the same.
Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things,
Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell
Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a square deal."

Sure Pop reached up to say something in Bob's ear as they went on to the
chipping yard, where long rows of men were trimming down the rough steel
castings with chisels driven by compressed-air hammers.

"Did you ever see anything like it, Bob, the way this 'square deal' and
'fair play' idea gets into their systems, once they wake up to the
possibilities of Safety First?"

"It certainly does," said Bob. "I thought of that, too. It's what that
tailor told the boys in the clothing factory, the day we got our
uniforms, and it's just what the foreman in that machine shop told us,
too."

"Yes, sir," said Sure Pop, "the spirit of fair play means everything to
a fellow who's any good at all--it's the very life of the Boy Scout law,
you know."

Joe was looking hard at the chippers.

"Every one of those men wear glasses! Isn't that queer!"

"It's all the difference between a blind man and a wage earner," was the
way the steel man looked at it. "When those steel chips fly into a man's
eyes it's all over but the sick money." He turned to little Sure Pop
again. "There it is again, Colonel--another of the simplest ideas a man
could imagine--just putting goggles on our chippers and emery wheel
workers--but it has saved hundreds and hundreds of eyes, and every eye
or pair of eyes means some man's living--and the living of a family."

"Splendid idea," nodded the little Colonel--just as if he, the Spirit of
Safety, had not thought it all out years before, and put it into the
minds of men! "Do you ever have any trouble getting the men to wear
them?"

"Plenty! Most of the men treated it as a joke at first. Then, gradually,
they began to notice that the men who wore theirs on their _hats_ (the
rule is that they must wear goggles while at this work or lose their
jobs), those were the men who lost their eyes. Several of the first men
to be blinded after the new rule was posted were those very ones, the
chaps that had made the most fun of the goggles. Then the others began
to wake up.

"Over in my office, I've several hundred pairs of goggles that have had
one or both lenses smashed by flying bits of steel--and every pair has
saved an eye, in some cases both eyes. Seems sort of worth while, eh,
Colonel?"

It wa