When I had completed at my works, Maxim, New Jersey, a certain frame building of generous proportions, of which I was quite proud, and in which I had installed various processes and apparatus for making smokeless gunpowder, I told one of my assistants to have a gauge put on a large bell-drier that stood in a corner, which was employed for the time being to extract the moisture from about forty pounds of guncotton. He gave instructions to a machinist to do the job, telling him to remove the guncotton first.

As it was necessary for the machinist merely to bore a hole through the bell-drier and screw in the connecting pipe, he thought it a useless expenditure of time and effort to remove the guncotton. After he had bored the hole nearly through, he took a punch and hammer to knock out the remaining burr. A spark ignited the guncotton, and that bell-drier went right up through the roof and turned a somersault, striking about a hundred feet away. The walls of the building on the end where the explosion occurred were thrown outward, and the roof came down.

My assistant and another young man were in the building with the machinist at the time. Although dazed by the shock, they immediately rushed to the rescue of the poor fellow, who lay prostrate under a pile of burning dÉbris. Not much could be done for the unfortunate, and he died soon afterward.

This instance is a type of many that result from inadequate precaution by workmen in the manufacture of explosives.