PREVENTION OF FOUNDRY ACCIDENTS.

Shirts Should be of Wool to Shed Sparks. Trousers Should be Kept in Repair.

The wearing of clothing unsuited to the business has caused some very severe burns in foundry work. Light gauze or cotton shirts should never be worn while a person is engaged in carrying or pouring iron. A small spatter of iron may set a shirt afire, and on account of its liability to blaze, a very severe burn may ensue, which would not have occurred had the person been wearing a woolen shirt of any kind. The wool burns very slowly, and never ignites into a flame, and will shed all of the small spatters of iron which are so frequent in pouring off. Still, a great many men in the foundry may be seen wearing light cotton shirts and taking chances of a severe burn, rather than to keep an old woolen shirt and change before the heat

commences.

Trousers, too, should be either wool or hard jean cloth. and should be kept repaired, so that there will be no slits or gaps where the iron could get through, go down the leg and cause a severe burn to the limb or foot.

A great many men have had their caps burned up while. wearing them, and have been burned more or less thereby, because they were wearing a very thin cotton cap during the heat, rather than to take the cap off before they commenced handling iron. These caps are in common use in all foundries and are good caps to wear while molding, but are absolutely dangerous when handling iron.

(Wrong) The above picture shows a cotton shirt and cotton hat, neither of which should be worn while taking off a heat. The effect of hot iron on cotton is shown, and often results in molders being seriously burned.

(Right) This picture shows a molder protected by a woolen shirt and woolen cap, which will not catch fire. This is the proper clothing for a molder when pouring off.

THE REAL TROUBLE.

Too Much Agitation, Too Much Investigation and Too Much "Suggested" Legislation.

The topic most prominent in the mind and thought of every progressive citizen of today is "the condition of business." One may read in the trade paper this week that "business is looking up, more specifications for new orders have been placed, shapes of this or that sort are holding their own in the matter of prices, etc.," but when we get right down to the final computations and figure out how we are going to pay the grocer we discover that we are in much the same position today that we have occupied for several months. We are now no nearer a return to the good old days of 1905 and 1906 than we have been since the present unpleasant and nerve-destroying business situation overtook us.

The only real and pacifying ray of sunshine which has lately put in its appearance is the attitude which the publicthe voters of our great and glorious country-is beginning to assume toward the alleged legislator who has been trying out his pet hobbies and pet schemes in the halls of Congress at Washington and likewise in the state legislature—for it seems quite becoming nowadays for the obscure legislator, in the obscure state legislature, to mimic the "big fellow" who has been sent to Washington. To make a name for himself and erect his personal fortune, either financial or political, the legislator who remains at home seems possessed by an inflammable desire to foist upon the good people every sort of ism of which the immature and inexperienced mind can conceive.

But let us hope that this wave of agitation, investigation

and legislation has about exhausted itself; let us hope that this ray of sunshine now making its appearance in the public press and denoting the exhaustion of the public patience with the sophistry and theories of the legislator who is but seeking personal advertisement and personal gain, may put an end to our troubles and that ere long the ship of state may sail away again on the sea of profitable businessbusiness both profitable for the employer and the employe.

What Is Really the Matter.

The Sunday Call, of Easton, Penna., has taken up the cudgels against the investigator, and the investigator of the investigator, in a most encouraging style. Let us hope that a few of the large publications in some of our great centers, which exercise such a potent influence in the education and acceleration of public opinion, may join with the Call, and that the agitating legislator who seeks only his own aggrandizement may be relegated to his proper sphere. Says The Call:

Interference With "Big Business."

"There has grown up within the past decade a demand for an interference by the government with what is termed "big business." There are United States commissions, composed almost all of lawyers and "experts" just out of college, whose official duty is to tell those who have their money in an enterprise or in a big business how the same must be conducted or carried on. These learned commisfor the people-find it

sioners who pretend to be acting necessary, if they would hold their positions and draw their salaries, to keep themselves in the limelight. To do this they must, forsooth, keep nagging those who are doing the country's "big business" until the men who are in these "big business" enterprises have little time to attend to anything except court trials. There was a time when men who did a