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Show 1 190o bv the New York Herald All ri'S,lts served. aVy drnuplit horses hitched to fr wacon walked slowly, done a woody lano that led liSono quarry ovcrhanR Jtlv'thcy were in no lmrry to btiv particular destination. In ttier stopped and rested fJvoA or Jo The load wna Cl just a few dry Roods boxes Vnoueh Job for all con. would seem: and yet "the ionjr.neckcd, thin-faced Swiss, y tipripht upon Ins sent, silent and pop-eyed, his Ihenintr automatically cvery Vacon settled an inch. Ho t rein also, and the perspira-led perspira-led steadily down from tho front of the quarry office tho iked over a stone and settled a slipht jar. ' Whoa! said hoarsely,, at the same tirno is ncals nidly and casting ed fflaaco in at tho office 5 the matter, Fritz?" laughed : Un' MitamI" aaid the tlv, as though arraid of his don't prefer dis job." He ispairingly to his horses. Shim and Chcrryl slow now! r tcvils! Ach, mem Gott the matter with him J" I i looked consequential. "Oh, thousand pounds of dyna-rhim," dyna-rhim," said he, loftily. ncr3l manager chuckled, out Fritz," said he. "He's jt load up several times a ;ht years, but he never gels ig like ho was sitting on . Well." bo added, serious-tiher serious-tiher havo him scared than i of Stirriu? Activity, tho deep, ragged quarry cone of noisy, stirring ac-am ac-am drills aro rat-a-tap-tap-i derricks swinging and onkey engines puffing back with strings of little flat are swamung all over the om, swinging heavy mawls nks of flinty rock, loading its. straining against great uck in fissures and under il boys run here and there 'nod drills; foremen bawl ihovo Hie din or clso stand otonously from tho bank. 10 end of the quarry stands slier building, half clouded heavy screens rolling and ; rotary crusher digesting at the rate of two tons a 1 the men in the quarry, are frantically engaged in ravenous steel maw, and r the quarry widens and I wholo trains of railway iway tho nut size product the bins, drcd men arc swinging cks and crowbars: but in rmation process that con-ttified con-ttified quarry into ballast e pebbles their combinod nothing compared with one papered cvlinder of soft, i packed in those boxes ibmuft?d as th0URh lhoy IK''3 dynamite, variously stvled ipowcr untamable," "a coiled IIKn81.?0'" "tko pink UKjOf. destruction," etc. It hasn't Hidjiig up powor of a little red as a destmctivo agent its IJV.13. incomprehensible. Measured WtID ,,c-c its vovrer was com-HtO com-HtO equalling sixteen and one-half ' B?,i10ac;ron'cr- UDfl its pressure as K inch usand Vouvds to a small JjKj; VaSaries of Dynamite, liflflf mMh is Hno"n about dynamite,. IKiT. it seems, its vagaries r 5 "own. or at least aro not so LlVaoini and observed that handling occupation. Hie5this to a "dynamiter," a E?Vimist?Rncd Italian who knelt jK,a r0? bcaninI ono arm high fK ! -lcks as though tbc3- wero so fiDdJmg wood. l dangerous?" said he. with a --g" a'f- "St vera mooch! Oh," WD carelossb'. "she aU right, CIS ",ta her right. Sure. So I" ho I J'WvJ aDj? looked down proudly at uiMEure-E0 I I treata her ferL but ccs 1 ara here! " aE? i "9- in a clcar letaG of UT.?wLnV f'1m Jr.,,ls had bored u series .iMfw-i01 varir depths, and mMi Tl2 ,r'l,rab,,il,e the moisture out ySwth onkiini. Tuto each hole AS A DESTRUCTIVE AGENT ITS MIGHT IS INOiE. " - then the "dynamiter" placed a brown stick of tho ''demon powdor." first inserting in-serting into the stick an exploding cap to which two copper wiros wero already attached. JSnch holo was then tilled with soft, dry dirt, tamped gently, and tho 'copper wires left protruding at the surface. sur-face. The drill holes wero then united by connecting thoso wires all except one from each end hole, which were united with long insulated wires leading to an electric battery in tho ledgo above, perhaps per-haps one hundred feet distant. Tho simple sim-ple act of pressing a button on this battery box completes tho current, sparks the caps and explodes each drill i ho'e at practically the same time Single holes, von' deep and hcavilv ' charged, were connected with more battery bat-tery boxes, and further away another dynamite gang was busy over big rocks shakon free by a previous explosion. On the t op of each rock a part of a slick of dynamite was laid and plastorod down with mud, single powder fuses being used here instead of iho continuous electric wires. Getting Heady. Now the evening whistlo blows. Tho ''tapping" drills ccaso in unison, derrick der-rick booms fall for tho night, tho roaring roar-ing crusher stops slowly, and men aro slipping on coats, snatching dinner pails and hurrying over tho embankment. Onlv tho dynamito gang remains, and the tawny mustached Italian ia in all his boastful glory. "Hoi-oi-oi! " he shonts, pounding his bulging chest. ' ' Geta-rcady 1 Hoi-oi-oi 1 ' ' A dozen helpers scamper back, somo under thick trees with shoulders crouched fearfully, somo in tho open with faces upturned anxiously to tho sky, othors to tho battory boxes, at a signal from their chief. ll Ready! ho veils. "One" At almost, tho same moment ho touches tho button an outer ledgo leaps up outward und bursts and 6plintcrs into groat cracks and littlo spawls. "Two a-three a-fourl " "Pop, bing, bangl crash." The air is filled with dust and sailing stones, and tho detonations rattlo and echo back and forth from mountain sido to Kn.l. n.l.iln il.n r.-4 1, J 1.1 ... beneath your feet. Ono big rock, -weighing several tons, is still caroouing when the air has cleared, rolling as though an .invisible giant were behind it. "Vera good," s.'iid tho dynamiter pompousb", eighteen pounds dida all that!" And then I thought of Fritz and his thousand pounds. ""Well, it's funny sLuA"," paid the general manager after tho gang loft. "I'll show you." Picking up a stick of dynamite, he led tho wav to a ledgo whero the quarry floor was deepest beneath us. "With his kuife he cut. tho stick in two and hurled :i half of it down upon tho rocks 200 feet below. There was no explosion. Wo saw the stick, break into pink dust. "You sec!" said he. "you could drop a 500-pound chunk of iron on fifty pounds of that dynamite and it wouldn't explode. It takes a sharp detonation to do it a cap. Well, naturally, that would do it. It's fulminato of mercury and has an cxplosivo prcssnro of over 300 tons to tho squnro inch. A red snark, too, will do the work. A whito spnrk won 't. they say. "Now you see Ihc safo sido of it. There's another side. "You taw mo cut that stick in two. Well, I know of a dynamito agent an old. experienced man who was blown into shreds doing tho saino thing." "Then why did von?" " Well, t ho stick I cut was fresh. Tho makers guarantee it ho. Wc out 'om up hero overy day. But. tho stick -lini Martin cut had been frozen. He didn't know that, "Fully eighty per cent of the accidents acci-dents aro duo to frozon dynamite. You see, when the stuff freczos and I've yot to see a kind that, won't freeze Lho nitro-glycerino collects in streaks nnd lumps. When you thaw out tho stick tho nitro doesn't rcditl'uso, and if your knifo cut into a fat streak away i'ou go ! "Wo hayo a rule hero novcr to cut. i frozou stick. For thawing wo uso a loublo compartment tin pail with boiling boil-ing water for boat, nnd wo'vo yot to lavo au accident from that cause. "Funny thing happened this fall, though. Ono of the old thawing pails tvas thrown down, linro by some fool ivorkmau... it .rolled agauisL a pilo oi ! tics aud might be there today had wc not run a sidetrack along there. One day a gang was unloading rails from a flat car. Tho first one struck this pail, and the next second tho air was full of flying ties and splinters. "Yoii sec. a good deal of nitro had lo-l-ori m.t 0f uin dynamite wliilo it. was thawing and had gradually lodged ju uiu ciuvui-M of tho pail. Explosive Water. "Out west in a mining camp thev tell of a miner who thawed out some sticks in a pan of water and left the pan standing in the cabin. His partner enmo in just in time to see tiie dog stealing some meat, picked up the pnn of water, hurled it at tho don-, mirl w.-m astonished to sco tho animal disappear I with a loud explosion. Thcro was nitro in tho water. i "They wero terribly careless, those miners, and evory now and then tho I landscapo was minus a cabin. Why, J I'vo seen them plaeo sticks of dynamito dyna-mito on tho front of the stove, within fivo inches of red-hot embers, while they cooked breakfast. Mobbo thev would just catch firo aud burn, but sometimes they exploded. "That's another curious thing about. , So,, , Tho "Higcr dumped out a handful of tho pink powder and applied ap-plied a match to it. It burned slowly with a bluish flume. "Out west." ho explained, "we mado rough assays of THE DYNAM5TE WORKER I .BY WILLIAM ALLEN JOHNSTON ! I lead rock by pulverizing a samplo, mixing mix-ing it with dynamite in tho form of a cono and touching it off. "So that makes it seom harmless, too. But if you did that with frozen dynamito you'd havo a different story to tc 1 or, rather, you wouldn't bo loft to tell a story. "Out thcro they had a habit of biting Uicir caps on to tho fuao. That's bad. Ono day in a tunnel I heard a sharp crack, and then, outlined in tho mouth of tho tunnel, stood a owaving, headless head-less man. Hero at tho quarrv last vear an inquisitivo tool boy struck ono with a hammer. ITe's that ono-armod boy working a forge in tho blncksmilh shop. Did you notice him?" Blown to Atoms. The bulk of tho dynamito used in this quarry is stored in a dirt cellar houHO back in the woods, and is under tho solo guardianship of Red Joo, tho Italian. or convemeuco sake a smaller quantity, quan-tity, perhaps ono hundred pounds, i3 kept m a shanty near tho ledge. Ono night this exploded, no ono knows how or why. Isoxt morning tho shanty was gone and tho spot whoro it had stood was covered with pine bushes torn up by tho roots in a more or les3 oxact cir-cumfcrcnco cir-cumfcrcnco and piled up neatly in the center of a circlo whoro tho shanty was. Lvoxy window' in tho oflico was broken, and the glass on the sido toward the explosion was blown outward. Papers trom within wero also swopt out toward the shanty, quite a distance ' Theso strange phonomena wero duo to tho fact that exploded dynamito creates cre-ates a vacuum all about it. and its surrounding sur-rounding destructive force is created by inrushing air. The exact extent of this circular vacuum va-cuum for a given amount of dynamito was shown ono timo by a slrango and doplorablo accident involving four j workmen. 1 One-man, working over tho dynamite when 'it exploded, disappeared altogether. altogeth-er. Tho bodies of two other men, working fifty and one hundred feet aw.iy, were swept in with the debris, one terribly shattered, the other strip-pod strip-pod of all his clothing, but still alivo. Tho fourth man, about one hundred and fifty feet away, was seon walking off in a dazed, aimless way and climbing a I ' I fence. Uo was .inst beyond tho cir- cumferenco of tho death circle. 3 - Tho complete disappearance of a body directly in contact with exploding ' , iH dynamito is not duo, it is now thought, . to its utter disruption, but rather to v tho terrific heat which is suddenly and briefly generated. It is difficult almost lH to imagino tho degrco of that heat. . Generates Terrific Heat. . jH A copper ccut placed under an ex- IH ploding stick of dynamito disappeared i so completely that a cbomical analysis , 'H of thQ snrfaco of tho steel block upon ! which it rested failed to give a trace . ' of it. Evidontly then it was resolved ' by heat into its elements, which in turn V were passed off in a cuscoua state. J As wo talked Bed. .Too came along, ). IH wangling tho keys of tho dynamito IH houso against his dinner pail and ca- . rolling a merry song. "Gooda nightl" ho called. v "Nervy man." I ventured. "Well, yes and no." said the man- Z agcr, serionslj'. "I'll tell you some queer things about him. Last year, 1 when wo wore having strike troubles T with new men, Joe slept in tho dyna- mite house at his ownsuggestion, too H almost a month, Slopt right over a ;'. Il ton of dyaumifn in dangerous times IH really slept, too' ll 'And yet you couldn't got .Too to climb to the top of that tall mast over thoro. He's afraid to; says bo. And last winter ho was tho one man scared , IH to walk across tho ico of tho rivor on ; his way home. "No, he's just a dynamiter. He's very careful. He goes through his du- i tics just as a boy recites a well rnomo-rized rnomo-rized lesson,, correctlj-, but not think- ing deeply about it. And then he's pround of his job. Over in 'Littlo -Italy,' across the river, ho sports a vol- : vet vest on Sundays and is called i well, what's tho Italian namo for Jo- seph Dynamite' "And then, of course," concluded tho ' manager, with a wry smile, "he's got to i earn a living, like the rest of us." ! And the truth of this phase of life i' was brought home to me as I recalled a dynamito plant explosion in New Jcr- IH soy somo years ago. Threo men were IH bloTi to bits, but the next morning ? IH thcro wore twenty applicants in lino'for the wine places! |