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
