The steel man smiled. "It ought to—it was made for use on a street car. Watch sharp when the crane comes back this way and you'll see the gong fastened right up under the cab floor. See? We tried whistles for a while, and automobile horns, too; but this plain, everyday street-car gong beats 'em all. A man doesn't have to understand English to know what that sound means!"
"It must have made a good deal of difference in the number of accidents," said Sure Pop, "with so many men working underneath those cranes right along."
"Did it? Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same. Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things, Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a square deal."
Sure Pop reached up to say something in Bob's ear as they went on to the chipping yard, where long rows of men were trimming down the rough steel castings with chisels driven by compressed-air hammers.
"Did you ever see anything like it, Bob, the way this 'square deal' and 'fair play' idea gets into their systems, once they wake up to the possibilities of Safety First?"
"It certainly does," said Bob. "I thought of that, too. It's what that tailor told the boys in the clothing factory, the day we got our uniforms, and it's just what the foreman in that machine shop told us, too."
"Yes, sir," said Sure Pop, "the spirit of fair play means everything to a fellow who's any good at all—it's the very life of the Boy Scout law, you know."
Joe was looking hard at the chippers.
"Every one of those men wear glasses! Isn't that queer!"
"It's all the difference between a blind man and a wage earner," was the way the steel man looked at it. "When those steel chips fly into a man's eyes it's all over but the sick money." He turned to little Sure Pop again. "There it is again, Colonel—another of the simplest ideas a man could imagine—just putting goggles on our chippers and emery wheel workers—but it has saved hundreds and hundreds of eyes, and every eye or pair of eyes means some man's living—and the living of a family."