From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.pyrotechnics,rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Dynamit Nobel
Date: 17 Dec 92 06:39:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec17.013939.18600
Expires: December 31, 1999
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal


	[Please adjust the distribution according to content.]

Dynamite was first made by Alfred Nobel in 1866; the patent was granted
the following year.  Twenty-three years later, writing in the aftermath
of the Haymarket explosion, the Chicago Police captain and self-styled
anarchist scourge extraordinaire, Michael J. Schaack, cites one Adolf
Houssaye, "the french litterateur", as saying:

	It should be remembered that nine-tenths, probably, of the
	dynamite made is used in peaceful pursuits; in mining, and
	similar works.  Indeed, since its invention great engineering
	achievements have been accomplished which would have been
	entirely impossible without it.  I do not see, then, much room
	for doubt that it has on the whole been a great blessing to
	humanity.  Such certainly its inventor regards it.  "If I did
	not look upon it as such," I heard him say recently, "I should
	close up all my manufactories and not make another ounce of the
	stuff."  He is a strong advocate of peace, and regards with the
	utmost horror the use of dynamite by assasins and political
	conspirators. When the news of the Haymarket tragedy in Chicago
	reached him, M. Nobel was in Paris, and I well remember his
	expressions of horror and detestation at the cowardly crime.
	"Look you," he exclaimed.  "I am a man of peace.  But when I see
	these miscreants misusing my invention, do you know how it makes
	me feel? It makes me feel like gathering the whole crowd of them
	into a storehouse full of dynamite and blowing them all up
	together!"

M. Nobel's peaceful sentiments are echoed, with a qualification, by the
author, writing as a representative of contemporary law enforcement:

	Dynamite, however, is the weapon with which the "revolution" has
	armed itself for its assault upon society. A terrible arm truly,
	but one difficult to handle, dangerous to hold, and certainly no
	stronger in their hands then in ours, if it should ever become
	necessary to use it in defense of law and order.

The rest of Schaack's tome, _Anarchy and Anarchists_ (Chicago, Illinois:
F.J. Schulte & Company, 1889), is a wonderful harangue in the same style
of unselfconscious, unintentionally funny bluster, so characteristic of
the period pillars of order.  (A good account of the historical
background is to be found in Paul Avrich's _The Haymarket Tragedy_,
Princeton: 1984.)  However, I have some ancillary questions arising from
my reading:

(i)	I cannot find any mention of Adolf (or Adolphe) Houssaye in the
period literature.  I want Schaack to be referring to the _directeur
litt\'eraire_ of _La Presse_, Ars\`ene Houssaye, a friend of Nerval, the
protagonist of Flaubert's Hussonnet (_L'Education sentimentale_), and
the first publisher of Baudelaire's prose poems.  Houssaye's collected
works do not contain the interview in question; nor do they contain any
other occasional journalism.  Are there any known homonyms of the
selfsame "french litterateur"?  Can anyone locate the source of the
quotation?

(ii)	For that matter, I can find no French or English-language
biography of Alfred Nobel.  Any alternative sources of early history of
dynamite, especially pertaining to the 1892 semantic shift of the French
term "dynamiteur" and its English cognates, will be greatly appreciated.

(iii)	Which specific explosives were used by the turn of the century
bomb-throwers?  Any pointers to general histories of terrorism?

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
Newsgroups: rec.pyrotechnics