WHERE SAFETY WAS A STRANGER
True to their word, Bob and Betty were up bright and early, ready for Uncle Jack's exploring trip.
"We're going to visit one of the big wood-working mills," he explained as they left the house after breakfast. "I'm curious to see the result of Colonel Sure Pop's Safety patrolling, and it seems to me that will be about as interesting a shop as we can begin on. It will be fun to see what they're doing to make it safer for the men—perhaps we can get some ideas for your outside patrols, Bob."
The twins looked around them sharply as they went into the mill by way of its lumber yard. "I don't see anything here that looks dangerous," was Bob's first remark. "Holdon, though—what about those piles of lumber? Don't you think they're piled too high to be safe?"
"I can tell you this much," said Uncle Jack, who had been reading up on the year's long list of accidents. "The danger of being hit by falling or flying objects in mills and factories is the biggest risk in the whole country today."
He walked around to the laborers who were piling lumber and began talking with the foreman. The twins stepped nearer so that they could hear what he was saying.
"They're getting that pile rather high," said Uncle Jack, as if he had only just noticed it. "It's beginning to look a bit wobbly on its pins. Isn't there danger of its toppling over and hurting somebody?"
"Oh, I don't know," was the foreman's answer. "We do have a few men smashed up that way, off and on; it's all in the day's work, though."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth when a heavily loaded wagon in passing beside the lumber piles swayed and came squarely up against the one the men were working on. With a crash and a clatter the whole thing went over. One man jumped clear of the wreck, another slid down with the lumber, bruised but not much hurt—and two disappeared under the huge mass of falling boards.
The three Safety Scouts stood watching the ambulance, fifteen minutes later, as it carried off the two men to the hospital, one with a broken arm and a gash over one eye, the other hurt inside so badly that he died that night.Both of them had boys and girls of their own—families whose living depended on their daily wages at the mill!
"Hard luck for their folks," said Uncle Jack, as the ambulance rumbled away. "The Colonel told me yesterday his men had done a lot of successful Safety scouting among the wood-working mills. I can't understand it. By the way, Bob, that ambulance reminds me: what drill are you giving your Safety Scouts on how to call the fire department, and the police and the ambulance and so on?"
"We've got that well covered in our Saturday reports, Uncle Jack. Once a week each Scout adds to his report the telephone number of the police and the fire department—it's usually a number that's easy to remember, like 'Main 0' for fire and 'Main 13' for police—as well as the street address of the nearest station."
"Bob, how did they happen to choose those numbers?" wondered Betty.
Her brother grinned. "I suppose because after a bad fire there's nothing left, and because it's unlucky to fall into the hands of the police!" and he cleverly ducked the box Betty aimed at his ear.
Uncle Jack's twinkle didn't last long, though. He was too much puzzled over the carelessness he was noticing in this mill, carelessness where he had expected to find up-to-date Safety methods. He poked with his foot at a board with several ugly nails sticking up in it and jammed them carefully down into the ground.
"That's the fourth bad case of upturned nails I've found here already," he said quietly. "There's no end of broken bottles and such trash under foot, and just look at that overloaded truck, will you? One sharp curve in the track and that load will spill all over the place. Why, these chaps don't realize the first thing about Safety, Bob."
They moved on into the engine room. One of the engineer's helpers, a boy who looked hardly older than Bob, stood beside a swiftly moving belt, pouring something on it out of a tin can. His sleeve was dangling, and every time the belt lacing whirled past, it flipped the sleeve like a clutching finger trying to jerk his arm into the cruel wheel.
Uncle Jack walked over for a word with the engineer, a fat, jolly looking man who seemed well satisfied with life. "Do your helpers often put belt dressing on while the belt is running?" he asked.
The jolly engineer was plainly surprised. "Why, they never do it any other time!" he exclaimed. "Why do you ask?"
"Only," said the explorer, dryly, "because there are several hundred men killed in just that way every year—and most of them have families. Don't you put guards around any of your belts in this mill, either?"
Again that puzzled look in the engineer's eyes. "No, not here," he answered slowly. "There was some talk about putting them on, but nothing came of it. It wouldn't be a bad idea, either; every now and then some poor fellowloses a hand or an arm. Last spring a new man from out in the yards was walking through here, and the wind blew his sleeve too near the belt. It yanked him clear in between the belt and pulley—smashed him up so he didn't live more'n a couple of hours. That certainly was hard luck."
"Luck!" snorted Uncle Jack, when the three were out of hearing. "A moving belt is almost as dangerous as a can of gunpowder! Yet these men call it luck when it takes off an arm or snuffs out a life. It's disgusting."
All through the plant they found the same state of affairs—careless men, unguarded machinery, guesswork everywhere. In the machine shop they found men and boys cleaning machines that were running at top speed. Any one could see how easily the rags and soft cotton waste they were using could catch in the moving parts and draw a hand or an arm into the flying wheels.
"I noticed in the accident reports of one single state," Uncle Jack told Betty, "that more than five hundred people were hurt in that very way, by cleaning machines that were moving. Half of them lost fingers and many lost their hands or arms. No sensible workman, these days, treats his machine as anything but downright dangerous as long as it's running."
The buzz saws fascinated the twins. They felt as if they could stand all day long and listen to the drone of the saw as it ate its way into the clean white boards, snarling like an angry dog when its teeth struck a knot in thewood. There were a good many of these saws in the big, long room; now and then they would get to singing together like a music class at school and then they would drop out of tune again.
"Not a saw guard in the place," shouted Bob in Uncle Jack's ear, for the saws drowned out his ordinary tone.
But Uncle Jack's keen eyes had already caught sight of some metal guards hung up on the wall here and there. "They've got them," he corrected, "but they are not making any use of them." He stepped up to one of the saws and spoke to the man who was running it. "Why don't you keep the guard on your saw?"
"Aw, those things are a nuisance," said the man. "Yes, we're supposed to keep 'em on, but they'd be in the way—we couldn't get the work out so fast with them."
"That's queer," said Uncle Jack. "In a good many mills like this they've found that a man using a good saw guard turns out more work than ever—because he's so much more free in using his hands, I suppose."
The man grunted, but did not answer. On their way to the door, the Safety Scouts spied, clear back in one corner, a man who really did have his saw guard in use. "And a rattling lot of work he's turning out, too," said Bob, after the three had watched him a while from a distance. The neat metal guard came clear down over the murderous saw teeth, so that no matter how much his fingers happened to be in the way, they were safe.
"Let's ask him why he uses his saw guard when the others won't," said Uncle Jack. He stepped nearer the silent workman and then—he saw the reason. Turning to Bob and Betty, he tapped his left hand with his right and jerked his head toward the man beside the saw. The twins walked around to where they could get a look at the workman's left hand. Then they understood. There was nothing left of the fingers but the stub of one, and the thumb!
"Easy enough to see why that one man was using his saw guard, eh?" said Uncle Jack to Sure Pop that night.
"Nothing easier," said the little Colonel. "A burnt child dreads the fire, you know. Not much Safety First idea noticeable in that mill, was there?"
"Colonel, that's just what I don't understand. I thought you said yesterday your Safety Scouts had done good work among the wood-working mills, but if that's a sample—"
"It isn't," was the quiet answer. "Do you happen to know who's the biggest stockholder in that mill?"
Uncle Jack stared. "Surely not—not Bruce?"
"You've guessed it."
Uncle Jack gave a long, low whistle of surprise. "But I had no idea he owned wood-working mills too."
"This is the only one. It's out of his line, I'll admit—but it goes to show his bitter prejudice against the Safety First movement, doesn't it? He'll come around by and by, never fear. All in good time, my friend, all in good time."
GIVING THE OTHER FELLOW A SQUARE DEAL
The Dalton twins had something on their minds. Mother felt it. Uncle Jack felt it. Every now and then they forgot to go on eating their breakfast; and when a Dalton went that far, as their uncle remarked, things were getting very bad indeed.
Betty sat and fidgeted. Bob looked as if he would like to pop one question at his uncle, but he managed to hold it in. Finally Betty slid down from her chair, went boldly around to Uncle Jack, and whispered something in his ear. How he threw back his handsome head and laughed!
"Betty, you're a regular mind reader! Why, we're going down to try them on this very morning, and I wasjust going to tell you to get ready, but you were too quick for me!"
Two hours later Betty, looking very spruce in her new Safety Scout uniform, was dancing up and down before the mirrors while Bob's blouse was having the buttons set over a bit.
"That boy," said the tailor, looking at him with bulging eyes, "has grown smaller since this uniform was measured!"
"If you'd seen the luncheon he tucked away, just before we came over that day to be measured," laughed Uncle Jack, "you'd only wonder that those buttons won't have to be set back at least a foot! Now, where are the trousers?"
"They are up in the shop. Wait, I'll get them. What? You'd like to come along? Up this way, then."
On the second floor they found themselves in a big room that looked like a forest of sewing machines, humming and clicking so fast that at first the twins were fairly bewildered. Girls who, it seemed, could hardly be older than Betty were bending over their machines, sewing away as if for dear life. Most of them did not even look up from their work as the visitors came through.
"The young man's trousers are in this next room," said the tailor, leading the way to a heavy iron door which separated the two rooms on that floor.
"What's the idea of this iron door?" asked Uncle Jack. "To keep a fire from spreading from one department into the other?"
"Exactly so. That big, thick fire wall goes straight through the building from top to bottom—cuts it in two. Suppose a fire breaks out here on the piecework side: the foreman just opens this fire door and shoos the boys and girls right through, like a lot of chickens. Then he shuts the fire door tight, and they are safe. That big fire we had here four years ago taught us something. So when the owner rebuilt it for us, he built it right."
The big room on the other side of the fire wall was crowded almost as full of workers as the first one. The main difference was that there were more boys and men, and that more sewing was being done by hand. Bob's khaki trousers were quickly found and tried on—a perfect fit.
"We'll give Bob a Patrol Leader's arm badge—two white bars of braid below his left shoulder," said Uncle Jack. "Betty will get one bar for the present, I understand. There are some badges yet to come, Colonel Sure Pop says."
Bob and Betty looked at each other, too pleased to talk.
The four were walking downstairs for a look at the other floors of the big tailor shop when the noon whistle blew. R-r-rip—slam—bang! A torrent of rattle-brained boys came tearing pell mell down the stairs like a waterfall over a dam. Most of them came pelting down three steps at a jump, but on one of the landings somebody stumbled, and the yelling boys piled up in a squirming, kicking heap.
"Hey! WAIT!" No one would ever have suspectedthe mild-mannered tailor of having such a foghorn of a voice! The rush from the upper floors slowed up at once, and Uncle Jack and Bob helped the fallen lads pick themselves up. But the boy at the bottom, a little fellow with a thin, pinched face that looked as if he had never had half enough to eat, nor even enough fresh air, lay there moaning softly.
Bob knew that queer, unnatural angle of the boy's right arm, which lay awkwardly stretched out beside him, as if it had never quite matched his left. The arm was broken.
"Here, here!" roared the tailor, gently picking the little fellow up and carrying him to the elevator. "Will you crazy fellows never learn? Only last week, somebody hollered 'Fire!' just to see the other fellows jump up and run, and broke that poor little Levinski's collar bone! And now look at this!"
"The old fellow's right on that score," was Uncle Jack's remark as the twins followed him to the street car, each hugging tight a big pasteboard box with a brand new Safety Scout uniform inside it. "Those lads meant no particular harm, but that certainly was about as far from a square deal as one fellow can give another. These 'practical jokers' who will yell 'Fire!' or run over a boy smaller than themselves—well, if a Boy Scout had no more sense than that, he'd be drummed out of the service!"
Once on the way home, when the car stopped at the corner, he pointed up to a fire escape on a big flat building."There's your flower-pot risk over again, Betty. Even worse, for this time they're on the fire escape steps where folks would fall over head first in case of fire. And see that girl leaning against that rickety old porch railing on the third floor! Certainly there's plenty in sight for a Safety Scout to do!"
That afternoon they visited a large machine shop across the river. To their great delight, Bob and Betty were allowed to wear their new Safety Scout uniforms, leggings and all. They stood very straight as they waited for their companion to get a permit at the Company's office.
"Those new uniforms are going to be about as good an 'ad' for Safety First as anything we could have," remarked Uncle Jack, leading the way into the big machine shop. He had caught the admiring glances that had followed them from the older people and the longing looks that the boys and girls had sent after them all the way over.
"We haven't done our 'Day's Boost for Safety' yet, though," said Betty. "I don't know but we ought to do our good turn every morning before we start out on any trip—I just hate not to get my button right side up till so late in the day!"
"Those girls have pretty neat looking uniforms of their own, haven't they?" said Bob, a little later, as they gazed down a long row of punch presses which were pouring out shining streams of aluminum pin trays. "What do they wear them for—just to look pretty?"
"You wouldn't have thought so," laughed the forewoman, "if you could have seen how they fought the first caps and aprons we tried to get them to wear. Theywerehomely things, even if they were life savers. So we kept at it till we got something so trim and pretty that the girls would rather wear it than not."
"Life savers?" repeated Betty. "How could caps and aprons save lives? Oh—by not catching in the machinery?"
"Just so. It's easy for a girl's hair to be blown into the machines, or for a braid to swing against a whirling shaft, you see. Oh yes, we had several girls killed that way, before we tried this uniform. They used to wear dresses with baggy sleeves,—ragged ones, sometimes. Rings and bracelets are bad, too; and even these aprons, you'll notice, are buttoned back so they can't fly out against the wheels. Yes, the girls all like the idea now. The caps keep their hair from getting dusty or mussed up. Besides, we find it saves a good many girls' feelings, too, having them all dressed so much alike."
The same good sense was shown in the other departments, in the working clothes worn by the men and boys.
"You won't find a man in this room with a necktie on," the foreman told them. "These are the biggest punch presses in our whole shop. A while ago one of the men got his necktie caught between the cogwheels and he was drawn into the machine head first. That was the end of that sort of thing inthisshop!
"Now, as you'll see, long sleeves and ragged or baggy overalls are things of the past. If a man does wear a long sleeve, he keeps it rolled up where it can't catch and cost him a hand or an arm.
"Watch the men and boys, and you'll see how careful they are not to look around while their machines are running. Before they start their machines, you'll find them looking all around to see there's nobody near who might get caught in the wheels or belt. These workmen are just as anxious to give the other fellow a square deal as anybody could be, once they catch the Safety First idea. It took some of them a long while to learn never to fool with the other fellow's machine—that's always dangerous, you know, just like a machine that's out of order. Our pressmen wouldn't think of starting up a machine which was out of order, or which they didn't understand—they'd report it to me at once."
"What has been the result of all this Safety training—has it got the men to 'thinking Safety,' so you don't have so many accidents?" asked Uncle Jack.
The foreman's face glowed with pride. "Why, it's got so now, sir, that even the youngsters are too wise to scuffle or play jokes on each other here in the shop. They've come to see how easy it is to fall against dangerous machinery or down a shaft or stairway. And as for throwing things at each other, the way they used to during the noon hour—nothing doing any more in that line.
"Would you believe it, we haven't had a bad accident in this shop since a year ago last July. That was when one of the boys on a punch press got the die clogged and tried to dig it out with his fingers instead of using a hook. That's about the last set of fingers this shop has lost; yes, sir. Before that, there was hardly a week went by but we had several hands crippled, and often somebody killed. Oh, this Safety First work is wonderful,—it's making things a lot safer for the working man!"
Uncle Jack told the kindly foreman what the twins were doing in Safety patrol work. Bob and Betty could see how proud the man was of the splendid Safety showing his shop was making. "And it's a fine pair of Scout uniforms you and the little lady have," he called after them. "More power to you both—and to the Safety Scouts of America!"
"You seem very much interested in everything in these shops, Bob," said his uncle, who could hardly drag him away.
"You'd better believe I am!" cried the boy, warmly. "As soon as I get through school, I'm going to get a job in one of these factories and—well, I'm trying to make up my mind which shop it shall be!"
One thing you always owe the other fellow—a square deal.—Sure Pop
AN ADVENTURE IN SAFETY
Betty told Sure Pop what Bob had said about getting a job in one of the big mills by and by, and the little Colonel remembered it a few weeks later when he was showing several of the Safety Scouts through the steel mills.
"Do you think it will be one of these mills you'll pick out for your first job?"
"Well, I don't know, now. It's a pretty big, lonesome sort of place for a fellow like me, Sure Pop, and there don't seem to be so many fellows of my own age here as in some of the other factories."
Betty and Joe and Chance followed Bob's eyes around the big steel mill yards. They knew how he felt. It wasa lonesome looking place till you got used to it, in spite of the thousands of men who swarmed around them. The queer, raw smell of the reddish iron ore added to the feeling, too.
Away down in the big ore boats along the docks, gangs of big, brawny workmen strained and sweated, filling the iron buckets that traveled up the wire cables to the ore dumps. Others were trucking the ore to the furnaces, while a swarm of little switch engines panted and puffed back and forth over the network of steel rails.
The steel works covered many acres of ground, and, shut off as they were by high fences, seemed almost like another world. The roar of the furnaces and the din of steel on steel made Betty and the boys feel rather confused at first. "I should think all these men just over from the old country would get mixed up, so many of them not understanding a single word of English," said Betty to their guide.
"Yes, we have to be mighty careful," said the man, who was one of the Safety men who gave all his time to making the steel mills safer for the thousands of workmen. "We print this little book of Safety Rules in all the different languages, so that each new man can study it and find out how to do his day's work without getting into danger."
"Wow! what's that?" Joe's black eyes opened very wide as he pointed to a great ball of fire that rose from one of the furnace stacks, floated a little way like a balloon, and then burst into a sheet of flame.
"Just the gas from the blast furnace—regular Fourth of July fireworks, isn't it? I remember how queer those gas bubbles used to look to me when I first came to work here."
He waited while his visitors stared for a few minutes at the fiery clouds, then led the way to the blast furnaces. They went through two or three big buildings, all of them fairly alive with hurrying, sweating laborers. But in spite of the seeming confusion all around them, Bob noticed how carefully the aisles and passageways were kept free and clear of anything the hurrying men might stumble over.
"We simply have to do it," explained the steel man. "Before we woke up to the importance of never leaving anything in the way where it might be stumbled over, we had more broken arms and legs every month than you could shake a stick at. Now it's different; it's as much as a man's job is worth to leave anything lying in the passageways for his fellow workmen to stumble and fall over."
"I saw some white lines painted on the floor of that last room we came through, the one where all those castings were stacked up in rows," said Chance. "Was that what they were for? Great scheme, isn't it? And as simple as falling off a log!"
"Simple? Sure—most of these things are simple enough, once you think of them," agreed their guide. "It took perhaps an hour of one man's time and a gallon or two of white paint to paint those dead-lines along the sides—and many's the man who has been saved weeks in the hospital by those same white lines."
The five friends followed him into the foundry department. Hardly had they stepped through the doorway, when the clang of a big gong overhead scattered a group of laborers who were piling heavy castings on flat cars.
Five pairs of eyes looked up as the five Safety Scouts turned to see where the gong was. Away up above them on a track that went from one end of the long room to the other, they saw something like an oddly shaped freight engine running along with a heavy wire cable dangling toward the floor. The big, strong cable was carrying a load of several tons of steel castings as easily as a boy carries in an armful of wood. "And with a whole lot less fuss and bother!" said Betty, with a sly look at Brother Bob.
"When a man hears that gong overhead," said the guide, "he knows what it means even before he looks up. That's what is called a traveling crane. It runs back and forth on those overhead tracks, wherever the crane driver wants to pick up or drop his load. He kicks that gong with his heel, just like the motorman on the street car, and it gives warning to the workmen below just as plainly as if it yelled out, 'Look out, below! Here comes a load that might spill on your heads!'"
"Sounds exactly like a street-car gong," said Betty.
The steel man smiled. "It ought to—it was made for use on a street car. Watch sharp when the crane comesback this way and you'll see the gong fastened right up under the cab floor. See? We tried whistles for a while, and automobile horns, too; but this plain, everyday street-car gong beats 'em all. A man doesn't have to understand English to know whatthatsound means!"
"It must have made a good deal of difference in the number of accidents," said Sure Pop, "with so many men working underneath those cranes right along."
"Did it? Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same. Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things, Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a square deal."
Sure Pop reached up to say something in Bob's ear as they went on to the chipping yard, where long rows of men were trimming down the rough steel castings with chisels driven by compressed-air hammers.
"Did you ever see anything like it, Bob, the way this 'square deal' and 'fair play' idea gets into their systems, once they wake up to the possibilities of Safety First?"
"It certainly does," said Bob. "I thought of that, too. It's what that tailor told the boys in the clothing factory, the day we got our uniforms, and it's just what the foreman in that machine shop told us, too."
"Yes, sir," said Sure Pop, "the spirit of fair play meanseverything to a fellow who's any good at all—it's the very life of the Boy Scout law, you know."
Joe was looking hard at the chippers.
"Every one of those men wear glasses! Isn't that queer!"
"It's all the difference between a blind man and a wage earner," was the way the steel man looked at it. "When those steel chips fly into a man's eyes it's all over but the sick money." He turned to little Sure Pop again. "There it is again, Colonel—another of the simplest ideas a man could imagine—just putting goggles on our chippers and emery wheel workers—but it has saved hundreds and hundreds of eyes, and every eye or pair of eyes means some man's living—and the living of a family."
"Splendid idea," nodded the little Colonel—just as if he, the Spirit of Safety, had not thought it all out years before, and put it into the minds of men! "Do you ever have any trouble getting the men to wear them?"
"Plenty! Most of the men treated it as a joke at first. Then, gradually, they began to notice that the men who wore theirs on theirhats(the rule is that they must wear goggles while at this work or lose their jobs), those were the men who lost their eyes. Several of the first men to be blinded after the new rule was posted were those very ones, the chaps that had made the most fun of the goggles. Then the others began to wake up.
"Over in my office, I've several hundred pairs of gogglesthat have had one or both lenses smashed by flying bits of steel—and every pair has saved an eye, in some cases both eyes. Seems sort of worth while, eh, Colonel?"
It was an enthusiastic group of Safety Scouts that passed out through the big steel mill gates and started home in the mellow September twilight. "Oh, I think it's wonderful," cried Betty, as they talked over what they had seen, "perfectly wonderful, Sure Pop, that such little things can save so many lives!"
"But I don't see why you call a trip like this 'an adventure,'" broke in Chance, who had never been along on any of the twins' Safety Scouting trips before. "We didn't see an accident or an explosion or anything!"
Colonel Sure Pop gave Chance one of his wise smiles. "That's the best part of the whole trip, as you'll see when you've been at it as long as I have. The most delightful adventure a lover of fair play can possibly have to look back on, my boy, is one just like what we've had today—a real, live adventure in Safety!"
The spirit of fair play is the very life of the Scout Law.—Sure Pop
ONE DAY'S BOOST FOR SAFETY
October had come and gone in busy school days and even busier Safety Scouting trips, all but the last day. For it was the morning of Hallowe'en,—and the Dalton twins' birthday.
"Twelve years old, eh?" said Father, at the breakfast table. "Well, well, how time flies, Nell! Stand up here, you Safety Scouts, and let's have a look at you. I declare, no one would suspect Bob of being a day under fifteen, would he, Jack?"
"I'd hate to have him haul off and hit me with that fist of his!" laughed Uncle Jack. "How are you going to celebrate the day, Scouts?"
"As if any one need ask!" smiled Mother. "Today's the day Bob takes his entering test and joins the Boy Scouts, and Betty joins the Camp Fire Girls. Just think—big enough for that! Good thing it's Saturday, Betty."
"What are you going to do—start out to capture all the honor medals?"
"Well, I hope to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with, you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can qualify as a first-class Scout."
"Hm-m-m!" muttered their uncle, winking at Mr. Dalton over the twins' heads. For he realized what Bob and Betty did not, that the practical, everyday Safety scouting the twins had done had already gone far toward qualifying them, not only for Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl honors, but for practical Safety work all the rest of their lives. There is no age limit in the Safety Scouts of America.
They were wearing their handsome new uniforms when Chance Carter came over to get some scouting tips from Bob. Chance was going around without his crutches now, for the broken leg seemed to be as strong and well as ever.
Chance had his heart set on a Safety Scout uniform like Bob's. "Dad says he'll get me one as soon as I do something to earn it," he told the twins. "I'm going to put in all day today scouting for something that will earn me thatuniform—and I want you two to think up some stunt that will win it,sure!"
The twins were eager to get ready for their entrance tests, but it seemed only fair to give their friend his chance, too. So they sat and thought hard, while the golden minutes flew past.
"I can't seem to think of anything worth while today," said Betty. "Why not hunt for a live wire and report it, the way Bob did?"
"Not much use on a day like this," objected Bob. "That was the morning after the big windstorm, when wires were down all over town. I'll tell you what you might do, Chance: you might patrol the roads on the edge of town. You may run across a broken culvert, or a shaky bridge, or something."
"And you might patrol the river bank and watch for a chance to fish somebody out of the river," added Betty. "There are lots of children playing down by the river every Saturday, you know."
"Now," said Bob, when to their great relief Chance Carter had hurried off to begin his day's scouting for Safety, "now, we've got to hustle, or we'll be late for those examinations. Come along, Betty."
"Wait till I turn my Safety button upside down," was his sister's answer. "It seems a shame to go to the Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girls tests with our Safety buttons wrong side up, doesn't it? I feel almost like waiting tillwe've managed to do our 'One Day's Boost for Safety,' Bob. Don't you suppose we'd better, after all?"
"Oh, now, Betty, comeon!If we can't do any better, we can count our patrolling hints to Chance as our work for Safety this time—certainly that took enough longer than our day's boost usually does!"
Though Betty scoffed at the idea of their talk with Chance being work for Safety, Bob had spoken more truly than they knew.
All forenoon long Chance Carter patrolled the different roads leading into town. By noon he was so hot and tired that he plodded on till he came to Red Bridge, as the boys all called the old bridge that spanned the river where it crossed Bruce's Road, the short cut to Bruce's Mills. Here he managed to find a shady spot on the grassy river bank and sat down to eat the lunch he had brought along.
"What luck!" he grumbled to himself. "Everything's so dis-gust-ing-ly safe!" The way he bit off the syllables showed how tired and disappointed he was.
He threw the crumbs from his luncheon into the water, hoping the fish would rise for them; but even the fish were not at all accommodating, this sunny Hallowe'en. For a while he amused himself by shying stones at the weather-beaten DANGER sign which was Bruce's only reply to the City Council's action condemning Red Bridge as unsafe. The bridge was really on Bruce's land, and nobody knew it better than the great mill owner himself. So, whilethe public wondered why the city did not build a newer and stronger bridge, Bruce had stubbornly insisted to the road commissioner, "Oh, that bridge'll hold a while longer," and was putting off spending the money for a new bridge just as long as he could.
Meanwhile the farmers from that part of the country had kept on using the shaky bridge as a short cut to town by way of Bruce's Mills. One of them was driving up to the bridge now. Lying on his elbow by the river's edge, Chance idly watched the old bridge quiver and quake as the light horse and buggy dragged lazily across.
Suddenly something went kerflop into the water, like a big fish jumping. Chance sat bolt upright, staring at the dark shadows under the bridge. There it was again! And this time he saw it was no fish, but a second brick which had rotted away from the bridge supports underneath the farther end.
"Phew!" whistled Chance to himself, now fully aroused. "If a light rig like that shakes the bricks loose, the old thing must be rottener than it looks! What would a loaded wagon do, I wonder?"
He carefully climbed up under the bridge to see just how bad it really was, and then climbed out again in a hurry. The whole middle support had crumbled away. Red Bridge was barely hanging on the weakened brickwork at the far end, ready to plunge into the river with the next heavy load that came along!
Bruce, in the meanwhile, was getting impatient. He sat at his desk in the little office, signing papers as fast as he could shove his pen across the pages. He glanced again at his watch and gave his call button a savage punch with his big, blunt forefinger. A buzzer snarled in the outer office, and a nervous looking secretary jumped for the private office as suddenly as if the buzzer had stung him.
"Why isn't that car here?" snapped the great man.
"I—I don't understand it, sir. It should have been here half an hour ago. Jennings is always so punctual," stammered the clerk.
"Humph! Call up the house and see if they've gone back for any reason. Bonnie told me she'd call for me with the car at five o'clock."
The clerk hurried to the telephone, while Bruce paced his office. "If that chauffeur has let anything happen to Bonnie, I'll—"
If Bruce had not cared more for his little golden-haired daughter than for anything else in the world, he never would have thought such a thing, much less said it; for he had had Jennings for years, and knew him for the safest, steadiest of drivers. But he scowled when the clerk hurried back to report that Jennings, with Bonnie in the biggest automobile, had left for the office almost an hour before.
Throwing his light coat over his arm, the big mill owner slammed down his rolltop desk and dashed out to the sidewalk,straining his eyes for a glimpse of the big automobile and Bonnie's flying curls. As he stood waiting on the curb, fuming at the delay, suddenly he heard a voice that sent his heart up into his throat.
"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, here we are!" The big automobile swept swiftly up to him—from the opposite direction!
"My Bonnie!" The big man snatched the dimpled, smiling girl into his strong arms and held her there.
In the excitement of the moment, Jennings interrupted his employer as the mill owner started to question him sternly as to the cause of the delay. Bonnie, too, broke in with her version of the story, and together they told him how a punctured tire had held them up fifteen minutes just as they were leaving the house in plenty of time.
They told him how, to avoid being late at the office, Jennings had taken the old short cut across to the mills, by the way of Red Bridge, only to be halted by a lad of fourteen who waved a red handkerchief at them and barred the way across the bridge in spite of the chauffeur's argument and threats.
They told him how a heavy lumber wagon, in which three farm hands were rattling home from the city, had come bouncing along to the other side of the river and how the men had howled down the boy's wild warnings and entreaties as they bowled on to Red Bridge as fast as their horses could go.
Bruce's stern face went white as his little daughter, shuddering at the awful memory of it, told how the bridge had gone crashing down into the river—men, horses, and all; how the boy who had tried so hard to warn them had almost given his own life trying to drag the drunken farm hands from the swift-running current; how two of the men had never come up again; and how the third, towed to shore by the half-drowned boy a quarter mile below, had been laid face down on the river bank as soon as the boy could catch his own breath long enough to get the water out of the man's lungs and start him to breathing again.
Still clasping Bonnie tightly to him, her father got into the automobile. "Home, Jennings. Why, what makes these cushions so wet?"
"Oh," said Bonnie, "that's where that nice boy sat while we were taking the almost drowned man to the doctor's. Then we took the nice boy home—he was so wet and shivery."
"Take us there first, Jennings, then home."
The big car whirled swiftly back to Chance Carter's house. Bruce found Chance with his hair still wet, but triumphant. He was telling his father exactly how he wanted his new Safety Scout uniform made, patch pockets and all!
From him Bruce got the whole story, clear down to the scouting hints from Bob and Betty that had started him off that morning. The mill owner took Mr. Carter aside and made him promise to send the bill for that uniform toBruce's Mills. "Where do this other boy and the girl live?" he asked, as he and Bonnie got back into the machine. "All right, Jennings, we'll stop there next."
"I think, sir," suggested Jennings, "that must be the same boy and girl we took home from Turner Hall last Fourth—the boy who put the splint on this other lad's broken leg, sir. It's the same house, anyway."
Sure enough, when they drew up at the curb, there were Bob and Betty in their Safety Scout uniforms, just going in to their birthday supper. They were going to have a big double cake, with lots of frosting and with twenty-four green candles on it—green for Safety, Betty explained—and they were so excited over having passed their examinations with such high marks, that it was some time before the big man could make them understand what he was getting at.
"What I want to know," persisted Bruce, "is how you ever came to put that Carter boy up to such a stunt as that. What difference did it make toyou?"
"Why," Betty told him, "we simply had to help him get a start for his uniform and his Safety First button. But we couldn't do much because we didn't have time. You see this is our birthday, and we had to go for our examinations." Before Bruce left they had given himtheirwhole story, too, and a good deal more than they had intended telling him, forgetting what Colonel Sure Pop had told Uncle Jack about the way Bruce had been holding back the Safety First work from Maine to California.
Bruce said little as he listened to their story, but he did some quick thinking. So this was the sort of thing he had fought so long and so stubbornly—this "Boost for Safety" talk which he had called "new-fangled theory," but to which he owed the life of his own little girl!
As they talked, two Scouts came into the front hall to remind the twins that their birthday supper was waiting, but Bruce was too interested to see them. Quick at reading signs, as all good Scouts are, Colonel Sure Pop and Uncle Jack watched and listened for a moment, then smilingly went back to the supper table.
"You were right, Colonel, as usual," said Uncle Jack, heartily. "Bruce is coming around. He'll be the biggest Safety Booster in the whole United States before morning!"
"Sure pop!" exulted the dapper little Colonel. "I'll have to wire my King about this day's work!"
It was long after Bonnie's bedtime, and the nurse waiting in the hallway was beginning to wonder if her little mistress was never coming upstairs. On the avenue outside, in the soft, mellow Hallowe'en breeze, jack o' lanterns and soot bags were still being paraded up and down, horns blowing, rattles clattering. Two street urchins, bolder than the rest, crept up to the great iron gate in front of the Bruce mansion and vainly struggled to lift it off its hinges. Still the mill owner sat before the fire, Bonnie on his knee. He could not bear to let her go tonight, even to bed.
In the flames dancing on the hearth, the big man was seeing visions—visions of the Safety First work that would be started tomorrow morning in every mill in the whole Bruce chain. "I'll telegraph every manager to get busy on Safety work at once if he wants to hold his job," he thought to himself. "I won't lose another day!" For after hearing from the Dalton twins and from Chance Carter the waytheirspare time was spent, his own work in the world seemed suddenly very small and mean. Here he—Bruce the rich, Bruce the powerful, with the safety of thousands of lives in the hollow of his hand—had been holding back the great work which these striplings had been steadily, patiently—yes, and successfully—building up!
"I'll send those three youngsters each a copy of my telegram in the morning," he muttered, looking more eager and enthusiastic than he had looked for many a day. "I'll write across the bottom of each telegram, 'The Safety Scouts of America did this!' And the wonderful part of it is," he added, "that it's only what any boy and girl could do, every day of their lives. I wonder why somebody didn't start this Safety Scout idea long, long ago!"
Over in the Dalton cottage, only a few blocks away, Bob and Betty were going upstairs to bed.
"Many, many happy returns of the day!" whispered Betty to her brother as she kissed him good night.
"Same to you, and many of 'em! But our 'One Day'sBoost for Safety' didn't amount to much today, did it, Betty?" For Bob and Betty had yet to hear of Chance Carter's adventures, and Bruce had given them no hint.
"No, it didn't—not unless what we told Chance gave him a start toward a Safety Scout uniform," said Betty, sleepily. "Never mind, though, Bob," she added. "We'll try to do better tomorrow, if we didn't get much done today."
But over in the big stone house on the avenue, the silent man with the little golden-haired girl in his arms thought differently of their day's work.