TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE daily record of accidents teems with accounts of disasters caused by the electric light wires that are now so common in the cities. A despatch from Chicago tells how, on Wednesday evening, Charles B. Shultz, an electrician, stood on the top round of a ladder fourteen feet from the sidewalk, adjusting a dimly burning electric light. Losing his balance, he grasped both rods which support the lamp and through which a current was passing. He was unable to let go and hung writhing to the swinging lamp until someone had stopped the engine which supplied the current, when he fell to the sidewalk dead. Firemen are exposed to similar perils all the time, and will be so long as such wires are permitted to be strung overhead. The remedy is to put them under ground.

SPEAKING about dust explosions, says The Milling World, a case from Germany is worthy of notice. A sack of flour, falling down stairs, opened and scattered the contents in a cloud through the lower room, where a burning gas flame set fire to the dust, causing an explosion which lifted a part of the roof of the mill and broke almost all the windows. There can be no doubt that the majority of dust explosions are, like mine disasters, due to open lights, and as this danger can be practically avoided by the use of the incandescent electric lights, there really seems to be no valid reason why it should not be introduced more generally, as those establishments which have used it express themselves in its favor. No matter how carefully other lights are guarded, an absolute safety, as long as the globes are intact, is offered only by the incandescent lamps, where the atmosphere or the dust has no access whatever to the flame. The above instance teaches also how little is necessary to start an explosion in the cleanest mill, so long as open lights are used ; how much greater must the danger be in establishments where the air is constantly charged with dust, and where cleanliness is looked upon as of minor importance!