The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1922-03-23


They decided that safe must be
built that could not be drilled, and
worked years to develop that idea.
Finally, their efforts were crowned
with success. The automatic time
lock steel safe, built very compactly,
with seven closely fitting sheets of
steel in the door, and an extra steel
chest for money behind the door, was
the product of their labor.
The safe burglar was stopped. A
drill applied to this safe simply
twisted and sung without leaving the
slightest impression. The burglar
was up against it, at last.
News of this kind spreads like wild
fire, and it was not long before the
old iron drillable safe became a
dead issue. The bankers and mer-
chants of the country lost no time
getting the new automatic time lock
safes.
After the cracksmen had made
dozens of unsuccessful attempts to
blow the new safes open, the conf
dence of the owners and safe makers
increased by leaps and bounds. A
(, victory sustained after battle Of
] thirty years causes thrills of joy and
enthusiasm.
OF course, the safe and bank burg
lars realized that they were strictly
no against it. CONSERVATION and
pessimism predominated among these
aristocrats of the Underworld. For
thirty years they had slipped the wine
of victory; now, the gall of defeat
was theirs, and their only field was
the few remaining old iron safes that
could be drilled and blown open with
powder. And these old safes seldom
contained much money. With every
robbery their opportunities for live
lhood diminished. The automatic
time-locker was everywhere Banks,
stores, railroad and express offices,
every wide-awake merchant, used the
time-locker. The safe makers capi-
tafized the Inability of the safe bur-
glar to open their latest invention by
flooding the country with advertising
literature, pointing out that the bur-
glars had tried and failed to open
them.
Finally some Of the safe burglars,
believing the time-lock safes to be
unbeatable, deserted the knights of
the cracksmen'~ for other forms of
criminality. Some went in for train
robbing: others became sneak
thieves. Those who remained cracks
men, realizing the futility of powder
!. and drills, began to devote their at
tention to dynamite. Dynamite was
tremendously more powerful than
powder, but it had this drawback:
like powder it had to be confined be-
fore it would produce results, and
to confine it required space. Space
meant drilling, and as this was. i'm
possible, with the new safes, why,
dynamite was, to the cracksman, but
powder under another name.
There was one more explosive
with which to experiment, and that
was Soup -nitro-glycerine: But
where was it to be got. No safe
burglar could buy it without ques-
ton, as he did gunpowder 1t was
not used in the quarries; therefore
it could not be stolen.
How was it made? None of the
cracksmen knew anything about it.
! But they had the brains to know that
the manufacture of explosives came
under the science Of chemistry. They
bought books on chemistry and
learned that nitro-glycerine was
mixture of glycerine, nitric acid sui
phuric acids. They also ascertained
that dynamite was merely nitro
glycerine mixed with certain ingre-
dents to assimilate the liquid.
Then they directed their thoughts
to the problem of extracting the
nitro-glycerine from the sticks of
dynamite, precarious undertaking.
Two of the first cracksmen who tried
were blown to pieces, and third
man of the party had his right arm
blown off.
One might readily conclude that
these fatalities would deter other
safe burglars from experimenting
with such dangerous explosive, but
they didn't. Fear was not in their
vocabulary. They were determined
to outwit the safe maker and con-
quer the time-locker.
I vividly recall the terrible catas-
trophe that attended the last unsuc-
cessful experimental extracting pro-
eaSs Eddie Howard George B1ake