THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
283 
&c., has reported officially that he was “ much struck, in the course of 
his inspections, with the extraordinary ignorance of even the most 
elementary dangers, and the precautions necessary for avoiding them, 
which prevails among persons in charge of important factories and 
magazines;” and that there can be no doubt that to the ignorance and 
incompetence of such persons a large number of the accidents which 
occur are indirectly due. Surely it is in the interest of employers to 
adopt measures for securing that the management of their works is in 
the hands of competent men, experienced in the details of the manufac¬ 
ture, and possessing adequate general education and technical knowledge 
to fit them for posts of such responsibility. The obvious mode of 
securing this is to render it compulsory for such men to obtain certificates 
of competency before they can hold responsible appointments in 
manufactories of gunpowder and other explosive agents. 
The manufacture of fireworks, ammunition, percussion caps, and other 
articles involving the application of explosive agents, is, it need scarcely 
be stated, attended by liability to accidents similar to, and sometimes 
even greater than, that existing in manufactories of gunpowder and 
materials of similar nature, and necessitates the adoption of precautions 
of the same nature as apply to these works. 
Such necessity has, however, been very much disregarded in the ar¬ 
rangement and management of factories of this kind ; and many very 
sad casualties have resulted either from utterly inadequate arrangements 
for localising explosions and reducing them to small proportions, by 
regulating the quantities of material dealt with in one building, and 
sufficiently separating and subdividing the manufacturing operations, or 
from neglect of simple regulations for excluding sources of fire from the 
buildings. Thus, in enquiries following on explosions at ammunition 
or firework factories, it has been found in Some instances a common 
practice for the men to wear their ordinary clothing when in the factory, 
and to carry lucifer matches about them. Again, at an ammunition 
factory at Birmingham, where an explosion not long since resulted in 
the deaths of fifty-three women, it was brought to light during the inquest 
that there were open stoves, not even provided with fenders, in the 
middle of the sheds in which the powder-work was carried on. At these 
stoves the women used to cook their dinners, and they were also in the 
habit of shaking the grains of powder off their aprons into the stoves. 
Other and special sources of danger exist sometimes in connection 
with this branch of the industry of explosive substances. Great stress has 
been laid upon the dangers which may arise in the manufacture of gun¬ 
cotton, and nitroglycerine preparations, from the liability of those 
substances to spontaneous change in consequence of the readiness with 
which their stability may be affected by imperfections in their manufac¬ 
ture. But there are several important instances of accidental explosions 
on record which have occurred in the manufacture of pyrotechnic com¬ 
positions and other articles of explosive nature, in consequence of aliability 
to the establishment of chemical activity between the ingredients of such 
preparations by even very slight inciting causes. Thus, certain descrip¬ 
tions of coloured fires are readily susceptible of so-called spontaneous 
ignition or explosion, either simply from the unstable nature of one or 
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