Back Aa

Careers of Danger and Daring

<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>II</h2> <h3>WE VISIT A DYNAMITE-FACTORY AND MEET A MAN WHO THINKS COURAGE IS AN ACCIDENT</h3> <div class='cap'>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!</div> 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 that terrible 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 (it comes 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, but did hold 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 it would explode. Concussion, he declared, is the thing that sets off dynamite. Another knew of experiments at the works where they had fired rifle-balls into 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." <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus81.jpg" width-obs="441" height-obs="600" alt=""EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES."" title="" /> "EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES."</div> 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! this blow up, or that little 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 here must breathe 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 occasion did do 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. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus82.jpg" width-obs="444" height-obs="600" alt=""HE WENT TO WORK THROWING WATER ON THE BURNING BOXES."" title="" /> "HE WENT TO WORK THROWING WATER ON THE BURNING BOXES."</div> 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 I know it." "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." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.