HIGH SPEED BULLETS AND B WHAT THEY DO By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN OTH sportsmen and soldiers have had to revise their ideas of the effects of bullets since "high speed" was made possible in the modern rifle. The sportsman sits puzzled before the animal he has just killed, unable to find a particle of the bullet, and yet finding no wound of exit, through which it could have gone and continued its course down country. Also he is confronted with the astonishing fact that a tiny .22 caliber bullet, if driven fast enough, makes a wound into which he can put his whole hand, and this too, a deep wound far into the animal's body. The soldier, on seeing his dead and wounded, charges that the other fellows are using dumdums loaded with dynamite. The old blunt-nose bullet made no such wounds, and here is a bullet still sharper-pointed that wrecks the bodies of its victims. It seems impossible that an ordinary sharp point bullet did it. And all the mystery arises from the fact that we have tried to reason from a known fact and make it cover something unknown. Analogy, and parallel reasoning are apt to be deceptive. We started after the Civil War with black-powder infantry and sporting rifles, giving their big bullets a velocity little exceeding twelve hundred feet a second. Such rifles killed off most of the big game of North America, including all the buffaloes. Such rifles were used in the Franco-Prussian War. Such rifles made good Indians out of many Sioux, but failed to roll back the hordes that swept over Custer. In 1893 came the Krag-Jörgensen, a radical departure from anything that the past century had seen. It used metal jacketed bullets to hold the rifling in the barrel and to prevent their being melted by the heat of the smokeless powder, now used for the first time. The velocity jumped to two thousand foot-seconds, that is, two thousand feet in one second. A marvel had come in gunnery. Then up to 1908, or for fifteen years, smokeless powder rifles were our standard. Sportsmen and military men became well acquainted with the effects of the bullets of this class of arm. It was known just what such rifles could do. Then came the rediscovery of the effects of putting a sharp point like the writing end of a lead pencil, on a bullet, and the possibility of making the bullets much lighter without having them fall off in speed like feathers. In turn came high velocity for the first time-and the upset of a lot of ideas. Logically the little spitzer or sharppoint bullet should be even more merciful than the old blunt-nose, smallbore bullet of earlier days. The point was sharper, the hole should be made. with less shock to the thing hit. Then, with such a good start toward earning a good reputation for itself, that little sharp pointed mass of lead began to display a devilish disposition. Roosevelt, Stewart Edward White, and other noted hunters tried it out on game-and found that it was far more deadly than even the especially designed "dumdum" or soft-nosed bullets intended for game. That the it delivers a tremendous shock. Animals and men-go down when hit as if struck by lightning. Hits in parts containing fluid-water being noncompressible-result explosively, the fluid being violently displaced, and rupturing everything in its way. The tiny 22, using only a seventy-grain bullet, gives us an idea of what happens to fluid within a body, if we try it on cans of water. A five-gallon oil can, filled to the top through the regular spout, and then hit with the bullet, disappears in a cloud of spray. Then it reappears, HOW THE HIGH-SPEED BULLETS PENETRATE STEEL AT THREE Numbers fourteen and sixteen are clear through the quarter-inch steel. spitzer was more deadly than the full jacket military blunt-nose bullet of old type goes without saying after the reports of the sportsmen. White, for example, hit one hundred eighty-five head with spitzer bullets on his first trip. Only six animals escaped after being hit -a testimony most striking as to the work of the high speed bullet. The bullet seems to be easily deflected in tissue. Where the longer, blunt-nose, small-bore bullet slipped straight through, with a small clean hole, the lighter, poorly balanced spitzer, with the weight in the base, and the point very light, goes to spinning widely on its tail-end like a slowing top, when it gets into tissue. Or else it actually plunges sideways, and always it slashes like a knife. To this is added a mysterious explosive effect -not that it explodes-it does not lose its shape or break up or expand-but it ruptures blood vessels for a considerable distance around its wound, and empty of every drop of water, and with the four tin sides opened out flat like a book. And all this is done by a tiny .22 bul let, traveling at very high speed. Another striking proof of the way the spitzer 150-grain Government bullet, issued to troops, tears flesh instead of going through with a small hole, is the fact of the small number of these bullets that went through the game killed by Mr. White. While the old type, blunt-nose, long .30 caliber bullet would have gone through in nearly every case-speaking now of the full THROUGH FIVE-EIGHTHS-INCH STEEL Beside the plate is a bullet similar to the one that went jacket bullet-yet this still sharper bullet of precisely the same caliber, with higher speed, failed to go through in half the animals hit, and when it did, it always emerged with a horrible, slashing wound. This list, now before me from Mr. White's game book, includes one hundred ninety head of game slain in Africa. The reason for failing to go through is of course that the bullet is diving or tumbling inside, and expending its energy tearing up tissue and breaking bones instead of slipping straight through as the older bullets did unless they were made especially to mushroom and so lost their penetrative power. Jack London comments specially on the way the Mexicans, shot at Vera Cruz, were torn up by our service bullets. The case against the highspeed spitzer bullet is clear. So when we come to European battle fields, with spitzer used for the first time, it is small wonder we hear frantic charges of the use of the dumdum-bullets made to expand or explode-bandied back and forth when the wounds are seen. The Germans use a bullet nearly the duplicate of our Springfield, and at still higher velocity-twenty-nine hundred feet per second. The French use another spitzer, at lower speed. The English use the spitzer. The Austrians use the spitzer. Only the Russians use the old-style round nose bullet. So wounds that quite apparently come from dumdum expanding bullets have after all been made by the little savage, diving, tumbling, slashing, high-speed, sharp-point bullet. An The sailors on German submarines may hold the world's record for daring feats beneath the surface, but an American diver has gone farther down than has any man before. account of his remarkable feat makes one of the many T By T. C. O'DONNELL HEY have a new way of scoring grocers in Michigan. The old idea was to hale the keeper of a dirty, ill-kept store before a health officer, which dignitary proceeded to score him with a copious, razor-edged vocabulary, and with a fine for a second offense. Michigan, however, has discovered that a more effective and more humane way is to score the clean grocers, by means of cards denoting various degrees of sanitation. It is difficult to give a grocer a score that will adequately represent, not only the manner in which his stock is kept free from dust and insects, but also the condition of his fixtures. As J. W. Helme, Michigan Dairy and Food Commissioner, and originator of the Michigan method, put it, "Often the various points given stores on fixtures outweigh a perfect score on cleanliness and in that way a dirty establishment that had extra good fixtures might outscore a much cleaner establishment-and in the end it is cleanliness that is sought." Obviously, then, a more effective score would consider, first, conditions of the stock; and, second, the nature of the equipment, since good fixtures enable a store to be kept in a satisfactory condition with a minimum amount of work. This matter of scoring the equipment-and in equipment such items as floors, walls, etc., are included-is more important than it might seem, for with them sanitary conditions can be maintained with far less labor than with the old-style fixtures, with the result that good sani tary conditions are more likely to be maintained with improved furniture and fixtures. Accordingly, of the three grades of cards, the highest, or white card, is awarded to establishments with the tile floors, tile walls, steel ceilings, and tile counters, and with other equipment to match. The card bears in large letters the legend, "Extra Fine Sanitary Condition." It is very obvious that few stores have tile floors and walls and can qualify for the white card. What the State desires, This stimulates him to improve his establishment by putting in better fixtures and so we have the blue-card man trying to get into the white-card man's class, and the red-card ('Good Sanitary Condition') man trying to get into the blue-card class. This gives an incentive to these people to keep improving. At the same time the card shows on its face that on any relapse on their part they will lose their card." The system was new and did not catch on quickly at first, because several grocers, when they found they could not get a white card, wanted none at all. But has been inspected by this department and found to be in EXTRA FINE SANITARY CONDITION This card remains the property of the STATE OF MICHIGAN. Should any inspector of this department discover any bad sanitary conditions in this establishment or any violation of the food laws or weights and measures law of the State he will at once take up this certificate and no new one will be fanned for a period of six months following the date of its confiscation and then enly after a thorough reinspection. Jon WHteling STATE DAIRY AND FOOD COMMISSIONER. Inspection on which this certificate is granted made by Inspector, os 191 THE STORY OF THE SANITARY GROCERY The cards are different colors, depending on the condition of the stores in which they are placed. however, is that a great many stores shall qualify, and so it seeks an incentive to grocers to refit their stores and get them in the "extra fine" class. Now the incentive that it offers is just the difference between the white card and the next highest, or blue card, the legend of which is, "Fine Sanitary Condition." And here is the psychology that underlies the Michigan idea, as related by Mr. Helme: "When a man gets a blue card, he says at once, 'Why, my competitor, John Smith, has a white card. Why cannot I have one?' Then we point out that his floor is wood instead of tile, and that his fixtures are not as up to date in sanitary requirements as his neighbor's are. when it was explained to them and to the Women's Clubs that even a red card would not be granted unless a man had a first-class place, that no cards were granted for ordinary stores kept in an ordinary manner, that the public could be sure that any man who had any card at all was keeping a clean establishment, then the demand for the lower grade cards picked up. The result has been that the Wolverine grocers are demanding more and more of the State cards. The proof of the pudding, of course, lies in the eating. And here the new scoring system has made good, for not in a single instance has it been necessary to call in a card. |