Rocket Ride

On July 4, no golden tourbillions will cascade fire down the night sky. There will be no blinding saucisson shells, no bengolas, no spidery pyro cuttlefish, no earwhacking bombshells, no climactic Niagara Falls. The U.S. is without its tradition al fireworks (except for a few bootleg pops) because the whole fireworks indus try has become a sizzling skyrocket.

Best peacetime fireworks year had been 1929. Then the entire industry employed 1,8 1 1 workers, did a $6,500,000 business. In the following years, state after state restricted fireworks. The industry wilted like a burned-out sparkler; total whole sale sales dropped by half. The war sent fireworks manufacture spinning upwards.

Enter Antoneili. Today about 30,000 workers turn out $150,000,000 worth of munitions and pyrotechnic devices yearly. The biggest fireworks manufacturer, Un excelled Manufacturing Co., reported a gross profit of $900,000 (net $188,000) for last year, compared to a 1939 deficit of $44,000. But normally much pyro technic-making is done by small shoe string operators, and they are getting their cut of war work too.

Typical small operator was big, heavy-set Amerigo Antoneili (see cut), born 53 years ago in Farafeliorumpetris, Italy, where his father, Rigoletto, is still Royal Pyrotechnician to the King of Italy. Coming to the U.S. in 1912, Antoneili began to make fireworks in Rochester, eventually employed 30 persons in the peak season, nine the year around (all were Italians trained in Italy where fireworks is an ancient, secretive father-to-son business). He grossed between $25,000 and $40,000 annually. Antonelli's crews traveled around New York fairs, where powder was often mixed on the spot, and pyrotechnicians were never sure whether they would get a spectacular effect or lose their eyebrows. Five days after Pearl Harbor, Antonelli landed a $1,005,000 contract to assemble incendiary bombs. Subsequently he got $2,000,000 more.

Exit Antonelli. Generally, the fireworks industry did a noble production job. But not Antonelli. Fortnight ago military police marched into his powder shacks, jailed Antonelli and six superintendents for "deliberate and malicious" faulty manufacture of grenades and incendiary bombs for the U.S. At the grand jury hearing last week, workers testified that they had been instructed to skimp on powder except when the "Boy Scouts" (Government inspectors) were looking, that Antonelli had said: "The bombs are no damn good anyway. Just get out the production."

Rest of the industry is too busy to pay much attention to the fizzled Antonelli. Some of the five big fireworks companies --Unexcelled; National Fireworks Co. of Boston; M. Backes and Sons of Wallingford, Conn.; Triumph Fusee and Fireworks Co. of Elkton, Md.; Essex Specialty Co. of Berkley Heights, NJ.--are operating shell-loading plants. Others are turning out: huge parachute flares for the Air Forces; signal lights, both flare and smoke for the Navy and Merchant Marine ; incendiary bombs for Chemical Warfare; huge cannon crackers for the infantry to toss over the heads of soldiers in maneuvers, condition them for gunfire.

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