Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-10-11

The millions of dollars cash and securities
| that will be stored in such q vault would be
the first object of attack from mob. But
when mob can hold possession of this city
long enough to enable anybody to crack
| that steel vault the city is gone-there
won't be anything else left worth having. %
| Five hundred men. running lathes, and
cutting steel and pounding plates Of iron
and goading emery wheels to red-hot anger
and guiding powerful planning machines and
other machinery can make a great deal OF
noise. And this noise began loudest at the
bottom and tapered off to cabinet workers
and painters at the top of the building. One
floor is set aside for fre-proof safes in stock,
another for burglar-proof; other floors for
the construction of each. Then there is the
combined burglar and fre-proof
BURGLAR AND FIRE-PRooF.
"a great many people confuse the one
with the other" continued Mr.. Pownal
ga fre-proof safe is nothing like burglar
proof The former is nothing but light
shell like this" and he took me, to the hol-
low castings that were being filled with
combination of asbestos, plaster OF paris and
alum. ''The lighter this iron shell is made
consistent with strength to hold together
when it tumbles o the cellar of burning
IL
not retain the heat But a burglars drill
will sink right through that door, and
little powder and a fuse and all is over. Be-
fore the modern tongue and groove edgings
and air cushions and when the oldAfashioned
beveled edges prevailed even a drill wasn't
necessary.
"Still, the fire-proof safe is not a burglar
proof. Nearly all Of the safe burglaries
you read about are cases of opening fire.
proof safes. A merely burglar-proof safe
would not resist fire successfully. 1t takes
a month to put the bolt work on burglar
proof and the bolt work on the freproof
can be done in less than day. The best
safes, of course, are the combination,
burglar and freproof, and these are now
generally used by small banks and other es-
tablishments where safety from burglars Is
just as important as safety from fires"
A NOVELTY FOR THE HOTELS.
One of the novelties I noted is sort of
combination hotel office safe and depository.
It is about two feet deep and as high as a
wardrobe. The greater portion of the in
terror is divided into small iron compart-
ments the same as in the vaults Of safe
deposit company's vault, and the idea is to
permit guest to hold the key to his own
strong box. Instead of passing over his
money and diamonds to the hotel clerk to be
chucked into a safe that stands open half
the time. the guest gets Sprivate box and a
KEY. To this lock the clerk holds what is
called the "master key" with which the
lock is set so the holder of the other key
can open it. The clerk can't open the box
at all, nor can the guest, except with the
assistance of the master key.
This safe and miniature deposit company
arrangement is constructed for the new Hol-
land House on Fifth avenue. There are tiers
Of the regular vault boxes of highly pol
ished steel on one foor-enough for city
postoffice-being finished for various trust
companies. You can get box in one of these
outfits just about big enough to hold a
couple of deeds and a marriage certificate
without any coupons on it, or big enough to
hold set of books.
There are 900 completed safes stored on
the top floor of this building. They come
up by elevator, in the row, so to speak, and
here receive the interior cabinet work and
that artistic stripe and landscape finish that
is apparently necessary to the safety Of the
modern safe One man does a certain line
of work only and the payroll of the paint
ers alone runs from $500 to $500 per week.
On the Office floor are lots more safes, and
on the ground floor some two or three dozen
more packed for shipment. They run all
the way from a little fre-proof at $50 to
combination eight-ton burgular-proof bank
safe at So, 900.
CHARLES THEODORE MURRAY.