The New England magazine . the explosion. Themen used several pounds of forty per cent,nitroglycerine. An electric battery servedto discharge the cap, and you may be sure that we were all well out of the way at thetime it went off. Close upon the diggers came thegainers—men whose business it wasto prepare the poles for the cross-arms,stripping the great chestnut shafts and cut-ting the places into which the arms the gainers are the pole-set-ters, twenty or more in number under theold method, though in this party only fouror five were necessary. That last statementcalls attention to
The New England magazine . the explosion. Themen used several pounds of forty per cent,nitroglycerine. An electric battery servedto discharge the cap, and you may be sure that we were all well out of the way at thetime it went off. Close upon the diggers came thegainers—men whose business it wasto prepare the poles for the cross-arms,stripping the great chestnut shafts and cut-ting the places into which the arms the gainers are the pole-set-ters, twenty or more in number under theold method, though in this party only fouror five were necessary. That last statementcalls attention to an interesting everybody has seen along suburbanhighways a gang of twenty or thirty menstruggling with pike-poles against a hugestick of timber, seeking to pry it into anupright position, and most of us have spec-ulated on what would happen if one or twoof the men weakened under the load andthe big club should come down upon thewhole crowd. In this particular construction-party the 326 NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE. The new method of lifting a pole. Two horses and four men can now do the work of twenty— using the pole-derrick fastened to a heavy wagon pike-pole has been laid aside. An appli-ance is used — one simple enough, butevidently the work of a genius — whichsaves much of the labor and most of thepains. This is a pole-derrick, hitched to aheavy wagon, over which it straddles withits twenty-eight foot spars like one of theequiangular triangles we used to demon-strate in high school. This apparatus ismade fast by guying with wire rope to near-by trees, or, failing the trees, to crowbarsdriven into the ground. When in position,it is capable of standing the weight of thetwo-thousand-pound pole as it is swungupward by means of a line attached justabove the centre of gravity and connectingover a pulley at the top of the triangle witha pair of horses down the road. As theteam starts on its steady, even pull the stickswings clear of the ground and a couple ofmen are
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