During this period I also learned that Lingg had not been the first and only one to experiment with dynamite in Chicago. I learned that as far back as 1881 there had been some desperate men among the Socialists, but by keeping their secrets to themselves they had managed to keep the general body of the party and the public at large in ignorance of their clandestine operations. They had even experimented with dynamite, hoping to perfect it so that it could be handled with safety; but somehow they had failed to discover means for making its use practicable. They had adopted various expedients to test its strength when confined in a small implement, and in their labors several had received serious injuries. Four or five men are living to-day who were crippled by the rash and ineffectual experiments. One Communist was particularly active in studying the properties of the explosive and devising a plan to make it serviceable in a combat with the police. This man had fled from France after the downfall of the Paris Commune, and thought himself quite capable of getting dynamite down to such a fine point that when his new-found brethren in Anarchy started their revolution they would be more successful than his French associates had been. He finally succeeded in making an explosive similar to dynamite, but which was found very unsafe to handle. After some of the Anarchists had tried it and got hurt, they refrained from further meddling, and dropped both the Frenchman and his explosive. For along time thereafter dynamite was not heard of. A man living on West Lake Street, however, still entertained hopes, and finally supplied some of the Anarchists with a dynamite prescription by which they could use it with great effect. In imparting his knowledge he told them to keep the “stuff” hermetically sealed, for if the air reached it an explosion would surely follow. Some found this true, to their sorrow. Then a man residing on West Twelfth Street stepped to the front and supplied what he claimed could be successfully used. One Sunday some half dozen Anarchists went out to Riverside to test the new compound by putting some of it under a lot of stone near the Desplaines River, but, to their surprise and mortification, they found that it was so weak that it scarcely made a noise.