The log cabin Democrat., 1907-07-04
ONE GIANT CRACKER
TO CONTAIN 1s7,5Co POUNDS OF
 GUN POWDER.
This Is What It Would Be if All the
 Little Crackers of One Fourth
 Were Put Together m
 One Tube.

There are-to be eXact-13, ,048, 537 boys between the ages of four and 20 |ears in the United States who are go- hg to celebrate the Glorious Fourth. Ind this takes no account whatever V the old boys, between the ages of and S0 with a few verging on the dge of 90 for good measure. These oys are going to celebrate in the bod oldfashioned way with firecrack- Es and toy pistols and cannons and kyroekets and nigger-chasers. They re going to make lot of noise and good many boys are going to get ber fingers and thumbs blown off bd their faces filled with gunpowder bd their ears trimmed. But that besnt make any difference; they are bing to celebrate nevertheless. Now, lere is no use dragging out statistics show how many boys were killed Ed maimed and sent to the hospital ast Fourth of July. You will waste bur ink in writing down the figures d your breath in talking about them, lt you will not stop the small boy, br the big boy, nor the middle-aged by, nor the old boy from celebrating. your arguments will have no avail. Suppose all the firecrdckers that ll be fired off could be concentrated to one colossal firecracker and that the boys in the United States could assembled around it and that at tven moment it could be fired off, Hnding up the whole business of a purth-of-July celebration at one fell )pp. There would be one mighty k to the nerves of nervous old bmen and shaky old men. There puld be one big sizz and one big Ing that would be heard all the way pund the world, and then all would over; everybody would have cele- Pted; the same amount of money (uld have been spent and quiet and hce would be resumed. Now, let's how it can be figured out.
 First of all, one must ascertain how ny frecrackers there are in the (ited States. One of the largest Rlers says there are now 00,000,000 Crackers in this country waiting to exploded on the Fourth of July. other large dealer says this esti- te is too high and places the num- at 20,000,000. When one cOnsid- however, that there are more than pOO,000 boys in the country and that
 first estimate allows something
 than eight firecrackers for each A one must admit that the figures XSkerhaps, not so far out of the way.
 one of the chief aims of this ar e is conservatism, and. therefore, promise position will be taken and average of two estimates will be d. which places the number of fire clers at 60,0OO,000.
 ext, let us see how much gunpow-
 there is in these 60,000,00O ire ckers. The best authorities On this lect say that in the average fire cker there is one-twentieth of an nre Of gunpowder. This calculation ased on the number of 'lady-fire- ckers," which are the smallest, on to the big cannon crackers, inciud- the tremendous Hunt" and Num-
 IS, which contains two ounces Of osives. With this good start 1t IS Rpy a matter of mathematics to n that in all the firecrackers of the Yed States there are 3,O00,000
 es of gunpowder, which, of course,
 lS7,500 pounds. This has all easy. There is your firecracker,
 You have to do is to get your boys flher, apply the match to the fuse,
 second with bated breath and h.
 ut hold on! How about the dam.
 0r many years there have been
 aed discussions concerning the
 Of various grades of explosives.
 esner's call it potential energy.
 " uma ago two famous French
 -Roux and Sarrau-made se-
 ;" experiments to determine the
 ' extent of tke potential energy