""Those," he told me, "are America"s great mills. In them and the other factories, thousands upon thousands of workmen are killed by accident every year--by accident, Colonel, not in battle.
""And that is not all," the King went on. "These blue lines mark the trails of the great iron horses--the railroads. Last year these iron horses trampled out thousands of lives in America alone. And all because the Americans haven"t learned to _think_ Safety!"
"That was too much for me. I pleaded with him to let me come straight to America and help end that awful suffering. But the King shook his head.
""The more haste, the less speed, Colonel. Before you can help America, you must help yourself; and the quickest way to do that is first to teach Safety to our own people. Let me see you win your spurs here in the Borderland, and then--to America you go!"
""Teach Safety to our own people?" I repeated, a bit puzzled. "How ought I to go about it, Sire?"
""Go through all the Borderland," said the King, "and muster an army of Safety Scouts. Train them to know signs that spell DANGER, as an Indian scout reads the signs of the trail. Teach them to report every danger signal they see--and they will teach their neighbors, and so the knowledge will spread. But above all, be sure your Safety Scouts are well chosen."
""But how?" I asked. "Shall I pick out wise people?"
""Colonel of the Scouts," said the King, shrewdly, "the wisest are not always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck to go under a ladder"?"
""Never," I owned up. "I"ve always thought of it as just a proverb."
""True. But proverbs without reason would be like trees without roots.
Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the climber--and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just then. And sometimes a painter"s heavy paintpot falls--and woe to him who walks under the ladder then, be he the wisest man in the kingdom. Now go, and one moon from tonight bring me a full regiment of Safety Scouts."
"So out through the Borderland I went, saying over and over to myself, "It is bad luck to go under a ladder," and waiting for the King"s meaning to be made plain.
"First I went to the home of a great wizard, the wisest man in the Borderland. As I neared the house, the door opened and the wizard came out, a heavy book of wisdom under his arm.
"He had a long black pipe in his mouth. Pulling out a match, he lighted his pipe, threw the burning match over his shoulder, and hurried on toward the city.
"I started to run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye.
There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the tangle of leaves!"
Bob jumped to his feet as if he had heard the clang of a fire bell.
"Good enough for him, the old fossil! Did it burn his house down?"
"Came mighty near it," said Sure Pop, looking at the scars on his hands.
"He had a sick wife in there all alone, and if I hadn"t happened along just then--
"Well, anyway," he went on cheerfully, "I got the fire out at last. And the King"s meaning was made plain--it is one thing to have wisdom and another thing to use it. So I didn"t ask the wizard to join the Safety Scouts, after all."
"I should say NOT!" cried Bob and Betty with one voice. "But where _did_ you find your Scouts?" added Bob.
"Well, the next idea I had was to ask mothers, for mothers give up much of their time, anyhow, to keeping children out of harm"s way. I found one whose house looked so trim and neat, and her children so clean and happy, that I had almost made up my mind to invite her to join--when my eye fell on a shining butcher knife hanging beside the kitchen table, where even the baby could reach it without half trying.
"And that wasn"t all I saw. There was a saucer of fly poison on the window sill! Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water to scrub the steps, when the bra.s.s knocker on the door gave a thump, and she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she talked to a peddler!
"Just then the baby came toddling across the room. He got safely past the scalding water and the fly poison, but the next moment I saw him climb up on a chair, open the medicine chest, and grab a bottle from the bottom shelf--the bottom shelf, Betty, of _all_ shelves in the house!
Out came the cork, and up went the bottle to his lips, just as I saw to my horror a skull and crossbones on its label. Like a flash I--"
"What"s a skull and crossbones, Sure Pop?" broke in Betty.
"Poison sign!" explained Bob, shortly. "Don"t interrupt! Go on, Sure Pop!"
"Like a flash," said Sure Pop, "I bounded to the baby"s side and s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle away. I tell you, I did some earnest thinking as I left that house. I realized that it would never do to ask that mother to join our army of Safety Scouts, for until she herself had formed the Safety habit, she could hardly be expected to teach Safety to others.
The adventure of the baby and the poison bottle had opened my eyes to the real meaning of the King"s words about finding Scouts who could read the little signs that spell DANGER.
"By the way, I told the poison bottle story to a great doctor the other day, and now he"s doing his best to get a law pa.s.sed requiring that all poison bottles be of some special shape, different from any other bottles. That will make them much safer, even in the dark."
"But how can they be made different in shape?" asked Betty. "What shape, Sure Pop?"
"Three-cornered, probably. That certainly would be a life-saving law, if he could only get it pa.s.sed. Just think! There were several thousand deaths in the United States last year from that one cause alone--just from mistaking bottles of poison for other medicine."
"But what I can"t see," said Bob, "is how anybody _could_ mistake a poison bottle. They all have skulls and crossbones on them, haven"t they?"
"Stop and think a moment," said the Safety Scout. "Suppose baby has croup in the night, and mother is roused out of a sound sleep and rushes to the medicine chest; she"s only half awake--the light is dim--poor baby is gasping and choking--not a moment to lose. She isn"t likely to stop and read labels very carefully, is she? But if she felt her hand close over a _three-cornered_ bottle, it would wake her up in a hurry.
Even in the darkness and in the excitement--if she had been trained to think of a three-cornered bottle as meaning DANGER, perhaps death--it would stay her hand as surely as a red light stops an engine."
"I suppose," said Betty, "that when folks are badly hurt, or awfully, awfully sick, other folks lose their heads and don"t know what they really _are_ doing."
"Betty, you"ve hit the nail right on the head. Now that"s why we must fix things so safety won"t depend on level heads or time to think. The danger signal must pop right into our heads from force of habit. The sooner American boys and girls--yes, and the grown-ups, too--get the Safety habit, the sooner "Safety First" will change from phrase into fact.
"The first day I ever spent in America opened my eyes to the price your country is paying for the word "guess." The more I studied the situation, the oftener I noticed folks saying "I guess" where they should have said "_I know_." In nearly all of America"s accidents, guesswork is the real cause.
"The moment I realized that, I said to myself, "It"s high time America dropped guesswork out of its daily life." My work was cut out for me: I began right then and there to study out ways of getting folks to stop guessing, once for all, _and be sure_--sure pop!"
_Stop guessing, once for all, and be sure._ --SURE POP
[Ill.u.s.tration]
ADVENTURE NUMBER FOUR
THE PERSISTENT PIGMY
"Say, Sure Pop!" burst out Bob, as the Safety Scout paused in his story.
"A whole regiment--did you realize that was a lot of Scouts to get together in one month?"
"Did I?" echoed Sure Pop with a chuckle. "_Did_ I? Well, if I didn"t when I set out on my search, I did before the first day was over. I had lost out on the wisest man in the Borderland--_he_ wouldn"t do, for all his wisdom. He only served to remind me of what the King had said, that the wisest are not always the safest."
"Sure--sure pop!" Bob broke in again. "But how did you ever get a whole regiment together in one month? You simply couldn"t disappoint the King, you know."
"You"re right, Bob, I simply couldn"t. So as fast as I did find one that would do for the army, I set him to work finding others--pa.s.sing the good work along. I soon saw I could never make good with the King by trying to do it all myself, and I do believe the King knew all along that there was only one way a really big work could be done--by getting _everybody_ stirred up and enthusiastic. So I turned each new Scout loose to hunt for more.
"You"d laugh to know who was the first Scout enrolled. As I slipped out of the poison-bottle house, I saw a funny little pigmy hurry out of a cottage across the lane and go z-z-zam! down the front steps. We"d had a nip of frost the night before, and the slippery steps took him by surprise. For a moment he stood rubbing his head, with his merry little face puckered up into a comical sort of bowknot. Then he picked his way slowly up the steps into the house.