Chapter 6

"I noticed in the accident reports of one single state," Uncle Jack told Betty, "that more than five hundred people were hurt in that very way, by cleaning machines that were moving. Half of them lost fingers and many lost their hands or arms. No sensible workman, these days, treats his machine as anything but downright dangerous as long as it's running."

The buzz saws fascinated the twins. They felt as if they could stand all day long and listen to the drone of the saw as it ate its way into the clean white boards, snarling like an angry dog when its teeth struck a knot in the wood. There were a good many of these saws in the big, long room; now and then they would get to singing together like a music class at school and then they would drop out of tune again.

"Not a saw guard in the place," shouted Bob in Uncle Jack's ear, for the saws drowned out his ordinary tone.

But Uncle Jack's keen eyes had already caught sight of some metal guards hung up on the wall here and there. "They've got them," he corrected, "but they are not making any use of them." He stepped up to one of the saws and spoke to the man who was running it. "Why don't you keep the guard on your saw?"

"Aw, those things are a nuisance," said the man. "Yes, we're supposed to keep 'em on, but they'd be in the way--we couldn't get the work out so fast with them."

"That's queer," said Uncle Jack. "In a good many mills like this they've found that a man using a good saw guard turns out more work than ever--because he's so much more free in using his hands, I suppose."

The man grunted, but did not answer. On their way to the door, the Safety Scouts spied, clear back in one corner, a man who really did have his saw guard in use. "And a rattling lot of work he's turning out, too," said Bob, after the three had watched him a while from a distance. The neat metal guard came clear down over the murderous saw teeth, so that no matter how much his fingers happened to be in the way, they were safe.

"Let's ask him why he uses his saw guard when the others won't," said Uncle Jack. He stepped nearer the silent workman and then--he saw the reason. Turning to Bob and Betty, he tapped his left hand with his right and jerked his head toward the man beside the saw. The twins walked around to where they could get a look at the workman's left hand. Then they understood. There was nothing left of the fingers but the stub of one, and the thumb!

"Easy enough to see why that one man was using his saw guard, eh?" said Uncle Jack to Sure Pop that night.

"Nothing easier," said the little Colonel. "A burnt child dreads the fire, you know. Not much Safety First idea noticeable in that mill, was there?"

"Colonel, that's just what I don't understand. I thought you said yesterday your Safety Scouts had done good work among the wood-working mills, but if that's a sample--"

"It isn't," was the quiet answer. "Do you happen to know who's the biggest stockholder in that mill?"

Uncle Jack stared. "Surely not--not Bruce?"

"You've guessed it."

Uncle Jack gave a long, low whistle of surprise. "But I had no idea he owned wood-working mills too."

"This is the only one. It's out of his line, I'll admit--but it goes to show his bitter prejudice against the Safety First movement, doesn't it? He'll come around by and by, never fear. All in good time, my friend, all in good time."

ADVENTURE NUMBER SEVENTEEN

GIVING THE OTHER FELLOW A SQUARE DEAL

The Dalton twins had something on their minds. Mother felt it. Uncle Jack felt it. Every now and then they forgot to go on eating their breakfast; and when a Dalton went that far, as their uncle remarked, things were getting very bad indeed.

Betty sat and fidgeted. Bob looked as if he would like to pop one question at his uncle, but he managed to hold it in. Finally Betty slid down from her chair, went boldly around to Uncle Jack, and whispered something in his ear. How he threw back his handsome head and laughed!

"Betty, you're a regular mind reader! Why, we're going down to try them on this very morning, and I was just going to tell you to get ready, but you were too quick for me!"

Two hours later Betty, looking very spruce in her new Safety Scout uniform, was dancing up and down before the mirrors while Bob's blouse was having the buttons set over a bit.

"That boy," said the tailor, looking at him with bulging eyes, "has grown smaller since this uniform was measured!"

"If you'd seen the luncheon he tucked away, just before we came over that day to be measured," laughed Uncle Jack, "you'd only wonder that those buttons won't have to be set back at least a foot! Now, where are the trousers?"

"They are up in the shop. Wait, I'll get them. What? You'd like to come along? Up this way, then."

On the second floor they found themselves in a big room that looked like a forest of sewing machines, humming and clicking so fast that at first the twins were fairly bewildered. Girls who, it seemed, could hardly be older than Betty were bending over their machines, sewing away as if for dear life. Most of them did not even look up from their work as the visitors came through.

"The young man's trousers are in this next room," said the tailor, leading the way to a heavy iron door which separated the two rooms on that floor.

"What's the idea of this iron door?" asked Uncle Jack. "To keep a fire from spreading from one department into the other?"

"Exactly so. That big, thick fire wall goes straight through the building from top to bottom--cuts it in two. Suppose a fire breaks out here on the piecework side: the foreman just opens this fire door and shoos the boys and girls right through, like a lot of chickens. Then he shuts the fire door tight, and they are safe. That big fire we had here four years ago taught us something. So when the owner rebuilt it for us, he built it right."

The big room on the other side of the fire wall was crowded almost as full of workers as the first one. The main difference was that there were more boys and men, and that more sewing was being done by hand. Bob's khaki trousers were quickly found and tried on--a perfect fit.

"We'll give Bob a Patrol Leader's arm badge--two white bars of braid below his left shoulder," said Uncle Jack. "Betty will get one bar for the present, I understand. There are some badges yet to come, Colonel Sure Pop says."

Bob and Betty looked at each other, too pleased to talk.

The four were walking downstairs for a look at the other floors of the big tailor shop when the noon whistle blew. R-r-rip--slam--bang! A torrent of rattle-brained boys came tearing pell mell down the stairs like a waterfall over a dam. Most of them came pelting down three steps at a jump, but on one of the landings somebody stumbled, and the yelling boys piled up in a squirming, kicking heap.

"Hey! WAIT!" No one would ever have suspected the mild-mannered tailor of having such a foghorn of a voice! The rush from the upper floors slowed up at once, and Uncle Jack and Bob helped the fallen lads pick themselves up. But the boy at the bottom, a little fellow with a thin, pinched face that looked as if he had never had half enough to eat, nor even enough fresh air, lay there moaning softly.

Bob knew that queer, unnatural angle of the boy's right arm, which lay awkwardly stretched out beside him, as if it had never quite matched his left. The arm was broken.

"Here, here!" roared the tailor, gently picking the little fellow up and carrying him to the elevator. "Will you crazy fellows never learn? Only last week, somebody hollered 'Fire!' just to see the other fellows jump up and run, and broke that poor little Levinski's collar bone! And now look at this!"

"The old fellow's right on that score," was Uncle Jack's remark as the twins followed him to the street car, each hugging tight a big pasteboard box with a brand new Safety Scout uniform inside it. "Those lads meant no particular harm, but that certainly was about as far from a square deal as one fellow can give another. These 'practical jokers' who will yell 'Fire!' or run over a boy smaller than themselves--well, if a Boy Scout had no more sense than that, he'd be drummed out of the service!"

Once on the way home, when the car stopped at the corner, he pointed up to a fire escape on a big flat building. "There's your flower-pot risk over again, Betty. Even worse, for this time they're on the fire escape steps where folks would fall over head first in case of fire. And see that girl leaning against that rickety old porch railing on the third floor! Certainly there's plenty in sight for a Safety Scout to do!"

That afternoon they visited a large machine shop across the river. To their great delight, Bob and Betty were allowed to wear their new Safety Scout uniforms, leggings and all. They stood very straight as they waited for their companion to get a permit at the Company's office.

"Those new uniforms are going to be about as good an 'ad' for Safety First as anything we could have," remarked Uncle Jack, leading the way into the big machine shop. He had caught the admiring glances that had followed them from the older people and the longing looks that the boys and girls had sent after them all the way over.

"We haven't done our 'Day's Boost for Safety' yet, though," said Betty. "I don't know but we ought to do our good turn every morning before we start out on any trip--I just hate not to get my button right side up till so late in the day!"

"Those girls have pretty neat looking uniforms of their own, haven't they?" said Bob, a little later, as they gazed down a long row of punch presses which were pouring out shining streams of aluminum pin trays. "What do they wear them for--just to look pretty?"

"You wouldn't have thought so," laughed the forewoman, "if you could have seen how they fought the first caps and aprons we tried to get them to wear. They _were_ homely things, even if they were life savers. So we kept at it till we got something so trim and pretty that the girls would rather wear it than not."

"Life savers?" repeated Betty. "How could caps and aprons save lives? Oh--by not catching in the machinery?"

"Just so. It's easy for a girl's hair to be blown into the machines, or for a braid to swing against a whirling shaft, you see. Oh yes, we had several girls killed that way, before we tried this uniform. They used to wear dresses with baggy sleeves,--ragged ones, sometimes. Rings and bracelets are bad, too; and even these aprons, you'll notice, are buttoned back so they can't fly out against the wheels. Yes, the girls all like the idea now. The caps keep their hair from getting dusty or mussed up. Besides, we find it saves a good many girls' feelings, too, having them all dressed so much alike."

The same good sense was shown in the other departments, in the working clothes worn by the men and boys.

"You won't find a man in this room with a necktie on," the foreman told them. "These are the biggest punch presses in our whole shop. A while ago one of the men got his necktie caught between the cogwheels and he was drawn into the machine head first. That was the end of that sort of thing in _this_ shop!

"Now, as you'll see, long sleeves and ragged or baggy overalls are things of the past. If a man does wear a long sleeve, he keeps it rolled up where it can't catch and cost him a hand or an arm.

"Watch the men and boys, and you'll see how careful they are not to look around while their machines are running. Before they start their machines, you'll find them looking all around to see there's nobody near who might get caught in the wheels or belt. These workmen are just as anxious to give the other fellow a square deal as anybody could be, once they catch the Safety First idea. It took some of them a long while to learn never to fool with the other fellow's machine--that's always dangerous, you know, just like a machine that's out of order. Our pressmen wouldn't think of starting up a machine which was out of order, or which they didn't understand--they'd report it to me at once."

"What has been the result of all this Safety training--has it got the men to 'thinking Safety,' so you don't have so many accidents?" asked Uncle Jack.

The foreman's face glowed with pride. "Why, it's got so now, sir, that even the youngsters are too wise to scuffle or play jokes on each other here in the shop. They've come to see how easy it is to fall against dangerous machinery or down a shaft or stairway. And as for throwing things at each other, the way they used to during the noon hour--nothing doing any more in that line.

"Would you believe it, we haven't had a bad accident in this shop since a year ago last July. That was when one of the boys on a punch press got the die clogged and tried to dig it out with his fingers instead of using a hook. That's about the last set of fingers this shop has lost; yes, sir. Before that, there was hardly a week went by but we had several hands crippled, and often somebody killed. Oh, this Safety First work is wonderful,--it's making things a lot safer for the working man!"

Uncle Jack told the kindly foreman what the twins were doing in Safety patrol work. Bob and Betty could see how proud the man was of the splendid Safety showing his shop was making. "And it's a fine pair of Scout uniforms you and the little lady have," he called after them. "More power to you both--and to the Safety Scouts of America!"

"You seem very much interested in everything in these shops, Bob," said his uncle, who could hardly drag him away.

"You'd better believe I am!" cried the boy, warmly. "As soon as I get through school, I'm going to get a job in one of these factories and--well, I'm trying to make up my mind which shop it shall be!"

_One thing you always owe the other fellow--a square deal._--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER EIGHTEEN

AN ADVENTURE IN SAFETY

Betty told Sure Pop what Bob had said about getting a job in one of the big mills by and by, and the little Colonel remembered it a few weeks later when he was showing several of the Safety Scouts through the steel mills.

"Do you think it will be one of these mills you'll pick out for your first job?"

"Well, I don't know, now. It's a pretty big, lonesome sort of place for a fellow like me, Sure Pop, and there don't seem to be so many fellows of my own age here as in some of the other factories."

Betty and Joe and Chance followed Bob's eyes around the big steel mill yards. They knew how he felt. It was a lonesome looking place till you got used to it, in spite of the thousands of men who swarmed around them. The queer, raw smell of the reddish iron ore added to the feeling, too.

Away down in the big ore boats along the docks, gangs of big, brawny workmen strained and sweated, filling the iron buckets that traveled up the wire cables to the ore dumps. Others were trucking the ore to the furnaces, while a swarm of little switch engines panted and puffed back and forth over the network of steel rails.

The steel works covered many acres of ground, and, shut off as they were by high fences, seemed almost like another world. The roar of the furnaces and the din of steel on steel made Betty and the boys feel rather confused at first. "I should think all these men just over from the old country would get mixed up, so many of them not understanding a single word of English," said Betty to their guide.

"Yes, we have to be mighty careful," said the man, who was one of the Safety men who gave all his time to making the steel mills safer for the thousands of workmen. "We print this little book of Safety Rules in all the different languages, so that each new man can study it and find out how to do his day's work without getting into danger."

"Wow! what's that?" Joe's black eyes opened very wide as he pointed to a great ball of fire that rose from one of the furnace stacks, floated a little way like a balloon, and then burst into a sheet of flame.

"Just the gas from the blast furnace--regular Fourth of July fireworks, isn't it? I remember how queer those gas bubbles used to look to me when I first came to work here."

He waited while his visitors stared for a few minutes at the fiery clouds, then led the way to the blast furnaces. They went through two or three big buildings, all of them fairly alive with hurrying, sweating laborers. But in spite of the seeming confusion all around them, Bob noticed how carefully the aisles and passageways were kept free and clear of anything the hurrying men might stumble over.

"We simply have to do it," explained the steel man. "Before we woke up to the importance of never leaving anything in the way where it might be stumbled over, we had more broken arms and legs every month than you could shake a stick at. Now it's different; it's as much as a man's job is worth to leave anything lying in the passageways for his fellow workmen to stumble and fall over."

"I saw some white lines painted on the floor of that last room we came through, the one where all those castings were stacked up in rows," said Chance. "Was that what they were for? Great scheme, isn't it? And as simple as falling off a log!"

"Simple? Sure--most of these things are simple enough, once you think of them," agreed their guide. "It took perhaps an hour of one man's time and a gallon or two of white paint to paint those dead-lines along the sides--and many's the man who has been saved weeks in the hospital by those same white lines."

The five friends followed him into the foundry department. Hardly had they stepped through the doorway, when the clang of a big gong overhead scattered a group of laborers who were piling heavy castings on flat cars.

Five pairs of eyes looked up as the five Safety Scouts turned to see where the gong was. Away up above them on a track that went from one end of the long room to the other, they saw something like an oddly shaped freight engine running along with a heavy wire cable dangling toward the floor. The big, strong cable was carrying a load of several tons of steel castings as easily as a boy carries in an armful of wood. "And with a whole lot less fuss and bother!" said Betty, with a sly look at Brother Bob.

"When a man hears that gong overhead," said the guide, "he knows what it means even before he looks up. That's what is called a traveling crane. It runs back and forth on those overhead tracks, wherever the crane driver wants to pick up or drop his load. He kicks that gong with his heel, just like the motorman on the street car, and it gives warning to the workmen below just as plainly as if it yelled out, 'Look out, below! Here comes a load that might spill on your heads!'"

"Sounds exactly like a street-car gong," said Betty.

The steel man smiled. "It ought to--it was made for use on a street car. Watch sharp when the crane comes back this way and you'll see the gong fastened right up under the cab floor. See? We tried whistles for a while, and automobile horns, too; but this plain, everyday street-car gong beats 'em all. A man doesn't have to understand English to know what _that_ sound means!"

"It must have made a good deal of difference in the number of accidents," said Sure Pop, "with so many men working underneath those cranes right along."

"Did it? Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same. Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things, Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a square deal."

Sure Pop reached up to say something in Bob's ear as they went on to the chipping yard, where long rows of men were trimming down the rough steel castings with chisels driven by compressed-air hammers.

"Did you ever see anything like it, Bob, the way this 'square deal' and 'fair play' idea gets into their systems, once they wake up to the possibilities of Safety First?"

"It certainly does," said Bob. "I thought of that, too. It's what that tailor told the boys in the clothing factory, the day we got our uniforms, and it's just what the foreman in that machine shop told us, too."

"Yes, sir," said Sure Pop, "the spirit of fair play means everything to a fellow who's any good at all--it's the very life of the Boy Scout law, you know."

Joe was looking hard at the chippers.

"Every one of those men wear glasses! Isn't that queer!"

"It's all the difference between a blind man and a wage earner," was the way the steel man looked at it. "When those steel chips fly into a man's eyes it's all over but the sick money." He turned to little Sure Pop again. "There it is again, Colonel--another of the simplest ideas a man could imagine--just putting goggles on our chippers and emery wheel workers--but it has saved hundreds and hundreds of eyes, and every eye or pair of eyes means some man's living--and the living of a family."

"Splendid idea," nodded the little Colonel--just as if he, the Spirit of Safety, had not thought it all out years before, and put it into the minds of men! "Do you ever have any trouble getting the men to wear them?"

"Plenty! Most of the men treated it as a joke at first. Then, gradually, they began to notice that the men who wore theirs on their _hats_ (the rule is that they must wear goggles while at this work or lose their jobs), those were the men who lost their eyes. Several of the first men to be blinded after the new rule was posted were those very ones, the chaps that had made the most fun of the goggles. Then the others began to wake up.

"Over in my office, I've several hundred pairs of goggles that have had one or both lenses smashed by flying bits of steel--and every pair has saved an eye, in some cases both eyes. Seems sort of worth while, eh, Colonel?"

It was an enthusiastic group of Safety Scouts that passed out through the big steel mill gates and started home in the mellow September twilight. "Oh, I think it's wonderful," cried Betty, as they talked over what they had seen, "perfectly wonderful, Sure Pop, that such little things can save so many lives!"

"But I don't see why you call a trip like this 'an adventure,'" broke in Chance, who had never been along on any of the twins' Safety Scouting trips before. "We didn't see an accident or an explosion or anything!"

Colonel Sure Pop gave Chance one of his wise smiles. "That's the best part of the whole trip, as you'll see when you've been at it as long as I have. The most delightful adventure a lover of fair play can possibly have to look back on, my boy, is one just like what we've had today--a real, live adventure in Safety!"

_The spirit of fair play is the very life of the Scout Law._--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER NINETEEN

ONE DAY'S BOOST FOR SAFETY

October had come and gone in busy school days and even busier Safety Scouting trips, all but the last day. For it was the morning of Hallowe'en,--and the Dalton twins' birthday.

"Twelve years old, eh?" said Father, at the breakfast table. "Well, well, how time flies, Nell! Stand up here, you Safety Scouts, and let's have a look at you. I declare, no one would suspect Bob of being a day under fifteen, would he, Jack?"

"I'd hate to have him haul off and hit me with that fist of his!" laughed Uncle Jack. "How are you going to celebrate the day, Scouts?"

"As if any one need ask!" smiled Mother. "Today's the day Bob takes his entering test and joins the Boy Scouts, and Betty joins the Camp Fire Girls. Just think--big enough for that! Good thing it's Saturday, Betty."

"What are you going to do--start out to capture all the honor medals?"

"Well, I hope to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with, you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can qualify as a first-class Scout."