Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/104

830 pushes the load off to the "mixing-houses."

At half-past six on the morning of the 24th of February, one week after the writer's visit to this house, it was the scene of a very disastrous explosion. Twenty-four hundred pounds of nitroglycerin was collected here, in the tanks and boxes mentioned, and from some cause which may never be known it exploded, killing six people—a chemist, a foreman, and four workmen. A few other employees were slightly hurt by flying debris. The sound was of course tremendous, and the effects of the explosion, which were very clear at Irvine, three and one-half miles away, are said to have been so strong in a town ten miles away that the gas-lamps were extinguished by the air concussion. A disaster such as this, whose suddenness is not its least painful characteristic, cannot of course be minimized in its tragic importance. At the same time, it serves as the best possible testimony to the value of the system of protection employed. That over a ton of nitroglycerin can explode in the heart of a factory where 1,300 people are at work, and only the six men, within a few feet of it, lose their lives, shows better than any other evidence the meaning and value of the Ardeer mounds.



You follow the box to a "mixing-house." This, in the case of dynamite, is a large wooden cabin, containing a long narrow table on each side. In it six girls are at work. The runner sets the open box of the mixture down in the doorway, A girl hoists it to a table, and flies at it with bare arms as if it contained only flour and water. She mixes it thoroughly. Then she takes a big wooden scoop, jabs it into the box, and dumps the scoopful into a raised box of the same size, with a brass sieve bottom. She then, as if the sieve bottom were a washing-board, rubs the dynamite with all her strength against the sieve, forcing it through the small holes. A few of the girls use a leather hand-flap to rub with, but most of them prefer their bare hands. You view the process with consternation. Hitherto you have looked upon dynamite as something to be regarded politely from a safe distance as if it were a rattle-snake. The girls handle it, however, as coolly as if it were the sand on the floor. Some of it is continually spilt, of course, and mixes with this sand, but the sand is all removed at short intervals and buried. One of the few fatal accidents in the history of Ardeer took place near this house. A cartridge hut wherein four girls were working exploded, killing the girls. Burning dust from this hut fell into the open boxes of dynamite in three other huts. The dynamite began to blaze, and the deadly smoke from it, which consists of hyponitric-acid fumes, immediately filled the huts. Two girls in each hut had the courage to jump over the blazing boxes, and escaped; but the others, six in number, were suffocated in a few minutes. Thus, ten persons lost