rushed out of their houses into the streets, crying, with white lips, that an earthquake was upon them.

It was not an earthquake. It was merely the explosion of a powder mill at Pleasant Prairie, Wis., fifty-five miles. north of Chicago, one of the many scattered plants for the manufacture of high explosives, which are owned by the Dupont Powder Company.

But as an explosion it appears to have been vastly the greatest and most far-reaching in its effect, since gunpowder was first invented. It was perhaps the nearest man had ever come to rivalling the resistless and elemental forces of nature. As an artificial cyclone and earthquake in combination, there has never been anything like it. Cities across the Mississippi River in Iowa felt the force of the shock, while the seismograph in the observatory of Saint Ignatius College at Cleveland, Ohio, three hundred and fifty miles away from the scene of the blast, recorded for nearly half an hour the tremors of the stricken earth.

The largest amount of explosives ever intentionally discharged at one time seems to have been 120 tons of blasting powder, backed by twenty tons of dynamite, used in the destruction of the Great

Hell Gate reef, which, until 1876, made East River, New York, a terror to shipping. But that was a mere baby's firecracker when compared with the more than a thousand tons of giant powder and the 35 tons of dynamite which-exploded by some mysterious and forever hidden accident-dug holes in the earth a hundred feet deep, by three hundred feet square, and threw half the population of the middle West into a spasm of fear.

As in most powder explosions, the exact cause of the disaster will always remain a mystery. The first explosion occurred in and utterly destroyed the glazing mill. It is in this room that the granules of blasting powder, after being moulded, are glazed with a thin coating. of graphite, to prevent the absorption of moisture which will ruin unglazed powder in a short time. For the purpose of glazing, the powder is put into steel cylinders containing graphite. There were two men in the glazing room when the explosion occurred, E. S. Thompson and Edward Hilliard. Thompson was one of the oldest and most experienced men in the plant. He was instantly killed by the blast and his mangled body was found some distance away. Hilliard was blown through the roof of the glaz

ing mill, but escaped unhurt. Even more remarkable was the escape of half a dozen men working in the soda mill some distance away. When the soda

mill went up-following the glazing mill blast-they were blown up into the air and alighted on another building, which, in its turn, then exploded. The second

that these human missles went unscathed through a series of tremendous blasts which broke a thousand windows and shook great skyscrapers more than fifty miles away.

The first result of the explosion was the instant liberation of billions of cubic feet of gas, which swept out from the common center with almost incalculable violence. It was this first hammer blow of the gaseous wave, seeking room for expansion, which shook buildings and overturned brick chimneys. It was followed an instant later by the return of the compressed air about the circumference of the circle, rushing in toward the center, where something like a vacuum had been created. This rebound of the great air wave greatly lowered the pressure outside the houses and other buildings, leaving the pressure inside much higher and more nearly normal. It was this higher pressure on the inside that caused the destruction of window glass, every pane, so far reported, having fallen out, as if struck a heavy blow from within. The pressure from without, in the first instance, was undoubtedly as strong as the reaction which followed it. That it was not as effective in destroying the glass may have been at least partially due to the fact that a window-pane is supported against outside pressure by the whole strength of the heavy window frame, while against pressure from within, there is no protection but the putty.

In addition to the air waves, earth waves of great intensity and duration were set up by the explosion. Much comment was caused by the fact that while at a distance of more than 300 miles in certain directions the earth vibrations were strongly felt, in other

directions and at a distance of only fifty miles they passed unnoticed. Over a large portion of the South side of Chicago, for instance, there was no recognition of the explosion, while in Cleveland, Ohio, the seismograph vibrated violently. The great difference is due to the varying constitution of the crust of the earth. In directions where continuous strata of solid rock ran away from the center of the disturbance earth waves were transmitted quickly and with slowly diminishing violence, while when such strata gave way to great deposits of sand and gravel the shock was poorly transmitted and quickly absorbed. The fact that a terminal moraine of loosely packed sand and detritus underlies much of Chicago accounts for the escape of certain parts of the city from any very noticeable effects of the earth waves.

The after effects of the explosion have been varied. In two or three cases the deaths of people who were seriously ill at the time have been ascribed to the shock. The Dupont Company has come forward and voluntarily offered to pay all damages caused by the blast. And in both Wisconsin and Illinois bills have been introduced in the State legislatures looking towards the more strict regulation and control of powder mills and other places where great quantities of high explosives are stored.

What seems to be needed is a lawbacked by competent and honest inspection-which will prevent the accumulation and storage in a single location of any such tremendous amount of blasting powder as a thousand tons.

As well live on the crest of a live volcano as within fifty miles of such a potential and ever-ready earthquake!

W

HEN "Jim" Fike drew up a pair of jaded ponies hitched to a dilapidated wagon and faced the setting sun on the lonely prairie in Thomas County, Kansas, twenty-five years ago, he didn't have $25 to his name. Now that same "Jim" Fike spends that much every week for gasoline alone and the most of the prairie he saw by the light of that setting sun is his own and on it is the largest wheat farm in the world.

Twenty-five years ago there were not ten carloads of wheat raised in Thomas County. "Jim" Fike requires that much now to seed his one farm. To do the work on that farm requires the services of more men than there were in Thomas County when "Jim" Fike went there. When James Fike arrived in Thomas. County he took up a quarter section of one hundred and sixty acres. He stuck to it through fat years and lean, through the grass

99

hoppers and the drought, until Fortune began to smile. He picked up a few more acres at a time until he became among his neighbors what they call in Kansas a "prominent farmer." He was the kind of man who wins popularity easily and his neighbors called him "Jim." He was appointed registrar of the land office under President Cleveland's second administration and after his term expired he was elected a railroad commissioner. Then Jim Fike quit politics and went back to farming.

By that time the farmers in western Kansas had begun to learn to grow wheat. Fike started in with sixteen hundred acres and he gradually increased his holdings until in 1909 he sowed ten thousand acres. From that area he harvested 120,000 bushels and made a profit of $60,000. Last year he had twelve thousand acres in winter wheat and harvested 600 acres more in spring wheat. His profits last year probably were at least $75,000. Every