Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial., 1918-12-10

the estimates of military observers ON the
ground, we do not think it was over so
tons n day. II may have been so tons a
day, but certainly no more.
'It was last October before the Amcri-
can Government decided to manufacture
posion gas on scale commensurate with
the rest Of our military preparations. 1t
was November when ground was broken
here, so that what you see is the work Of
less than a twelvemonth."
PLANT cosr S6O,oo0,0oo.
What | saw was a city of brick kilns,
high chimncys, correlated vats IN in
Vulnerable series, repeated shot towers,
miles Of railway, miles Of elevated pipe
lines, machinery OF the finest type and the
most psrfect installation, housed in con-
crete and sheet iron, built apparently for
permanence 1t was all only few miles
from Gunpowder Creek, where were
concrete piers built in the midst of the
once fine duck hunting preserves. Gun
powder Greek runs into Chesapeake Bay,
so that vessels loaded with the gases
direct from the factory, sailed to Havre
without a stop. The governments in
vestment here rs $50, 900, 900. Elsewhere
there has been spent, at various subsidiary
plants, about Sl2, ,000 600. Thus all told
the United States has spent about S72,-
OO0, 900 in the manufacture of toxic gases,
practically none OF which have any COM
mercial value The hssic elements arc
salt, sulphur, and alcohol, which, broken
INTO component parts and chemically re-
united, in. some cases by means Of heat, IN
others by means of cold, again by force of
gravity, are caused to form the mustard
gas, the phosgene and the phosphorus, the
chlorine, DC, which have been found
efficacious in warfare. For the cold pro-
cesses, vast refrjgerators were built.
These cover acres. Hall mile away were
enormous boilers and hot rooms for fus-
ing Then curious towers Of spindle steel,
looking like miniature Eiffel Towers,
scattered about the grounds, support pipes
down which, in a different process, are
dropped two chemical elements which thus
are forced to fuse By gravity.
Chiefly impressive, once one became
accustomed TO the thought that all this
ingenious, costly mechanism was built TO
generate poison for the sole purpose Of
horribly manning and frightfully killing
WIS the orderliness, the immensity, and
the stability Of the plant The Bethlehem
steel mills or the Bridgeport rife works
are no better built.
OK TEAM STAMPED WORKERS
Zone day last summer an incident oc-
CURED that will illustrate what we went
through. The dust was very deep on the
roads, and along one of them came a
heavy OK team, which kicked up an
enormous cloud Of dust. Some carpenters
working a piece off in the woods saw it,
and some one started the cry, a poison
tank has burst That was enough
Those carpenters started beating it for
the railroad, two miles away, and as they
ran, they fast picked up company. BY
the time they reached the tracks there
were 1000 or 1900 laborers in a panic
stricken flight. The block signaler On the
railroad saw them coming, set all his
blocks, and ran. For three hours that
afternoon, the entire Pennsylvania sys-
TEN was tied up. ia bunkhouse, eight
Negroes were sleeping 1. being a bot
summer afternoon, they were devoid of
clothing They heard the false alarm as the
van of the flying crowd passed, leaped
from their hunks, and ran, naked, down
the tracks. reached an empty box car
bound for Philadelphia, and which had
iugt escaped the block set, ntered it, and
were seen no more From that day to this