The Moving Picture Weekly (1916-1917)

THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY 27 How Rufus Steele Came to Wrile "The Eagle's Wings These three were the Waterfliet arsenal in New York State, the Frankfort arsenal at Philadelphia, and that at Watertown, Mass. "At the first are made the largest guns for the army and some of those for the navy. The shop is 1,000 feet long, 200 feet wide, and 150 feet high. It is the most enormous place I ever saw in my life. Everything from a 3-inch gun to the new 16-inch gun is made there. The 14-inch gun is the large gun more commonly used, and this is fifty feet long, and weighs seventy tons. Yet the great cranes pick up these monsters and handle them as if they were pencils. It takes four men, one to operate the crane, and the others to handle the cables, which are so heavy that three men have all they can do to lift the sling and place it around the gun. "If you told most people that they use wire in making a 14-inch gun, they would be considerably surprised. Yet there are 125 miles of square steel wire used in every gun of this calibre. The gun barrel is not a solid piece; it is composed of a core which is wrapped with the wire. Then a jacket is shrunk into place, after which this is again wrapped with wire. This gives the gun far greater strength, though its life is short enough at best. To make the 16-inch monsters, an addition of 75 feet had to be made to the enormous shop. A complete idea of the immensity of this plant can hardly be gained by the pictures in 'The Eagle's Wings,' but the ease with which the monsters are handled is graphically illustrated — and for the first time. "At the Frankfort arsenal all sorts of ammunition are manufactured, from 14-inch shells to revolver cartridges. Many women are employed here, and are seen at work in the film. The machines seem positively human, especially that which puts the finished cartridges into a clip. A hand grabs them in the most life-like fashion. The girls work with lightning rapidity, especially the inspectors of the bullets. The nickle is pressed into shape and the lead forced into that, and each must be absolutely perfect. The girls run them through their hands at terrific speed, and then they are reinspected, and if a girl has made more than five errors in a day, that is, has passed more then five bullets with, to us, imperceptible defects, she is penalized. "When we wanted to take the making of the time fuses, in one of the arsenals, the officer in charge made an objection. He said that the place had just celebrated its one hundredth anniversary, and no camera, in all that time, had ever been inside the plant. He could not understand how By Peter Pepper Continued from Page 11 we had obtained permission to take them there now. "Of course we had to take our pictures by artificial light, and so we were careful not to go where powder was being used. In one place, on the third floor, there were about a hundred girls and men assembling the fuse parts. Inside a glass partition there were more men, working at machines with an iron apron in front, something like a harness-maker's machine. They were putting the explosives into the shells in rings, using a press. They gazed through the glass at our picture-taking, in astonishment at seeing cameras in the plant. One man was so interested that he became careless. When the press came down, the plunger struck on the edge of a ring and a spark found its way to the powder. There was an explosion, and when it was over, though there had been two hundred and two people in the place, just two had stood their ground — the cameraman and myself. This was not an indication of superior bravery on our part — it merely meant that we did not know enough to run I I confess that after I had heard that the man was not hurt, I had to go out and get a breath of air. "Then we went to the room where the biggest shells are loaded. A weird place! There were little rooms, eight feet square, all divided from each other by walls eight feet thick. The idea of this arrangement is that if one man is blown to bits, all his neighbors won't go, too! A comfortable place to work in. They told us, however, that it was not particularly dangerous, and that we might set up our camera here. There was dust on the wall. I rubbed some of it oflP on my fingers. " 'What's this?' I asked. " 'Just dust,' they answered. "But I saw plainly that it was powder dust, and I decided that we would take no pictures by artificial light there. "The room where the shells are loaded with the highest explosive is the strangest place of all. The men move with the precision of machines. There is absolute stillness, they do not even talk among themselves. When we entered they carefully laid down their work and turned to look at us, but no one spoke or smiled, as they had done in the other rooms. Outside, one could hear the constant 'put-put-put' of rifle fire out on the ranges where they test cartridges — so and so many out of every thousand— all day long. It was one of the queerest impressions of my life, but we took no pictures there! "At Watertown, Mass., near Boston, the gun carriages and biggest shells are made. Here was obtained the beautiful picture which is called in the film 'Blowing Steel.' No one has ever photographed these things before, and in all human probability no one will ever do so again, for the plants are to be reorganized and then they will close up tight again. Prominent engineers who have seen these pictures have expressed the opinion that they are the finest industrial pictures which have ever been taken. The secret of this is that they are close-ups, which show every detail of the process with almost greater impressiveness than if one were looking at the real thing. But there are other remarkable features of the picture. "Every one has spoken of the reproduction of the raid on Columbus, with its extraordinary representation of Villa. In the scenes in Washington the House and the Senate are reproduced with such fidelity that a Congressman or a Senator would feel at home there. Men have been chosen who physically resemble conspicuous figures. Champ Clark and VicePresident Marshall, for example. "The picture gains immensely when we realize that such a scheme as it protrays for the industrial preparedness of the country, has actually been formulated, and that the listing of the plants adapted to the carrying out of it, has actually beg^n. To many who have seen it, the most impressive thing in it is the dissolving view of the six men, representing raw material, into the one soldier thoroughly equipped and the five industrials who are needed to equip him. Many people do not realize that, if it ever, comes to an actual test of this scheme, it will not be the men of brains and soft hands who will be exempt from military service in the trenches, but the huskies who wield the hammer and the honest workingman, who in previous wars has been the one to be called first." JULIAN BEGINS NEW FEATURE. «[^ARCEL'S Birthday Present," suggested by a play of the same name, is the next production to be undertaken by Director Rupert Julian who has just finished the masterpiece "The Bugler of Algiers." The original play was written by H. R. Durant and has been scenarioized in five reels by E. J. Clawson. Julian will not play any of the roles.