Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

282 BRITAIN AT WORK. experience can suggest. Yet the making of gunpowder, on account of the continual agitation the ex- plosive is submitted to and the liability of machinery to break down, must per se be a more perilous operation than any of the simple and well-understood purposes to which it is applied. Accidents, however, are said to happen under the best regulations, and terrible havoc has been wrought in the teeth of every human provision to the contrary. Let us, however, gain a general idea of a powder factory and the processes of making powder. lake the factory of Messrs. John Limited, the oldest and biggest, and, according to expert opinion, among the best arranged we have. It occupies that low and retired corner of Kent between Faversham and the Swale. To the passing observer it resembles a game preserve, so well fenced in, thickly wooded, and noiseless are the grounds. Yet within there are 150 different buildings, many with machinery at work day and night, and hundreds of em- ployees go daily in and out of the gates. The buildings which are one-storeyed, . in hollows and ground around them confining the lateral \ effects of possible explosions, and the \ distance between them preventing an ex- plosion in one from being communicated , in any way to another. Similarly separated, in groups of two, or seldom more than three, aie the operatives, so that in the case of any untoward event the number of victims is limited. These arrange- ments, made with a due sense of the liability of accidents to happen, are simply to confine their destructive effects. The ariangements to prevent accidents are endless. An elaborate network of canals intersects the works, and is used as far as possible for conveying the powder in ig|É5 ^le different stages of its manufacture. Water is also used wherever practicable IjgTi as ^1c motive power instead of steam. Most of the finished powder, too, is taken away by barge to the Mariner powder magazine anchored below Gravesend. Buckets filled with water surround every Hall and Son, the mill. REFINING SALT. PETRE : THE AGITATORS. for the most part lie wide apart, the rising INCORPORATING MILLS.