Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1889 — He Changed the Subject. [ARTICLE]

He Changed the Subject.

New York Sun. Customer (to grocer’s clerk) —“Isn’t this young Mr. Cfusic?” Clerk—“ That is my cognomen, air.” Customer —“I thought you were going into journalism on leaving college?” Clerk —“I *did for a little while. You will find tbat codfish delicious air, anything else to-day” ’

Beating the Burglar. New York Buu. An officer of one of the great safemaking concerns talked very frankly about his business the other day. Said he: “We do not make a safe th& we would guarantee against burglars. They are as smart as we are. Safe making is like the eclence of warfare. Each new improvement is met by something that beats it, add so another ktep in advance has to be taken. We have to keep ahead of the burglar, we have got so far as to make safes of solid metal and tremgndons weight that will insure against drills and all other tools oMortyeight hours in an open lot, but we can not insure them against tremendous explosives. Good burglars carry few tools now* They take high explosives in compact form and little arrangements for blowing or patting the explosives in the cracks of the safes. They - used to use powder, but it is not powerful enough for blowing loose solid doors that weigh many tong. We first got ahead of them by putting India rubber in the places where the doors fit into the frames, hut they beat that now by pouring in an acid that eats the rubber out. They put in small wedges increasing in size till they make an opening, then puttv up all thi* rest *f the crack, put in their explosive and attach a fuse. “We do beat their drills, though. We make the safes of combined layers of hard and soft metal. The drills that work through hard metal will not work in softer metal, and, as they can not tell which is which, or where each metal is, they are defied. The best of our devices, though, is the use of little steel balls in the walls of burglar-proof vaults. When the. drills strick them the get no hold, and even if a ball should be held and broken through another would fall in its place.”