A high-grade modern rifle can be fired twenty-five times per minute. This gun will pierce 60 pine boards each one inch thick. It will kill a man at a distance of four miles. A bullet with sufficient force to pierce a one-inch pine board will kill a man or a horse. Actual tests show that the best modern rifles will force a bullet through a target made of the following combination:—fifteen folds of cow-hide, sixteen one-inch pine boards, and one and four-fifths inches of hard beech wood. Bullets fired from rifles used in the American Civil War would do little damage after passing into or through the bodies of soldiers in the front ranks. Men in the second and third ranks felt much protected by the bodies of men in front of them. All is different now. The best modern rifles will force a bullet through five horses at 27 yards; four horses at 220 yards; two horses at 1,100 yards. Even as recently as the war of 1870–71 and the war of 1877–78, bullets from rifles then used in the German army would not pierce a human skull at a distance of 1,760 yards, one mile; but with the best modern rifles bullets can be fired through the thick bones of an ox at a range of 3,850 yards, about two and one-fifth miles. Experiments demonstrate that the best modern rifles will force a bullet through three human bodies at a range of 3,900 feet; and through five human bodies at 1,200 feet. In the American Civil War bullets for long range work had to be fired high, describing a long high arch, thus missing all objects on the battlefield between the gun and the object aimed at. A bullet from a modern rifle will fly straight across the field for hundreds of yards with no elevation, even half a mile and more with but little elevation, sweeping the whole width of the field between the gun and the target.[[71]]
The deadliness of the modern rifle can be made clear in another way. Says Bloch:
“According to the data of the Prussian general Rohne one hundred sharp-shooters will put a battery out of action, firing at a distance of 88 yards in the course of two and two-fifths minutes, 1,100 yards in the course of four minutes, 1,320 yards in the course of seven and a half minutes, 1,650 yards in the course of twenty-two minutes.”
“The new Springfield rifle,” says Fitzmorris,[[72]] “has a range of five miles, the bullet having a velocity of 2,300 feet per second leaving the weapon, or sufficient to drive it through four and a half feet of white pine.”
The “attractiveness” of war increases, of course, with the likelihood that the improving marksmanship of the enemy will increase one’s chances for meeting an “attraction.” The accuracy of fire is being rapidly improved by tireless target practice in all the great armies of the world. Says Mr. Wright, Ex-Secretary of War:[[73]]
“The results from target practice for the year 1907 and 1908 show that the average battery-hitting capacity has been rapidly increased.... About sixteen times as many hits were made in 1906 from the same gun in a given time at the same range as were made in 1900.”
Under no circumstances should the delicate flesh of a big business man be exposed to well-aimed bullets fired from a modern rifle. His flesh is, of course, specially sensitive and precious. Moreover, it is wholly unnecessary, because he can buy the flesh of a common working class man for bullet stopper purposes very, very cheap, as a substitute. That is a much better arrangement, the big business man thinks, and, of course, the working men agree with the business men on this matter just as they do on nearly everything else.
The Danish “Rexer” rifle is another instrument ready for use in war and in pacifying hungry people on strike. The “Rexer” weighs only eighteen pounds, uses high-power, small-calibre ammunition, is easily and accurately operated from a handy, portable “rest,” can be conveniently carried on horseback, rushed up front for short distances by infantry, can be fired slowly or, if desired, by simply holding the trigger, 300 times per minute. Equipped with this rifle one full regiment of soldiers or militiamen, each firing only 75 shots per minute, could fire into the ranks of wildly hungry strikers or unemployed one million five hundred thousand prosperity slugs in twenty minutes. With this gun ten militiamen could “quiet” five thousand strikers with twenty-five thousand shots in ten minutes.[[74]]
With the improved murdering machine called the Maxim gun 700 bullets per minute can be fired, bullets that will kill a man at a range of one and a half miles, bullets that will pacify a striker at a range of two miles. The Gatling gun equipped with an electric motor will discharge 1,800 death-dealing bullets per minute.[[75]]
“The Gatling gun,” says Morris,[[76]] “... is now, in its perfected form, in use all over the world. This consists of a cluster of rifle-barrels arranged around a central shaft and rotated by a crank. The magazine contains a supply of cartridges, which drop down and are rammed home one after another as the barrels rotate. This, in the later improved forms, is done with such rapidity that the gun can discharge its balls at the rate of 3,000 per minute.... Machine guns were designed for service against bodies of men.”