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THE "SEARCHER" AT WORK AT THE ENTRANCE TO A NITROGLYCERIN HILL.
"He searches every man who enters, no matter how often the man may come and go."
steel retorts about six feet in diameter and four feet deep, which are bricked up like ovens. Here sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, from Glasgow is combined with nitrate of soda from Chili, and the nitric acid thus set free passes over in pipes to a high framework carrying numberless brown earthenware jars in which it condenses. As it passes over it gives off reddish fumes which are suffocating—a whiff of them gives you a fit of coughing, and a full breath of them would choke a locomotive. Mr. Findlay explains that the nitric acid thus made is mixed with a larger quantity of sulphuric acid, and moved in steel pony-cars to a station at the foot of each nitroglycerin "hill." Thence the acids are drawn up by cable or blown up through pipes to a tank at the top of the "hill" by compressed air. You mentally compare the advantages of being blown up with compressed air to being blown up by other means, and smoothing down your hair, enter the "Danger Area."
THE "DANGER AREA"
To enter the "Danger Area" you must pass the "searcher." He stands in front of his cabin, and you will find one of him always blocking the way at the four entrances to the explosive district. He is a tall, military-looking man in a blue uniform faced with red, and he takes from you all metallic objects—your watch, money, penknife, scarf-pin, match-case, matches, and keys. None of these are allowed to be where nitroglycerin is. He searches every man who enters, no matter how often the man may come and go. The girls, 200 of whom are employed, are not permitted to wear pins, hair-pins, shoe-buttons, or metal pegs in their shoes, or carry knitting, crochet, or other needles. These regulations are the outgrowth of experience and the long-ago discovery in dynamite cartridges of buttons and other foreign substances calculated to make trouble at unexpected moments. The girls are searched thrice a day by the three matrons who have them in charge. From the lack of hair-pins they wear their hair in braids, tied with ribbons, which gives them all an unduly youthful look. The searcher tells you that his chief tremble is with matches. Some of the lower-class male employees—there are 1,100 men in
