The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-14
MAN BEHIND THE STICK.
MEANING THE STICK OF HIGH TX
 PLOSIYE.
Few Uninteresting Moments tn the Working Hours of Handlers of Dy- namtte and NitrosIyccTine-How the stuff is Handled.

hhnlte anu NttEOSiy A"'' NAAD l stun is Handled.
 It takes some nerve to toy with eter- nifty every day and go to work every morning with the thought that you may come home at night to your sorroWing family in a basket There are men In this city who face death six days out of seven, and think nothing of 1t, and 1t is a death of the most horrible kind. | These men handle the dynamite and ni- | troglycerine which are used in blasting rock in the different quarries, and they pay but little heed to a handful of the dim beyond in the shape Of stick of l high explosive done up in yellow wrap | ping paper.
 | These men are experts in their trade, and hold the position of foremen of the various gangs who do the drilling and | blasting in East Longmeadow and Will | braham They are young men mostly | the trade not being conducive to old age. They begin as assistant foremen and remain such until premature crash causes a vacancy. At first the fear of high explosives IS drilled into them until they regard the saWdust- lined boxes with horror. But in few months they become accustomed to their trade and handle the sticks of dy- namite as a boy handles big fire cracker. They claim that dynamite is not such terrible thing after all, un- less you eat it, and then it will give you d violent headache. Men have often l done this, and 1t makes them very i'll for short time. A new assistant fore man Is almost always broken in in this | manner
 l Dynamite is an uncertain quantity, | however, and acts differently at differ ent times. It burns without an eXplo- sion, and can even be dropped on the ground without going off, but this Is not q safe experiment. to try. Let stick be strolled with a piece of metal how | ever. and if the man who does 1t wishes | to communicate with his friends he will l have to use q long distance telephone. l Nitro-g -glycerine Is almost an unknown quantity and even the most hardened 1 quarryman handles 1t with the utmost care Anything will explode it, and 1 many men have been streWn over the l landscape through it's offices.
 A Wilbraham quarry gang Is an in teresting study in humanity, The fore man is usually an American Of more than average intelligence and courage, and the men under him are Italians. These latter men drill the holes in the rocks and make all ready for the blast, and then the foreman puts in the charge and fuse and lights it off The Italians fear the high explosive, yet they are extremely careless in hand ling it, and the death rate among them is correspondingly large.
 How the dynamite gets to this city Is a mystery and one that will not be di- vulged. The foremen say that when they want it they notify the people they work for and the next morning box of dynamite, or "jelly," as the nitrogela- tine is termed, Is found beside the tool box. It is against the law to carry such high explosives on trains, for dy- namite ranks 30 and jelly 90 per cent. Both come in what are termed sticks and weigh about one-half pound each.
 They are packed in boxes holding perhaps twenty sticks, each stick being carefully packed in loose saWdust. The sticks are about eight inches long and one inch in diameter, covered with vel low paper. The dynamite is yellow, and looks like q mixture of vasel!ne and sawdust, and the jelly looks like a thick vaseline. Before using dyna- mite 1t Is crumpled up in the hand into a powder, but the jelly Is quietly and gently unrolled and placed tenderly in the hole which 1t Is to blast. Of course the quantity used depends on the size of the rock to be blasted. and 1t Is ne- cessary to "tamp" or pack either down so that the full force of the explosion will not go out and up. When it is tamped the force will go down to great extent.
 In loading rock with dynamite vari- ous methods are used, but the most popular one is to put the explosive m to the hole quietly and then press 1t in even more gently with stick. When
 the hole has been almost filled the per cussion cap attached to thirty second fuse is nut in and then bit more dy-
 namite put in on top of it. The whole charge Is then covered tenderly with a
 lit tie sand and match touched to the
 fuse. While this Is being done, the ln-
 nocent sons of sunny Italy have been seeking the long grass and tall trees TOT
 safety. Each one yells "fre!" at the
 top of his lungs as he runs, and just
 before the blast goes off there is noth-
 ing to be seen but the fleeing foreman
 After the crash and when the shower o1
 rock has subsided to some extent the
 sorrowing foreman goes in search ot
 bis Italians. He finds them peacefully slumbering or talking In the woods and when told to go back to work each asks in a curious tone if the blast has gone off. It was heard in the three ad-
 joining counties a few minutes before
 It takes some hours to drill hole for
 blasting. and that is the sad part of
 the whole game After the blast there is nothing left of the hole and no exam nle of handiwork to hand down to pos terity.
 The local foremen are very careful ot their high explosives, yet strange things ara ant to banpen to the lit tie tin box in which the sticks are kept. This box Is placed carefully in the big tool box each night and the keys Of both boxes are placed deep in the pocket of the
 foreman during the night Wild ad-
 ventures often take place near the box
 es and one of the Wilbraham foremer
 toid of q narrow escape which a gang l .la,. l;,, had this spring The