Uncle Jack's twinkle didn't last long, though. He was too much puzzled over the carelessness he was noticing in this mill, carelessness where he had expected to find up-to-date Safety methods. He poked with his foot at a board with several ugly nails sticking up in it and jammed them carefully down into the ground.
"That's the fourth bad case of upturned nails I've found here already," he said quietly. "There's no end of broken bottles and such trash under foot, and just look at that overloaded truck, will you? One sharp curve in the track and that load will spill all over the place. Why, these chaps don't realize the first thing about Safety, Bob."
They moved on into the engine room. One of the engineer's helpers, a boy who looked hardly older than Bob, stood beside a swiftly moving belt, pouring something on it out of a tin can. His sleeve was dangling, and every time the belt lacing whirled past, it flipped the sleeve like a clutching finger trying to jerk his arm into the cruel wheel.
Uncle Jack walked over for a word with the engineer, a fat, jolly looking man who seemed well satisfied with life. "Do your helpers often put belt dressing on while the belt is running?" he asked.
The jolly engineer was plainly surprised. "Why, they never do it any other time!" he exclaimed. "Why do you ask?"
"Only," said the explorer, dryly, "because there are several hundred men killed in just that way every year—and most of them have families. Don't you put guards around any of your belts in this mill, either?"
Again that puzzled look in the engineer's eyes. "No, not here," he answered slowly. "There was some talk about putting them on, but nothing came of it. It wouldn't be a bad idea, either; every now and then some poor fellow loses a hand or an arm. Last spring a new man from out in the yards was walking through here, and the wind blew his sleeve too near the belt. It yanked him clear in between the belt and pulley—smashed him up so he didn't live more'n a couple of hours. That certainly was hard luck."
"Luck!" snorted Uncle Jack, when the three were out of hearing. "A moving belt is almost as dangerous as a can of gunpowder! Yet these men call it luck when it takes off an arm or snuffs out a life. It's disgusting."
All through the plant they found the same state of affairs—careless men, unguarded machinery, guesswork everywhere. In the machine shop they found men and boys cleaning machines that were running at top speed. Any one could see how easily the rags and soft cotton waste they were using could catch in the moving parts and draw a hand or an arm into the flying wheels.
"I noticed in the accident reports of one single state," Uncle Jack told Betty, "that more than five hundred people were hurt in that very way, by cleaning machines that were moving. Half of them lost fingers and many lost their hands or arms. No sensible workman, these days, treats his machine as anything but downright dangerous as long as it's running."