Careers of Danger and Daring

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 tendency to 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, he is marked for sacrifice, his tigers will rend him, the deep waters will overwhelm him, a swift fall will crush him – he will surely die.

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 will only 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, he was in 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 fire will bring explosion.

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 turn to 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.

II

WE VISIT A DYNAMITE-FACTORY AND MEET A MAN WHO THINKS COURAGE IS AN ACCIDENT

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 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."

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.

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."

III

HOW JOSHUA PLUMSTEAD STUCK TO HIS NITROGLYCERIN-VAT IN AN EXPLOSION AND SAVED THE WORKS

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. He looked 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 is how 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."