of interest here obtained from a workman who was in the main gallery at the time. This man heard a shout of warning, and, looking down the rock street, saw a puddle of blazing oil from one of the lamps lapping at the side of a heavy wooden box. He knew that the box was full of dynamite, and as he looked he saw the yellow oil flame turnto blue. That was enough for him, and he started to run for his life. But the explosion caught him in the first step, lifted him from the ground, and bore him on, while his legs kept up the motions of running. He was running on the air.
As he was thus hurled along his knee struck a large stone between the siding and the north heading, and he fell on his face, half dazed. The air was thick with strangling fumes, there was a frightful din about him—yells and crashing stones. Every lamp had been blown out, and in the utter darkness he could see the glaring eyeballs of fleeing negroes, who cursed in awful oaths as they ran. He pressed his mouth close to the ground, and found he could breathe better. He felt some one step over him, and seized a leg. The leg kicked itself free and went on. He groped about with his hands, and touched an iron rail; it was the little track for hauling the dumping-cars. He crept along this painfully to the siding, then down the siding to the shaft, where, in the blackness, he found a frantic company—negroes mad with fright, Italians screaming and praying, Irishmen keeping fairly cool, but wondering why, oh, why! the elevator did not come, and several men stretched on the ground quite still or groaning quietly.
Time lacks for the rest of the story; they took out men dressed in a collar and shirt-band only—everything else blown off, and some whose faces were mottled with fragments of stone, a kind of dynamite tattooing, and some grievously injured. There are no limits to the fury of dynamite, once it sets out to be cruel.
ON a certain pleasant morning in June, I set forth to visit a dynamite-factory, and see with my own eyes, if might be, some of the men who follow this strange and hazardous business. As the train rushed along I thought of the power for good and evil that is in this wonderful agent: dynamite piercing mountains; dynamite threatening armies and blowing up great ships; a teacupful of dynamite shattering a fortress, a teaspoonful of the essence of dynamite—that is, nitroglycerin—tearing a man to atoms. What kind of fellows must they be who spend their lives making dynamite!
In due course I found myself back in the hill land of northern New Jersey, where everything is green and quiet, a lovely summer's retreat with nothing in external signs to suggest an industry of violence. Stop; here is a sign, though it doesn't seem much: two sleepy wagons lumbering along the road between these cool woods and the waving fields. Farm produce? Lumber? No. The first is loaded with a sort of yellow meal, and trails the way with yellow sprinklings. That is sulphur. They use it at the works. The second is piled up with crates, out of which come thick glass necks like the heads of imprisoned turkeys. These are carboys of nitric acid, hundreds of gallons of thatterrible stuff which is so truly liquid fire that a single drop of it on a piece of board will set the wood in flames. This nitric acid mixed with innocent sweet glycerin (itcomes along the road in barrels) makes nitroglycerin, and the proper mixing of these two is the chief business of a dynamite-factory.
Farther down the road I came to a railroad track where a long freight-train was standing on a siding. Some men were busy here loading a car with clean-looking wooden boxes that might have held starch or soap, butdidhold dynamite neatly packed in long, fat sticks like huge fire-crackers. Each box bore this inscription in red letters:high explosives. dangerous.I looked along the train and saw that there were several cars closed and sealed, with a sign nailed on the outside:powder. handle carefully.
In this case "powder" means dynamite, for the product of a dynamite-factory is always called powder. I think the men feel more comfortable when they use that milder name. There was "powder" enough on this train to wreck a city, but nobody seemed to mind. The horses switched their tails. The men laughed and loitered. They might have been laying bricks, for any interest they showed.
I asked one of them if it is considered safe to haul car-loads of dynamite about the country. He said that some people consider it safe, and some do not; some railroads will carry dynamite, while others refuse it.
"Suppose a man were to shoot a rifle-ball into one of these cars," I asked, "do you think it would explode?"
This led to an argument. One of the group was positive itwouldexplode. Concussion, he declared, is the thing that sets off dynamite. Another knew of experiments at the works where they had fired rifle-ballsinto quantities of dynamite, and found that sometimes it exploded and sometimes it didn't.
Then a third man spoke up with an air of authority. "You've got to have a red spark," said he, "to set off dynamite. I've handled it long enough to know. Here's an experiment that's been tried: They took an old flat-car and loaded it with rocks; then they fastened a box of dynamite to the bumper, and let the car run down a steep grade, bang! into another car anchored at the bottom. And they found that the dynamite never exploded unless the bumpers were faced with iron. It didn't matter how much concussion they got with wooden bumpers, the dynamite was like that much putty; but as soon as a red spark jumped into it out of the iron, why, off she'd go."
Then he instanced various cases where powder-cars had gone through railroad wrecks without exploding, although boxes of dynamite had been smashed open and scattered about.
"How about that car of ours the other day up in central New York?" said the first man. "Everything blown to pieces, and six lads killed."
He smiled grimly, but the other persisted: "That collision only proves what I say. There was a red-hot locomotive plowing through a car of dynamite, and of course she went up. But it wasn't the concussion did it; it was the sparks."
"You say that it takes a red spark," I observed, "to set off dynamite. Do you mean that a white spark wouldn't do it?"
"That's what I mean," said he. "It seems queer, but it's a fact. Put a white-hot poker into a box of dynamite, and it will only burn; but let the poker cool down until it's only red-hot and the dynamite will explode."
"EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES.""EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES."
Pondering this remarkable statement, I continued on my way, and presently, not seeing any big building, asked a farmer where the Atlantic Dynamite Works were. He swept the horizon with his arm, and said they were all about us; they covered hundreds of acres—little, low buildings placed far apart, so that if one exploded it wouldn't set off the rest.
"The dynamite-magazines are along the hillside yonder," he said. "If they went up, I guess there wouldn't be much left of the town."
"What town?" said I.
"Why, Kenvil. That's where the dynamite-mixers live. It's over there. Quickest way is across this field and over the fence."
I followed his advice, and presently passed near a number of small brick buildings so very innocent-looking that I found myself saying, "What!thisblow up, orthatlittle sputtering shanty wreck a town?" It seemed ridiculous. I learned afterward that I had walked through the most dangerous part of the works; it isn't size here that counts.
I paused at several open doors, and got a whiff of chemicals that made me understand the dynamite-sickness of which I had heard. No man can breathe the strangling fumes of nitric acid and nitrated glycerin without discomfort, and every man heremustbreathe them. They rise from vats and troughs like brownish-yellow smoke; they are in the mixing-rooms, in the packing-rooms, in the freezing-house, in the separating-house, everywhere; and they take men in the throat, and make their hearts pound strangely, and set their heads splitting with pain. Not a workman escapes the dynamite-headache; new hands are wretched with it for a fortnight, and even the well-seasoned men get a touch of it on Monday mornings after the Sunday rest.
In walking about the works I noticed that the several buildings, representing different steps in the manufacture of explosives, are united by long troughs or pipes sufficiently inclined to allow the nitroglycerin to flow by its own weight from one building to another, so that you watch the first operations in dynamite-making at the top of a slope, and the last ones at the bottom. Of course this transportation by flow is possible for nitroglycerin only while it is a liquid, and not after it has been absorbed by porous earth and given the name of dynamite and the look of moist sawdust. As dynamite it is transported between buildings on little railroads, with horses to haul the cars.
I noted also that most of the buildings are built against a hillside or surrounded by heavy mounds of earth, so that if one of them blows up, the others may be protected against the flight of debris. Without such barricade the shattered walls and rocks would be hurled in all directions with the energy of cannonballs, and a single explosion would probably mean the destruction of the entire works.
At one place I saw a triangular frame of timbers and iron supporting a five-hundred-pound swinging mortar, that hung down like a great gipsy kettle under its tripod. In front of this mortar was a sand-heap, and here, I learned, were made the tests of dynamite, a certain quantity of this lot or that being exploded against the sand-heap, and the mortar's swing back from the recoil giving a measure of its force. The more nitroglycerin there is in a given lot of dynamite, the farther back the mortar will swing. It should be understood that there are many different grades of dynamite, the strength of these depending upon how much nitroglycerin has been absorbed by a certain kind of porous earth.
In a little white house beyond the laboratory I found the superintendent of the works, a man of few words, accustomed to give brief orders and have them obeyed. He did not care to talk about dynamite—they never do. He did not think there was much to say, anyhow, except that people have silly notions about the danger. He had been working with dynamite now for twenty-five years, and never had an accident—that is, himself. Oh, yes; some men had been killed in his time, but not so many as in other occupations—not nearly so many as in railroading. Of course there was danger in dealing with any great force; the thing would run away with you now and then; but on the whole he regarded dynamite as a very well behaved commodity, and much slandered.
"Then you think dynamite-workers have no great need of courage?" I suggested.
"No more than others. Why should they? They work along for years, and nothing happens. They might as well be shoveling coal. And if anything does happen, it's over so quick that courage isn't much use."
Having said this, he hesitated a moment, and then, as if in a spirit of fairness, told of a certain man at the head of a nitroglycerin-mill who on one occasiondiddo a little thing that some people called brave. He wouldn't give the name of this "certain man," but I fancied I could guess it.
"HE WENT TO WORK THROWING WATER ON THE BURNING BOXES.""HE WENT TO WORK THROWING WATER ON THE BURNING BOXES."
This nitroglycerin-mill, it seems, was on the Pacific coast, whence they used to ship the dynamite on vessels that loaded right alongside the yards. One day a mixing-house exploded, and hurled burning timbers over a vessel lying near that had just received a fresh cargo. Her decks were piled with boxes of explosives—wooden boxes, which at once took fire. When this"certain man" rushed down to the dock, the situation was as bad as could be. There were tons of dynamite ready to explode, and a hot fire was eating deeper into the wood with every second. And all the workmen had run for their lives!
"Well," said the superintendent, "what this man did was to grab a bucket and line, and jump on the deck. Yes, it was burning; everything was burning. But he went to work lowering the bucket overside and throwing water on the flaming boxes. After a while he put 'em out, and the dynamite didn't explode at all; but it would have exploded in a mighty short time if he had kept away, for the wood was about burned through in several places. I know that's a true story, because, well—because Iknowit."
"Don't you call that man brave?" I asked.
The superintendent shook his head. "He was brave in that particular instance, but he might not have been brave at another time. You never can tell what a man will do in danger. It depends on how he feels or on how a thing happens to strike him. A man might act like a hero one day and like a coward another day, with exactly the same danger in both cases. There's a lot of chance in it. If that man I'm telling you about had been up late the night before, or had eaten a tough piece of steak for breakfast, the chances are he would have run like the rest."
I DROVE over from the works to Kenvil under the escort of a red-nosed man who discoursed on local matters, particularly on the prospects of his youngest son, who was eighteen years old and earned three dollars a day.
"What does he do?" I asked.
"He's a packer," said the red-nosed man.
"What does he pack?"
"Dynamite. Guess there ain't no other stuff he c'd pack an' get them wages. Jest the same, I wish he'd quit, specially sence the big blow-up t' other day."
"Why, what blew up?" I inquired.
"Freezing-house did with an all-fired big lot of nitroglycerin. Nobody knows what set her off. Reg'lar miracle there wa'n't a lot killed. Man in charge, feller named Ball, he went out to look at a water-pipe. Hadn't been out the door a minute when off she went. Say, you'd oughter seen the boys run! They tell me some of 'em jumped clean through the winders, sashes an' all. If ye want to know more about it, there's my boy now; he was right near the house when it happened."
We drew up at the Kenvil hotel, where a young man was sitting. Here was the modern dynamite-worker, and not at all as I had pictured him. Helooked like a summer boarder who liked to take things easy and wear good clothes. Wondering much, I sat down and talked to this young man, a skilful dynamite-packer, it appears, who happened at the time to be taking a day off.
"They put me at machine-packing a few days ago," he said, "and it's made my wrist lame. Going to rest until Monday."
After some preliminaries I asked him about the process of packing dynamite, and he explained how the freshly mixed explosive is delivered at the various packing-houses in little tubs, a hundred pounds to a tub, and how they dig into it with shovels, and mold it into shape on the benches like so much butter, and ram it into funnels, and finally, with the busy tamping of rubber-shod sticks, squeeze it down into the paper shells that form the cartridges. One would say they play with concentrated death as children play with sawdust dolls, but he declared it safe enough.
"How large are the cartridges?" I asked.
"Oh, different sizes. The smallest are about eight inches long, and the largest thirty. And they vary from one inch thick up to two and a half. I know a man who carried a thirty-inch cartridge all the way to Morristown in an ordinary passenger-car. He had it wrapped in a newspaper, under his arm like a big loaf of bread. But say, he took chances, all right."
At this another man informed us that people often carry nitroglycerin about with them, and take no risk, by simply pouring it into a big bottle of alcohol. Then it can do no harm; and when they want to use the explosive, they have only to evaporate the alcohol.
The talk turned to precautions taken against accidents. In all powder-mills the workmen are required to change their clothes before entering the buildings,and to put on rubber-soled shoes. There must be no bit of metal about a man's person, no iron nail or buckle, nothing that could strike fire; and of course the workman who would bring a match on the premises would be counted worse than an assassin.
"Just the same, though, matches get into the works once in a while," remarked the young packer. "I found a piece of a match one day in a tub of dynamite; it had the head on, too. Say, it's bad enough to find buttons and pebbles, but when I saw that match-head—well, it made me weak in the knees."
This brought back the old question, When does dynamite explode, and when does it not explode? I mentioned the red-spark theory.
"I think that's correct," agreed the packer. "I've watched 'em burn old dynamite-boxes, and if there are iron nails in the boxes they explode as soon as the nails get red-hot; if there are no nails, they don't explode."
"You mean empty boxes?" I asked.
"Certainly; but there's nitroglycerin in the wood, lots of it. It oozes out of the dynamite, especially on a hot day, and soaks into everything. Why, I suppose there's enough nitroglycerin in the overalls I wear to blow a man into—well, I wouldn't want to lay 'em on an anvil and give 'em a whack with a sledge."
There was a certain novelty to me in the thought of a pair of old overalls exploding; but I was soon to hear of stranger things. By this time other workmen had drawn up chairs, and were ready now with modest contributions from their own experience.
"Tell ye a queer thing," said one man. "In that explosion the other day,—I mean the freezing-house,—a car loaded with powder [dynamite] had just passed, not a minute before the explosion. Lucky for the three men with the car, wasn't it? But what gets me ishow the blast, when it came, blew the harness off the horse. Yes, sir; that's what it did—clean off; and away he went galloping after the men as hard as he could leg it. Nobody touched a buckle or a strap. It was dynamite unhitched that animal."
"Dynamite did another trick that day," put in a tall man. "It caught a bird on the wing. Dunno whether 'twas a robin or a swaller, but 'twas a bird, all right. Caught it in a sheet of tin blowed off the roof, an' jest twisted that little bird all up as it sailed along, and when it struck the ground, there was the bird fast in a cage made in the air out of a tin roof. Alive? Yes, sir, alive; and that shows how fast dynamite does business."
So the talk ran on, with many little details of explosions. The expert explained that the air waves of a great concussion move along with crests and troughs like water waves, and the shattering effect comes only at the crests, so that all the windows might be broken in a house, say, half a mile from an explosion, and no windows be broken in a house two hundred yards nearer. The first house would have been smitten by a destructive wave crest, the second passed over by a harmless wave trough. And, by the way, when windows are broken by these blasts of concussion, it appears that they are usually brokenoutward, not inward, and that the fragments are found on the ground outside the house, not on the floors inside. The reason of this is that the concussion waves leave behind them a partial vacuum, and windows are broken by the airinsidehouses rushing out.
"How about thunder-storms?" I asked.
"There is always danger," said the expert, "and all hands hurry out of the works as soon as the lightning begins to play. If a bolt struck a lot of dynamite it would set it off."
Then he explained that the policy of dynamite manufacturers is to handle explosives in small quantities, say a ton at a time, each lot being finished and hauled away in wagons before another lot is started. This is possible because of the short time occupied in making dynamite. He assured me, for instance, that if there were only raw materials at the works on a certain morning when the seven-o'clock whistle blew, it would be perfectly possible to have a ton of dynamite-cartridges finished, packed in boxes, and loaded on freight-cars by nine o'clock.
After this some one told of a thrilling happening in the mixing-house, by the great vat, wherein nitroglycerin is mixed with porous earth, called dope, and becomes dynamite. Over this vat four men work continually, two with rakes, two with hoes, kneading half a ton or more of explosive dough to the proper consistency.
One day a powder-car loaded with heavy stone got loose on its track a quarter of a mile up the slope, and started down the steep grade. The tracks ran straight into the mixing-house. The switch was open, and the first thing these men knew, there was an angry clang at the switch, and then a swift, heavy car was plunging toward the open door, with every chance that it would set off twelve hundred pounds of dynamite there. Workmen outside shouted, and then stared in horror. Not a man in the mixing-house moved. All four kept their places around the vat, held tight to their rakes and hoes, while the car, just missing the dynamite, hurled its mass of two tons through the back wall of the building, and spent its force against a tree-trunk. There was no explosion, and nothing happened, which was something of a miracle; but what impressed me was that these four men stood still, not from courage, but because they were frozen with fear!
"A SWIFT, HEAVY CAR WAS PLUNGING TOWARD THE OPEN DOOR.""A SWIFT, HEAVY CAR WAS PLUNGING TOWARD THE OPEN DOOR."
While there is danger in every step of dynamite manufacture, it appears that the center of peril is in the nitrating-house, where the fresh glycerin is mixed with nitric acid, or, more correctly, is nitrated by it. This operation takes place in a great covered vat about which are many pipes and stop-cocks. A man stands here like an engineer at the throttle, watching his thermometer and letting in fresh glycerin. These are his two duties, and upon the right performance of them depends the safety of the works. Every hour he must let in some seven hundred pounds of glycerin upon the deadly acid, and every hour he must draw off some fifteen hundred pounds of nitroglycerin and let it go splashing away in a yellowish stream down the long, uncovered trough that leads to the separating-house yonder. From this separating-house runs another trough to the freezing-house, and a third to the distant mixing-house. These three troughs inclose an oblong space, at the corners of which stand the nitrating-house, the separating-house, and the freezing-house. In each one of these, at any hour of the day, is a wagon-load of pure nitroglycerin, while in the three troughs are little rivers of nitroglycerin always flowing.
The arrangement of buildings in this part of the works makes clearer what was done at the nitrating-house by a certain Joshua Plumstead in the recent explosion. Joshua is a veteran at dynamite-making. He has worked at the nitrating-vat for twenty-five years, and has probably made more nitroglycerin than any one man in the world. He has been through all the great explosions; he has seen many men killed; he has stood by time and again when his own nitrating-vat has taken fire; and yet he always comes through safely. They say there is no man like Joshua for nerve andjudgment when the demons of gas and fire begin to play.
This explosion took place at the freezing-house, which is the one place in all the works where dynamite is never expected to explode. Yet itdidexplode now, with a smashing of air and a horrible grinding underfoot that stifled all things in men but a mad desire to flee.
Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. His helper had fled. The roof timbers were crashing down about him. He heard the hiss of fire and the shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second explosion might come at any moment. There was danger from fire-brands and flying masses of stone and iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the near-by houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here might mean the end.
Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer that reached up from the furious smoking mass of oil and acid. The mercury had crept up from eighty-five to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew the nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and nothing could save it. The vat was seething with a full charge. Ninety-one! He shut off the inflow of glycerin. Ninety-two! Something might be wrong with the coils of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He opened the cocks full. Crash! came a beam from overhead, and narrowly missed the gearing of the agitating-blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, turned on compressed air, watched the thermometer—and waited.
"HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY MOMENT.""HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY MOMENT."
There was no other man but Plumstead whodidwait that day; there was none but he whose waiting could avail anything.Hehad to fight it out alonewith that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explosion come far worse than the other. He fought it out; he waited, and he won. Gradually the thermometer dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the danger was passed.
But—well, even the superintendent admitted that Joshua did a rather fine thing here, while the workmen themselves and the people of Kenvil shake their heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works.
IT is 8.30p.m., any night you please, and for miles through the yards of East Chicago lights are swinging, semaphore arms are moving, men in clicking signal-towers are juggling with electric buttons and pneumatic levers, target lights on a hundred switches are changing from red to green, from green to red; everything is clear, everything is all right, the Lake Shore Mail is coming, with eighty tons of letters and papers in its pouches. Relays of engines and engineers have brought these messages, this news of the world, thus far on their journey. Up the Hudson they have come, and across the Empire State and along the shores of Lake Michigan, nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, which is not so bad, although the hottest, maddest rush is yet to come.
It is a fine thing to know the men who drive the engines on these trains; just to see them is something, and to make them talk (if you can do it) is better business than interviewing most celebrities you have heard about.
To this end I set out, one evening early in January, for the great round-house of the Northwestern road, that lies on the outskirts of Chicago. A strange place, surely, is this to one who approaches it unprepared—aplace where yellow eyes glare out of deep shadows, where fire-dragons rush at you with crunchings and snortings, where the air hisses and roars. It might be some demon menagerie, there in the darkness.
To this place of fears and pitfalls I came an hour or so before starting-time, and here I found Dan White, one of the Northwestern crack-a-jacks, giving the last careful touches to locomotive 908 before the night's hard run. In almost our first words my heart was won by something White said. I had mentioned Frank Bullard of the Burlington road, a rival by all rights, and immediately this bluff, broad-shouldered man exclaimed: "Ah, he's a fine fellow, Bullard is, and he knows how to run an engine." White would fight Bullard at the throttle to any finish, but would speak only good words of him.
"Tell me," said I, "about the great run you made the other night." From a dozen lips I had heard of White's tremendous dash from Chicago to Clinton, Iowa.
"Oh, it wasn't much; we had to make the time up, and we did it. Didn't we, Fred?"
This to the fireman, who nodded in assent, but said nothing.
"You made a record, didn't you?"
"Well, we went one hundred and thirty-eight miles in one hundred and forty-three minutes; that included three stops and two slow-downs. I don't know as anybody has beat that—much."
A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS.A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS.
By dint of questioning, I drew from this modest man some details of his achievement. The curve-bent stretch of seventeen miles between Franklin Grove and Nelson they did in fourteen minutes, and a part of this, beyond Nachusa, they took at an eighty-mile pace. They covered five miles between Clarence and Stanwoodin three minutes and a half, and they made two miles beyond Dennison at over a hundred miles an hour. As the mail rushed west, word was flashed ahead, and crowds gathered at the stations to cheer and marvel.
"There must have been five hundred people on the platform at Dixon," said White, telling the story, "and they looked to me like a swarm of ants, just a black, wriggling mass, and then they were gone. We came on to a bridge there after a big reverse curve with a down grade, and I guess no one will ever know how fast we were going, as we slammed her around one way and then slammed her around the other way. It was every bit of ninety miles an hour. You got all you wanted, didn't you, Fred?"
The fireman looked up, torch in hand, and remarked, in a dry monotone: "Goin' through Dixon I said my prayers and hung on, stretched out flat. That's what I done."
"Fred and I," continued White, "both got letters about the run from the superintendent. Here's mine, if you'd like to read it."
The pleasure of these two blackened men over this graciousness of the superintendent was a thing to see. For such a bit of paper, crumpled and smeared with oil, I believe they would have taken the Mississippi at a jump, engine, train, and all. Superintendent's orders, superintendent's praise—there is the beginning and end of all things for them.
My first long ride on one of these splendid locomotives was with the Burlington night mail (no passengers), 590 pulling her and Frank Bullard at the throttle. It is said that the Baldwin Locomotive Works never turned out a faster engine than this 590. The man must be a giant whose head will top her drivers,and, for all her seventy tons, there is speed in every line of her. She is a young engine, too—only four years old—and Bullard swears he will back her in the matter of getting over rails to do anything that steel and steam can do. "She's willing and gentle, sir, and easy running. You'll see in a minute."
These words from Bullard, first-class engine-driver of the C. B. & Q., a long, loosely jointed man, with the eye and build of a scout. As he spoke they were coupling us to the mail-cars, in preparation for the start. In overalls and sweater I had come, with type-written authority to make the run that night. This was in the first week in January, the second time Bullard had drawn the throttle for Burlington on the new fast schedule. Burlington lay off there in Iowa, on the Mississippi, with all the night and all the State of Illinois between us.
Now the train stands ready—three mail-cars and the engine, not a stick besides. No Pullman comforts here, no bunks for sleeping, no man aboard who has the right to sleep. Everything is hustle and business. Already the mail clerks are swarming at the pouches, like printers on a rush edition. See those last bags swung in through the panel doors! Not even the president of the road may ride here without a permit from the government.
Bullard takes up a red, smoking torch and looks 590 over. He fills her cups, and prods a two-foot oiler into her rods and bearings. Dan Cleary, the fireman, looks out of his window on the left and chews complacently. Down the track beside him locomotive 1309 backs up, a first-class engine she, but 590 bulks over her as the king of a herd might over some good, ordinary working elephant. As she stands here now, purring through her black iron throat, 590 measures sixteenfeet three inches from rails to stack-top. Both engines blow out steam, that rolls up in silver clouds to the electric lights.
Bullard climbs to his place at the right, and a hiss of air tells that he is testing the brakes. Under each car sixteen iron shoes close against sixteen wheels, and stay there. Down the length of the train goes the repair man with his kit, and makes sure that every contact is right, then pulls a rope four times at the rear, whereupon four hissing signals answer in the cab. Bullard shuts off the air.
"It's all there is to stop her with," says he, "so we take no chances with it. She's got high-speed brakes on her, 590 has—one hundred and ten pounds to the inch. Twenty-four, Dan," he adds, and snaps his watch. "We start at thirty."
Dan chews on. "Bad wind to-night," he says; "reg'lar gale."
Bullard nods. "I know it; we're fifteen minutes late, too."
"Make Burlington on time?"
"Got to: you hit it up, and I'll skin her. Twenty-six, Dan."
Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come up with polite inquiries. The thermometer is falling, they say, and we shall have it bitter cold over the plains. They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I pull my cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our side of the cab is quite cut off from the fireman's side by a swelling girth of boiler, which leaves an alleyway at right and left wide enough for a man's body and no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alleyway, Bullard's back and black cap just before me. Dan, with his shovel, is out on a shaky steel shelf behind, that bridges the space between engine and tender.That is where he works, poor lad! We are breathing coal-dust and torch-smoke and warm oil.
"F-s-s-s-s-s!" comes the signal, and instantly we are moving. Lights flash about us everywhere—green lights, white lights, red lights, a phantasmagoria of drug-store bottles. The tracks shine yellow far ahead. A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like the roar of battle. Our cab heaves with the tugging of a captive balloon. Our speed increases amazingly. We seem constantly on the point of running straight through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden and disconcerting swayings around curves that all lead, one will vow, straight into black chasms under the dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that this plunging enginemustnecessarily go off the rails in two or three minutes, say five at the latest; for what guidance, he reasons, can any man get from a million crazy lights, and who that is human can avoid a snarl in such a tangle of bumping switches? I am free to confess, for my own part, that I found the first half hour of my ride on 590 absolutely terrifying.
Thus, at break-neck speed, we come out of Chicago, all slow-going city ordinances to the contrary notwithstanding. We are chasing a transcontinental record schedule, and have fifteen minutes to make up. I breathe more freely as we get into open country. We are going like the wind, but the track is straighter, and the darkness comfortable. I begin to notice things with better understanding. As the lurches come, I brace myself against the boiler side without fear of burning; that is something learned. I find out later that I owe this protection to a two-inch layer of asbestos. I catch a faint sound of the engine bell, and discover,to my surprise, that it has been ringing from the start—indeed, it rings, without ceasing, all the way to Burlington, the rope pulled by a steam jerking contrivance, but the roar of the engine drowns it.
Deep shadows inwrap the cab, all the deeper for the glare that flashes through them every minute or two as Dan, back there on his iron shelf, stokes coal in at the red-hot door. Two faint lights burn for the gages—a jumping water column in front, a pair of wavering needles on the boiler. These Bullard watches coolly, and from time to time reaches back past me to turn the injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my head. For the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head forward at the lookout window, right hand down by the air-brake valve, left hand across the throttle lever, with only a second's jump to the reversing lever that rises up from the floor straight before him. As we race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the chime whistle, making its deep voice challenge the darkness. At curves he eases her with the brakes. And for grades and level stretches and bridges he notches the throttle up or down as the need is. Watch his big, strong grip on the polished handles! Think of the hours he spends here all alone, this man who holds life and death in his quick, sure judgment!
Now he catches the window-frame and slides it open. A blast sweeps in like an arctic hurricane. Bullard leans out into the night and seems to listen. "Try it," he cries, but his voice is faint. I put my head out, and come into a rush of air billows that strangle like breakers.