Dyn-o-mite! (Long Article)
German:
Your recollection made me remember a yellowed unattributed clipping in my files about the powder works. I can only tell you the article dates to 1890. I hope you enjoy the read:
How Dynamite is Made
A Visit to the Factories in Southern New-Jersey.
In the pine woods of Southern New-Jersey, far from any human habitation, there are several dynamite factories. Harmless-looking places they are, with scattered frame buildings mostly one-story high, seldom more than one or two visible from any one point of view; showing few, if any, signs of industry, save a streak of smoke rising over the pine tops or a fleecy tuft of steam; with no sound to break the monotonous and somewhat mournful soughing of the wind through the pines, except, at long intervals, the dull rumble of a mill or the low consumptive coughing of a high-pressure engine, or, perhaps, a snatch of song that seems to come from nowhere in particular, but, on the contrary, “sometimes murmurs overhead and sometimes under ground.”
No sounding of wheels, no thunder of machinery. No energy more obtrusive than the vegetative energy of nature as exhibited in stunted pines and shrub oaks, with huckleberry and bay bushes growing plentifully between. No suggestion of the tremendous forces compounded and concentrated under or two squat roofs barely visible through the encompassing verdure. Not a hint to the casual observer that death and destruction lurk side by side so close at hand.
Eight years ago the Volney Chemical Company established one of these factories near Toms River. Three years of experiments sufficed to wind the company up. Several lives and about $40,000 paid for those experiments. In 1885 it was leased by the United States Dynamite Company of New York, which afterwards purchased it and has been operating it ever since. All of the buildings, and there are from fifteen to twenty of them, are with two hundred yards of the Toms River branch of the New Jersey Central Railroad, but not one passenger in a hundred would ever notice more than one beside the rude station house. That one is a neat two-story cottage with a bit of a flower garden in front of it. The luxuriance of the dahlias and carnations is in strong contrast with the apparent sterility of the soil, and these, catching the eye of the passenger as the train rushes by, move him to wonder why anybody should have chosen so lonely and desolate a spot for a habitation.
The building behind the flower garden is the office of the factory. Its only tenant by day is the Superintendent, Mr. Yates, and by night a solitary watchman. Sometimes a fellow-workman remains over night to keep the watchman company, but otherwise he is all alone in the silent wilderness, for nobody lives there. The surroundings are not homelike, and in a thunderstorm they are uncomfortable.
Up to last April there was another building within a hundred feet of this. Now its site is marked by half a dozen low brick pillars and a mass of charred embers. It was a storehouse for gun cotton used in the manufacture of dynamite. One night in April in the coarse of a thunderstorm the building was struck by lightning. One side of the roof was found some distance away next morning. Eight hundred pounds of gun cotton went off at the touch of the thunderbolt, and what was left of the building was burned up. What will seem strange to the average reader is that at least 800 pounds more of the gun cotton stored in the building neither burned nor exploded. It was wet and packed in barrels. When wet it will not burn or explode. The section of roof that was found is now propped up on poles alongside the site of the burned building, and beneath are several broad shallow iron pans containing gun cotton spread out to dry. It looks like soiled cotton waste with a slight yellowish hue. Gun cotton is cotton weast steeped in strong nitric acid or a compound of nitric and suphuric acid. After being steeped it is ground to pieces between rollers in a trough filled with water. The water Is employed for the double purpose of washing out the free acid and preventing the cotton from heating in the grinding. Gun cotton is a highly explosive compound, and peculiarly liable to explosion by heat. If not carefully prepared it is also liable to explosion by action of light.
A reporter who visited this factory one day last week was very courteously shown around by Superintendent Yates. Mr. Yates is an Englishman, about fifty years old, who has spent his life since boyhood in the manufacture of dynamite. Dynamite is a compound of nitro-glycerine and cellulose, and is sent to market in various forms, in sticks that somewhat resemble hard molasses candy in appearance, in a black lusterless powder put up in cartridges, and in a brownish powder similarly put up. Nitric and sulphuric acid are mixed with glycerine to produce nitro-glycerine, and nitro-glycerine is mixed with cellulose, treated with nitrate of soda to produce dynamite. Cellulose, it may be mentioned, is a general name for a variety of substances containing a large proportion of carbon, as cotton waste, charcoal, peat-moss, and sawdust.
It was mentioned at the outset that the buildings in which the various processes are carried out are all detached. They are placed at considerable distances in some instances several hundred feet from each other. This arrangement is adopted to reduce the risk to a minimum, so that if an explosion occurs in one building the others will be affected as little as possible by it. The buildings in which the most dangerous processes, those of mixing the nitro-glycerine and cellulose together, are carried on are built in excavations so that only the roofs are visible above the surface of the ground, and the earth is clared away for several feet on all sides. In describing the buildings and processes carried on it them it will be convenient to follow in main the order in which they were shown to the reporter by Superintendent Yates.
The engine house contains a stationary engine of eight to ten horse power, two boilers, a tank for preparing the solution of soda which is used in the preparation of gun-cotton, and a mill for grinding nitrate of soda. One of the boilers supplies steam to the engine, the other to the pans in which the nitro-glycerine is mixed with the cellulose, (which is in a house about 100 yards distant,) and hot water to the tank above referred to. In front of the engine house and without any shed over it is the trough mill in which the gun cotton is ground. Over a succession of elevated pulleys a wire cable runs from the engine house to a building more than 100 feet distant, where the nitro-glycerine is made. This pulley turns the mixer in which the acids and glycerine are compounded. At a short distance from the western gable of the engine house is a small building containing a furnace and broad iron pans in which the nitrate of soda is dried. The drying is necessary to take the moisture out of it, as in its ordinary condition it contains a large percentage of water. When dried it is pulverized to a fine powder in the mill before spoken of and is then ready for mixing with the cellulose.
The house, a mere shed in which the nitro-glycerine is made, contains two cylindrical wooden tanks shaped like cisterns, a smaller placed above a larger one, and still higher than the upper tank is a cylindrical metal tank. The latter, which holds the acids, is entirely closed, while the others are open at the top. The smaller wooden tank contains a coil of pipe resembling in appearance a small copper still through which steam is passed to keep the glycerine in a liquid state. The tank is filled with glycerine, the acids are poured in, a mixer which works in the tank is revolved, and the nitro-glycerine is made. When the missing is done the compound is drawn off into the larger tank, which contains a large quantity of water. The nitro-glycerine sinks to the bottom of the water, cooling and loosing its free acid as it does so. At the proper time it is drawn off and carried to another house and kept under water in covered pans ready for mixing.
Up to the making of the nitro-glycerine the process is not particularly dangerous. The danger lies in the subsequent steps. There are several houses in which these are carried on—where the nitro-glycerine is mixed with the different forms of cellulose for the production of the different kinds of dynamite. All of these are rough, one-story buildings, built partly below the surface of the ground, as before described. Not more than two men work in any one of these houses, for should an explosion occur the fate of every man in the building is sealed. The most interesting of the final steps is the mixing of the nitro-glycerine with gun-cotton to make the gelatinous form of dynamite. The process requires great care. The cans in which the components are mixed are surrounded by steam pipes and the mass must be kept within a narrow range of temperature all the while. The nitro-glycerine, also, is kept under a certain amount of water. The exact figures of temperatures, as well as the proportions of nitro-glycerine and cellulose mixed together, are among the secrets of the trade, especially the latter, on which the efficiency of the dynamite is supposed to depend and which varies, therefore, with different factories.
If the temperature is allowed to rise too high or the water, or the nitro-glycerine fall too low, the mass with explode. Mr. Yates says, however, that with due care the work can be carried on in perfect safety. Nevertheless, three times in the history of this factory this particular house has been blown up, and on each occasion, two men have been killed and their bodies scattered to the winds. The latest explosion occurred last December. There was a horse race of local interest fixed for that day, and the two men working in the house had asked permission to go to it. Permission was granted on condition of their finishing the work in hand. One of the men was afterward said to have remarked to one of his fellow workmen that he would go to the horse race or blow the roof off of the building. It is supposed that in their haste they neglected the proper precautions, for at 9 o’clock in the morning the roof went “off” and then men went with it.
After combination with nitro-glycerine the gun cotton disappears and the mass assumes an appearance closely resembling apple jelly, and, says Mr. Yates, “You can almost eat it.” The effect of handling this substance is peculiar. According to Mr. Yates it produces violent headache and in some instances distressing nausea, which lasts for hours. Only after the men become inured to it can they handle it without suffering. Some persons seem to be more susceptible to its effects than others, for not long ago a visitor to the factory was attacked with active vomiting after going the rounds and remained ill for more than a day. Nevertheless, the men who have become accustomed to it seem to enjoy excellent health.
For use dynamite is generally put up in cartridges varying from 8 to 10 inches in length and from 1¼ to 1½ inches in thickness. The cases are made of paper, first rolled on tin cylinders to insure uniformity of size, then pasted, and subsequently dipped in paraffine to protect their contents from moisture. The cases are made by women in a house far removed from the other buildings, and are dipped in another containing a furnace and pans for melting the paraffine. When the paraffine is dry the cases are taken to the packing house, where they are filled. In this house six to seven men are employed, five or six in filling the cartridges in boxes. The cases are filled from tin funnels set in frames arranged along a bench against the wall. The dynamite, except the gelatin variety, is in the form of a powder, and is placed in tubs alongside the workmen. It is shoveled into the funnels by tin scoops, and then packed in the cartridges by pounding down the neck of the funnel with a stout stick about two feet long with a heavy cap of lead on its upper end. The gelatinous form is simply poured into the cases and allowed to harden, becoming eventually as hard as a stick of glue.
To the average read who has heard so much about the liability of dynamite to explode from a jar the pounding process above described must seem like an urgent invitation to sudden death. But this is not all. The man who packs the cartridges in boxes for shipment, after placing a layer of sawdust on the bottom of the box, arranges fifty pounds of the explosive thereupon, shovels a scoopful of sawdust on top, gives the box a rude shake, and proceeds to nail down the top with ringing blows, all as unconcernedly as if he were handling confections. The writer stood for more than an hour in the packing building, where there was more than 2,000 pounds of dynamite, while this pounding and hammering was going on incessantly. Yet no one seemed to think there was any danger in jarring dynamite, for the men were joking and laughing with each other, and occasionally one would break out with a popular song and the others would join in the chorus.
Speaking of the liability of dynamite to explode, Mr. Yates said: “In England they are not allowed to nail down the cover of a box containing dynamite. Brass screws must be used instead of nails. If they move a box or a car of dynamite it must be accompanied by a red flag. The same precautions are taken in France, where not a pound is allowed to be sold without a special permit from the Government, which must go through a succession of hands from the Minister of War to the Prefect of Police, first up and then down. Both in England and France there are regularly-commissioned inspectors of dynamite factories, who are charged with the rigorous enforcement of the laws. In this country the only general law requires the stamping on each box or package of the words, ‘Explosive, dangerous.’ The railroad companies also require a placard with the word ‘Powder’ in large letters to be placed on cars used for the transportation of dynamite.
“The popular idea that dynamite is easily exploded by a jar is unfounded. I have known a box containing fifty pounds to fall from a man’s hands and smash so that the cartridges were all scattered without the dynamite exploding. Not long ago a car loaded with dynamite was smashed in a railroad accident. One end of the car was wrecked and many of the boxes were broken, yet there was no explosion. The company which made the dynamite had the wreck photographed for advertising purposes. The fact of the matter is that not concussion, but percussion, is needed to explode dynamite. There must be a fulminating cap used to set it off. The accidents that happen attend the manufacturing and are due to carelessness on the part of the workmen. The most stringent precautions are necessary in making the article, and the risk is greatest in the Spring of the year, when the weather is generally unsettled and tempestuous. That the weather really has something to do with the matter I am not prepared to say, but we never work here in a thunderstorm.”
Reference was made to the Zalinski dynamite gun, and Mr. Yates was asked if it would be safe for a ship to carry dynamite for its use in her magazine. “Quite safe,” he replied. “Why the firing of a whole broadside would not affect it.”
It might naturally be supposed that the men who work in the dynamite factories are paid in proportion to the risk they run, but their wages are not very high. The average pay is $10 to $12 per week, and no difficulty is encountered in getting workmen. Prices have been so much cut by the big establishments, Mr. Yates says, that the business is no longer very profitable. A pound of dynamite, which a few years ago sold for 55 to 60 cents, now sells for 15 cents. Immense quantities of the stuff are used for blasting in mining, tunneling, and building operations.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
