The San Francisco call., 1898-05-01

glycerine He returned with all the knowledge obtainabIe upon the subject and $9000 and many months were spent in erecting a safe" building with the proper preVe tiOnS against premature explosion. The plant was transferred with the utmost care.
 Two hours later this new "safe" building went up in a premature" eX- plosion. And that's as much as one can believe in new safe" ideas to guard against powder explosions.
 Tn the San Lorenzo Canyon, where the powder mills are, the roofs of the houses gleamed in the warm sunlight like a milkmaid's tins set out to dry, for the buildings have been rebuilt or gaIZaniZed iron, neatly corrugated, and they nestle with deceptive security III the green eXpanSe of tree and shrub. Opposite, across the wooded space that interVened between us and the super intendent'S home, a gOlden-ha Dapy played among the flowers, the pret- tiest blossom of them all. Black smoke curled heavily upward like stupehed serpent from SnOkeStaclIs below, where the business of turning out Government supplies went on apace. Steam es- capped noisily here and there, and the smothered sound of many machines in action throbbed like heartbeats. A WagonlOad of madrOnO was creeping to it's destination near the charcoal house. 4 gang of WOrkmen on the hillside were blasting with dynamite the vast masses of blue granite imbedded there, for new machinery to facilitate the ex- ecutiOn of nations military orders makes solid foundations necessary, and every few moments shower of gravel and rubbish fell like, hailstones about us.
 
 A elk caste o+ all times the gravest of responsibilities and who just now has no time for sleep is w. c. Peyton, a native son, born in the Santa Cruz redwoods, and superintendent of the mills.
 MT. Peyton has a brother to aid him. Be it early dawn, high noon or mid night their watchful eyes are ever on the alert, their vigilance unceasing. From the most critical experiment to the least of the operations, they per SOnally conduct, guide and direct. and there is not a workman on the place whose duties they could not perform as we'll as he. Yet no men could be more at the mercy of their employees. The slightest inattention on the part of one of them, the careless handling of a hammer, the negligence in some minute particular that safe familiarity may have bred a contempt of, and their lives will have been horribly sacrificed. It is difficult to imagine that such pos abilities do not even find place in their thoughts; that men may be so en- grossed with the successful incorpora- tion of explosives as to think only of perfect chemical results. but such is in very truth the devotion of the Pey- tons to their perilous vocation.
 "Danger?" repeated the superinten- dent, in answer to a question. Why, there is practically no more danger here than in a fiourmill. The dust of flour, you know, is capable of causing a terrific explosion. In our business, cau- tion is the safeguard. Carelessness alone is responsible for the disasters that take place. I do not think more than thirteen men have been killed here in thirty years, a small proportion compared with those that meet death in railroad employ"
 Statistics may be reassuring, but facts are too stubborn for one to take much comfort from them. And the facts are that a slip of the hand, a fragment of metal where metal must not be, one little error of judgment, a seconds miscalculation, and this Val ley of the Shadow could have been wiped from the earths surface as eff fectually as a schoolboy would sponge a sum of arithmetic from his slate
 
 Drawn up in battle array with mouths toward the forest, into which they belch their thunder, were the rifed cannon, an eight-inch, six-inch and six