Notice safety door at the girl's elbow. A flash in this room will not communicate to an adjoining room. The room is heated by overhead hot-air heating system.] [Illustration: FULMINATE COMPOSITION CHARGING, STEEL SHIELD, WITH WINDOW OF HEAVY GLASS TO THE RIGHT. Girl operating the same device on the left. The view shows the bulkhead between the operations.] [Illustration: SHELL PAINTING. This view shows the exhaust hood open and turntable lowered. Operator raises turntable by foot lever and closes hood before spraying.] [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF SHELL-PAINTING ROOM. Shell is received on the elevated platform and trucked to the edge on hand trucks, where the trolley hook just enters the eyebolt as shell is removed from truck, thus making it unnecessary to lift the shell during any operation in this room.] All fixed ammunition was assembled at the shell-filling plants, making it necessary to install at these points storage capacity and equipment to handle the propellant powder as well as to fill the high-explosive shell. Boosters and fuses were loaded at separate plants and shipped to the shell-filling assembly places to be packed for shipment with the shell for transportation overseas. The cost of a loaded 75-millimeter shell with the fuse and propellant charge ready to be fired is about $11. Such a shell contains a little over 1½ pounds of high explosive, which costs $1. The loading and assembling of the complete round costs $4. A loaded 155-millimeter shell complete with fuse costs about $30, exclusive of the propellant charge of powder, which is loaded separately. A shell of this caliber holds about 14¼ pounds of high explosive, which costs $10, while the loading and assembling costs $4. The 75-millimeter and 155-millimeter shell were used in the greatest quantities on the European battle fields, and at the time of the signing of the armistice our American loading plants were concentrating on filling ammunition for guns of these two calibers. The nature of the work carried on at these shell-loading plants, of course, made the danger of a disaster ever present. Prior to our entry into the war an explosion at the Canadian Car & Foundry Co.'s plant, Kingsland, N. J., resulted in the entire destruction of the plant with large loss of life. In October, 1918, the Morgan plant of the T. A. Gillespie Co., South Amboy, N. J., was wiped out by an explosion in which about 100 employees lost their lives. Plans for rebuilding this plant, had progressed far when the armistice was signed. In the fall of 1917, 40 people were killed in an explosion at the Eddystone Loading Plant, Eddystone, Pa.