Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1907-06-27
ONE GIANT CRACKER
TO CONTAIN 1s7,5oo POUNDS or
GUN POWDER.
This Is What 1t Would Be IL All the
Little Crackers of One Fourth
Were Put Together in
One Tube.

And this takes no account whatever
OF the old boys, between the ages of
20 and 80, with few verging on the
edge Of 80 for good measure. These
boys are going to celebrate in the
good old-fashioned way with firecrack-
ers and toy pistols and cannons and
skyrockets and nigger-chasers. They
are going to make lot of noise and
good many boys are going to get
their fingers and thumbs blown of
and their faces filled with gunpowder
and their ears trimmed But that
doesn't make any difference; they are
going to celebrate nevertheless. Now,
there il no use dragging out statistics
to show how many boys were killed
and manned and sent to the hospital
last Fourth of July. You will waste
your ink in writing down the figures
and your breath in talking about them,
but you will not stop the small boy,
nor the big boy, nor the middle-aged
boy, nor the old boy from celebrating.
All your arguments will have no
avail
will be fired off could be concentrated
into one colossal frecracker and that
all the boys in the United States could
DO assembled around it and that at
given moment it could be fired of,
winding up the whole business of
Fourth-of-July celebration at one fell
swoop. There would be one mighty
shock to the nerves of nervous old
women and shaky old men, There
would be one big sizz and one big
bang that would be heard all the way
around the world, and then all would
be over; everybody would have cele-
brated; the same amount of money
would have been spent and quiet and
peace would be resumed. Now, let's
see how it can be figured out.
First of all, one must ascertain how
many firecrackers there are in the
United States. One of the largest
dealers says there are now 100,00O,O00
f1recrackers in this country waiting to
be exploded on the Fourth of July
Another large dealer says this esti-
mate is too high and places the num-
Der at 20,00O000. When one consid-
ers, however, that there are more than
100000 boys in the country and that
the first estimate allows something
less than eight firecrackers for each
boy, one must admit that the figures
are, perhaps, not SO far out of the way.
But one of the chief aims of this ar
ticle is conservatism, and, therefore, a
compromise position will be taken and
the average of two estimates will be
used, which places the number of fire.
crackers at 60,000,000.
Next, let us see how much gunpow-
der there is in these 60,000,000 fire.
crackers. The best authorities on this
subject say that in the average fire
cracker there is one-twentieth of an
once Of gunpowder. This calculation
is based on the number of ''lady-fre-
crackers" which are the smallest, on
up to the big cannon crackers, includ-
ing the tremendous Hunt and Num-
Der 10, which contains two ounces of
explosives. With this good start it is
simply a matter of mathematics to
learn that in all the flrecrackers of the
United States there are 100000
ounces Of gunpowder, which, II course,
means 187, 500 pounds. This has all
been easy There is your frecracker.
All you have to do is to get your boys
together, apply the match to the fuse,
wait a second with bated breath and
then
But hold on! How about the dam,
age?
For many years there have been
learned discussions concerning the
force of various grades of explosives
The experts call it potential energy
Some time ago two famous French
men-Roux and Sarrau-made a Sc
ries of experiments to determine the
exact extent of the potential energy
of the most powerful explosives and
the results of these experiments have
become the standards of the best in
formed experts on this subject. II
was learned from these studies thai
the average potential energy Of gun
powder is 480 foot-tons to the pound
You will observe, therefore, that there
would be good deal of business
concentrated in gigantic firecrackel
containing 1877, 500 pounds of gunpow
der In this immense cracker there
would be stored 90,O0O,000 foot-tons O.
potential energy. Startling as are
these figures, to the layman they NEAR
little. Let us compare them to some
object with which we are familiar.
Take the Flatiron building in New
York, for instance. Its weight is so,
900 tons. Now, if there are 48O foot
tons of potential energy in each pount
of gunpowder, it would require 10.
pounds of gunpowder to blow up
building weighing $4,000 tons. Thi'
amount of gunpowder, is scientif1call!
applied, would do the job completed!
! and rae the big structure from base
ment to roof Such an explosive effor
as this, however, represents but |
small part Of the force in the suppose
tional king Of giant frecrackers, which
would contain on 1(() 200 foOt-tOns "a