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
[Illustration]