transformed the several ingredients into what is called detonating or percussion-powder, ready for use in the loading of percussion caps. It may be handled more freely now, but if we are allowed to take one of the paper bags, into which it is poured, into our own hands, we must be careful not to drop it;—the concussion would explode it, perhaps, and Heaven only knows what would follow upon such a mishap!
Leaving the mixing room we are next led to the priming room, and this we find, like the other, and for the same reason, is also an attic with a light roof. We should hardly have expected to find it next the mixing room, for we had already heard from our old friend who advised us to come here, that “priming” is at least an occupation from which very serious results might be expected. Yet there it is; and the slightest explosion in either apartment—they are only divided by a thin partition—must inevitably communicate itself to the combustibles in the other, and render the result tenfold more disastrous. The occupants of this priming room are an elderly woman—the “priming woman”—and about a dozen little girls between the ages of eight and twelve, who are called “fillers” and “wetters,” and all of them are very busily employed. Half the children are sitting beside large baskets filled with the shell caps we have already seen made, and, picking them up rapidly, one by one, are placing them, mouth upwards, into a block filled with hundreds of regular indentations made to receive them. These are the “fillers,” and as soon as they have filled their blocks they carry them off to the priming woman. Following the last filled, we find that the priming woman places it on a stand before her, and then has recourse to a copper contrivance which we are told is the “priming plate.” In reality it is two plates of copper, both pierced with holes to match each other, and to correspond with the indentations in the blocks we have just seen filled, and so attached to each other that the holes in the upper plate may be brought either over those in the under one, or over the solid metal between the holes at the will of the operator. At the present time she has so fixed the plate that the top holes are over the solid metal. With the utmost care she now takes a packet of the detonating powder made in the mixing room, and, sprinkling some of it over the top plate, gently brushes it into the holes with a hare’s foot. This done she lifts the whole priming plate, and placing the bottom holes over the mouths of the shell caps in the block, pushes the top plate along until the holes come over each other, when, as a matter of course, the detonating powder so carefully brushed into each of the top holes falls through the bottom ones into the caps, and the caps are primed. But here again there is danger in every movement. The least particle of grit between the plates, the least pressure upon the powder, the least accident on the part of the children, and there is an explosion. If no powder in the bulk be near, it may as our guide tells us, only blind the priming woman for a day or two and blow out the windows; but if there be powder near, as ten chances to one there is, the result cannot be estimated. This time, however, there has fortunately been no such mishap. The block-full of caps has been primed, and is now passed on to the other half of the little girls, each of whom has a similar block before her, and each of whom with a camel’s-hair brush is dropping one drop of liquid shellac into each of the caps to keep the powder in. These are the “wetters,” and, their work done, the caps are carried off to a stove and dried. When dried they are sent down into the packing rooms by the million; and, following them there, we shall find that, even when finished, they afford employment to some twenty or thirty workpeople; for, while two or three lads are for ever making little round tin boxes, half a dozen girls are making similar boxes of cardboard, and while in one corner one set of girls are busily packing the caps in the boxes, in another, another set are busily labelling them, and in the warehouses, several warehouse girls, warehouse men, clerks, and porters, are constantly engaged in packing the small boxes of caps into big boxes, directing them, making out invoices, and seeing to their shipment to all parts of the world.
We have seen that the lives of the whole of these workpeople are in continual peril, and common sense suggests an instant remedy. Remove the fulminate of mercury from the cellar, give the primer and mixer rooms of their own at some distance from each other and the manufactory, take all those little girls away from the priming room, and let them pursue their harmless calling out of harm’s way; and then, even if the worst come to the worst, more than one life need not be sacrificed by the most terrific of explosions. This no doubt was the benevolent intention of Parliament, when after each of the two great explosions which have happened recently, it made a law relating to “explosive compounds.” But Parliament, however good its intention, did not go the right way to work. It said to these manufacturers, it is true, “You shall neither prime, nor mix, nor store your powder in the same manufactory where you do your metal work, nor within a hundred yards of any other building;” but it gave no one the right to go into these same manufactories to see whether the law was kept or broken. The result was that the manufacturers, forseeing the inconvenience and expense of having their workpeople scattered about at distances, not putting any very high estimate upon human life, and finding the law would be inoperative if they were circumspect, closed their doors to all comers and went on as before. By-and-by there came another explosion, and then Parliament, to remedy its former blunder, made another law giving a power of inspection, but appointed no local inspector. That is the position of the matter now, and no doubt will be until another frightful explosion shall occur to wake a dreaming legislature from its slumbers. Then, perhaps, we may get what is wanted—an Act of Parliament that shall compel percussion-cap manufacturers, like powder makers, to carry on their business in some secluded country place, where each dangerous process shall be carried on in light sheds, sufficiently far apart to prevent the destruction of one involving the destruction of the whole—workpeople, neighbours, and property.
J. L.
