Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1907-07-03
ONE GIANT CRACKER
TO CONTAIN 1877, 500 POUNDS OF
GUN POWDER.
This lsvNhat II Would Be if All the
Little Crackers of One Fourth
Were Put Together liza
One Tube.

years in the United States who are 60
ing to celebrate the Glorious Fourth
And this takes no account whatever
C0f the old boys, between the ages Of
20 land co. with few verging ON the
ledge sof 80 for good measure. These
boys ARE going to celebrate ia the
good lOld-fashioned way with firecrack-
GERS and toy pistols and cannons ard
sskXrockets and nigger-chasers. They
ARE going to make lot of noise and
a good many boys are going to get
their fingers and thumbs blown off
and their faces filed with gunpowder
and their ears trimmed. But that
doesn't make any difference; they are
going to celebrate nevertheless. Now,
there is 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 fgureF
and your breath in talking about them,
but you will not stop the small boy,
nor the big : boy, nor The middle-aged
hoy, nor the old boy from celebrating.
All your arguments will have no
avail.
Suppose ali the firecrackers that
will be fired of could be concentrated
into one colossal firecracker and that
all the boys in. the United States could
be assembled around it and that at a
given moment 1t could be fired off,.
winding up the whole business of a
FouFth-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 f1recrackers there are in the
United States. One OF the largest
dealers says there are now 100, 900, 900
frecrackers 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 20,000,000. When one consid-
ers, however, that there are more than
13,000,0 900 boys in the country and that
the first estimate allows something
less than eight f1recrackers 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,
compromise position will be taken and
the average of two estimates will be
used, which places the number of fire
crackers at 60,O00,OOO.
Next, let us see how much gunpow-
der there is in these 60,000,0OO 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-fire-
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 firecrackers of the
United States there are 100000
ounces of gunpowder, which, of course
means $500 pounds. This has all
been easy. There is your firecracker.
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. 1t
was learned from these studies that
the average potential energy of gun
powder is $50 foot-tons to the pound
You VIII ODSCING, JuGlSlOIG, that IUcfG
would be a good deal Of business"
concentrated in a gigantic firecraclker
containing 1S7,500 pounds of gunpow-
der In this immense cracker there
would be stored 9O,OOO,OOO foot-tons of
potential energy. Startling as are
these figures, to the layman they mean
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 90,
GOO tons. Now, if there are 480 foot
tons of potential energy in each pound
of gunpowder, it would require 104
pounds Of gunpOwder to blow up a
building weighing $4,000 tons. This
amount of gunpowder, is scientifically
applied would do the job completely
and rae the big structure from base
ment to roof. Such an explosive effort
IS this, however, represents but
small ra"F of tho foTpn in tho cuupOcf-