Accident or Villainy?

The employes of Trojan Powder Co., in the rolling country northwest of Allentown, Pa., had just settled down to their hazardous day's work one morning last week. They were making sensitive detonators for blasting, TNT for the Navy, smokeless powder for the Army. It was around 8:30 when they heard it, a sound anyone could recognize, the dull boom like the slamming of an underground door. Sixty miles to the east, at Woodbridge, N. J., the dust and debris settled over what had been the plant of United Railway Signal Corp., over a horrible group of ragged bundles that had been two men, six women.

An hour later, with an eye-searing flash, the detonator house of the Allentown plant blew up. showered splintered wood on the bodies of three workmen.

Meanwhile, 260 miles west, near the Ohio State line at Edinburg, Pa., it was the Burton Powder Works' (American Cyanamid Co.) turn. A half-ton of dynamite (one of the stablest of explosives) blew up. Dead: the three men within reach of its thunderous punch.

Three explosions within an hour were a little too much. The U. S. public sat up and took notice. Such official bloodhounds as Congressman Martin Dies had long been shouting "Sabotage!" Maybe Martin Dies really had something. Many a citizen and many a newspaper, taking stock of the past 90 days, was hard put to it to charge off what had happened to the inevitable accidents attendant on speeded-up industrial activity.

There were five blasts in U. S. explosives plants in the first five months of 1940, then none until Aug. 7, when things began to happen fast, 1) At King Powder Co., Kings Mills, Ohio, which makes dynamite, blasting powder, three were killed. 2) At the Atlas plant, Joplin, Mo., which turns out 1,000,000 lb. of TNT monthly for Great Britain, on Aug. 16, five were killed. 3) At Du Font's dynamite plant at Gibbstown, N. J., six days later, four were killed. 4) At the Hercules plant at Kenvil, N. J., in the biggest explosion since World War I, on Sept. 12, 51 were killed. 5) At the Army's Picatinny Arsenal, on Sept. 23, two were killed.

Other things had happened. Some may have been accidents, but together they did not look accidental: explosions and fires in an oil-tank field in Ohio, an oil well in Oklahoma, fire in the uncompleted fourth floor of the War Department's office building in Washington, gasoline found in fire extinguishers in the Bath (Me.) Ship-building yards, where Navy destroyers are made, fire destroying some $1,000,000 worth of Army stores in the Municipal Auditorium at Atlanta, Ga., emery dust in precision tools at Todd Seattle Drydocks.

Busy but discreetly mum were black-browed John Edgar Hoover and his FBIndians. Months ago they warned U. S. industrialists that sabotage might lie ahead, handed out a printed pamphlet on how to head it off by greater vigilance, better plant supervision. Until they could nab an active saboteur, they had to keep their evidence to themselves. Up to last week, they had apparently nabbed none. Not thus inhibited was Martin Dies. Last week he announced that he and his committee had compiled a fat tome on sabotage agents, intimated that shortly he would release it to press and public. It may need fast editing to be up to date. Tin's week, the main building of the American Cyanamid plant at Bridgeville, Pa. was wrecked by an explosion; the tiny plant of Pennsylvania Chemical Corp. at Johns town was destroyed by fire.

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