 The cavalcade of America presented by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Tonight we announce with pride that the Secretary of the Navy has awarded to the DuPont Company the coveted Navy E for excellence, being one of 14 American companies so honored for outstanding production of materials for national defense. This award so eagerly sought by officers and men of the American Navy is another indication of the all-out spirit of the men and women of DuPont in working toward a goal which has become the common objective of the American people. And now we bring you our play for tonight. A story of Clifford Holland, the great tunnel builder. Our drama written by Robert Talman stars William Johnstone of the cavalcade players in the title role. Our orchestra and the original musical score are under the direction of Don Buries. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents William Johnstone as Clifford Holland on the cavalcade of America. Battery Place Manhattan, a few years after the turn of the century. A horse-drawn ambulance careens around the corner and draws up before a little crowd of people. All right, let me through here. Let me through please. Is this the patient's office? This is him, doctor. Good alcoholism, huh? Down here we call it the blind stag is that. A little dizzy, that's all. Be all right in just a moment. Let me along. You better come along, get sobered up. A little hospital treatment won't do you any harm. No, no, hospitals all wrong. Mr. Holland says never let them take you to the hospital. It's the hospital of the clink for you, Mike. So you better go along in the ambulance. I'll help you get him in there tonight. I'll take his feet. Here we go. Just a minute. Just a minute there. Now what? Where are you taking this man? To the hospital, Mr. Holland. To the street from this condition? A hospital is the worst place you could take him. You think he's drunk, don't you? Thank you, Dr. Holland. Listen, Mr. Holland. Well, he's not drunk. Just smell his breath. Say, I guess he isn't at that. You a friend of the stag? Mr. Holland is one of the engineers on the new tunnel over there. Yes, you see, doctor, this man works for us as a sandhog, a compressed air worker. He's suffering from one of the forms of case on disease, the staggers. The staggers, that's it. You tell him, Mr. Holland. Anyway, you mustn't take him to a hospital. You'll see that he gets the proper treatment. But I can't turn an ambulance case over to you. Not even if it means the difference between life and death. I don't get it. There's only one treatment for what ails this man. He's got to be taken to the tunnel and put back under the compressed air for a while. Are you sure, then? If it's anything about tunnels, you can trust Mr. Holland, doctor. Okay, okay. But the responsibility of not going to the hospital is his. Not mine and not yours, Mr. Holland. I understand, doctor. Thank you. George, we'll be out of these staggers in no time. Much better. And keep your head clear. Hold your nose and force the air back to your airdrums, remember? Yeah. Yeah, my head's clear and I'm fine. What happened anyway? Something that's not going to happen again on this job. Not if I can help it, Mike. Well, Holland, I simply can't do it. The way things are going now, I'll be lucky if I break even on my part of this job. Then you shouldn't have ended such a low bid. You're not building a post office, you know? You're helping to build a tunnel under a river with men working under a pressure equal to three atmospheres. You should be prepared for anything. May I help it if my competitors are optimists? There's another word for that kind of optimism. And the word is criminal. That's a pretty harsh way of putting it, Holland. But it's the truth. You knew what you were doing. The last East River tunnel was an example. 3,692 cases of the bends. 20 dead that we know of. No one knows how many crippled or incapacitated for life. These men know what they're doing when they take tunnel job. That's not the point. When you contracted to do this job, you took somewhere between 500 and 1,000 human lives into your hands. If you don't believe that, where will the state start billing you for workman's compensation? That'll be plenty at the present rate. Compensation is something the politicians understand. This plan of yours, four shifts a day, rest periods, three hours. The men will spend half their working time going on and off the job, sitting in those compression chains. And they should. It's the only guarantee against the bends and the staggers and all the other horrors that doctors are pleased to call case on disease. I thought you were an engineer, Holland. You're talking like a social reformer. I'm an engineer, all right. That's why I hate to see waste in any form. Well, you're new to this work. You'll get used to it. Then you refuse to adopt this plan? That, my boy, is exactly the case. I refuse. Howdy, Mr. Holland. How are you, Pat? Mr. Martha, Mr. Holland. You look all in. Little tired, it's all left. Mr. Holland, come on down here. I want you to meet a guy. Oh, yeah, Mike. Glad to see you, Mike. How's it going? Well, if I get the staggers tonight, it'll be from good ride. Well, you better take it easy. Where's this guy you wanted me to meet? Oh, all right here. Timmy Ryan meets Mr. Holland, my boss. Timmy's just visiting. He's a fan-hawk with a Brooklyn crew. Well, glad to meet you, Ryan. How are things going on your side? Away ahead of your crew, Mr. Holland. What about the men? Many cases of the bends? What kind of a tunnel guy do you call this, Mike? We don't talk about them things, Mr. Holland. Sorry, but maybe you ought to talk about it. I said we don't talk about them things, Mr. Holland. You heard me that time, didn't you? Now, listen to him, Ryan. You ain't talking to no Brooklyn star boss. You're talking to a friend of mine. Keep a civil tongue in your head. Mr. Holland wants to talk about the bends, and we talk about the bends. Okay, you asked for it. But now I'm going to let you have it. Listen, take it easy, Ryan. Let me at him. No, Chief New York Sandhawks is going to tell me how to be polite. Break it up, you fellows. I don't want no trouble in this guy. You want him to talk to you? Come outside if you're so anxious to fight. I wouldn't want to shock Mr. Holland. I can see he's a college man. Ryan, I like you. I like a guy with plenty of scrap in him. That's why I think we'd better understand each other right now. Hold these specs in mind a minute, will you, Mike? What are you going to do, Mr. Holland? I want to show your cousin a little something I learned at home. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! What happened? Yeah. Let me give you a hand. Say, Mr. Holland, what else did I teach you in college? All right, boys. This one's on me. Mr. Holland, sir. Oh, yes, yeah. I'm on your hand. Mr. MacMillan sent me over to look for you, sir. I just came off the job. Anything wrong? Everything's wrong, sir. The whole shield's flooded. But what about the men? We all got out in time. Pump's working? Yes, sir, but she floods in fast so we can pump it out. Well, did you try grouting and bagging the leak? We tried everything. Nothing does any good. Say that change for me, Joe. I've got a rush. What are you going to do, Mr. Holland? I don't know, Mike. This is something they didn't teach me at Harvard. Yes, sir. I've just been down there. Well, what are we going to do? We'll have to increase the air pressure to at least 48 pounds. And we'll finish the whole crew, Holland. None of you adopt my plan. Custom them slowly to the pressure. Work them in 30-minute shifts. And increase our labor costs six times. Yes. Yes, it will. You're sure this plan of yours will work? Absolutely. All right, Holland. You win. Have it your way. But believe me, if it doesn't work, it was your idea, Mr. Not Mine. We're going to examine the old figure. What? What's the big idea? I got no hard trouble. Mr. Holland said you got to. Well, then it must be OK. Well, Doc. You'll do. Thanks. And no, not him, Doctor. What's the matter with me? We can't use any fat men, Mr. Holland's orders. I'm a hard worker. I know. But you fellas are going under heavier pressure than most of you have ever worked under. For some reason, a stout man is more susceptible to the bends. It's a matter of the nitrogen in the bloodstream. And what's that? All right, it's a gas. It blows you up, like. Oh! OK, Doctor. Are these other men all right? Sounds good to me. OK, come along. Now, for the benefit of you and no men, we go into the airlock now. You just sit there, and Mr. Holland tells you you can go out the other side. Can we smoke? You can try. Maybe you study the fire eaters in the circus. Well, that's what a cigarette does under pressure. Like that. OK, here we go. Holland. Yes? OK, shut the door. All set now, Mr. Holland. Good. Now, you no men, just watch the others. You'll notice that they hold their noses to force the air back to their air drums. That relieves the pressure on the sinuses, too. Otherwise, your head may get blocked. And I can assure you that's very painful. All right, O'Rourke, turn the bell. All right. Any of you feel any discomfort yet? This is nothing, Mr. Holland. Shall I speed it up? Wait, Mike, wait. This new fellow over here isn't taking you so well. Cut it for a second. All right. You all right? You want to go through with the fellow? Sure. I'm all right. It's better now. Oh, fine. Now, I want you all to watch your reactions carefully from now on. We're getting up to the really high pressure. You better count it off on the gauge there, Mike. All right, here goes. 35, 7, 8, 9, 40. Just stop a second. What? Hold it. Yeah. All right. Go on now. 42, 5, 8. Okay, cut it. Well, how do you feel? I feel swell. Like I had a shell of straight brandy. Well, that's what we've got to look out for. Your bodies are getting several times the normal amount of oxygen. It makes you feel peppy, but your energy burns out sooner. So I want you to let me know the minute you feel the slightest fatigue. Is that understood? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right. Let's get to the job. Go, Mendele, listen very carefully, please. This is the shield. It's been out of operation for a while, so you don't see it under actual operating conditions. These are the hydraulic jacks. They push the shield forward through the muck. The muck comes through these openings like toothpaste coming out of a tube. Now, your job is to clean it away and load it on these cars and keep out of the way of that big crane when they start pulling the new steel sections into place. Well, I guess that's all. Mr. Holland, here is my informant. Do you think I have the right to shovel away the purse of the muck? Sure, I guess so. Why do you want it, Mike? I don't know. I figure there have been so many changes on the job. It's like starting all over again. It's like something they might write in the book. How's it going, Mike? All right. Fine, Mr. Holland. That's fine. Good. You boys all feel all right? All right, Mr. Holland. This is fine. This is cinch. All right, I think you better go up and tell the other ship to get ready. It's probably about as long as we should stay under this pressure. You feel punk too, Mr. Holland? Yeah. In fact, I think I'm coming with you. Well, Mr. Holland, it looks like your plan was working out. Yes. How do you feel now, Mike? I'm tired and chilly. You always do when you're coming out of that air in there. Just tired and chilly, huh? Yeah, that's all. We're back in God's air again, Mr. Holland. How's about something to eat? Sure. Where are we going? All right. You know a little Italian place. Right up on Nassar Street. Mike, Mr. Holland, what is it? I don't know. I feel like I was being stabbed at all my time. Let me go. Just keep loud. It must be... Yeah. I'm afraid it's a fence, Mike. I guess my little plan didn't work out so well after all. Telling you God will punish you for what this tunnel is doing to our men, folks, Mr. sending men down there under the river like rats when you know what's happening to them. Mrs. O'Rourke, I'm trying to tell you we've made tremendous improvements since your son was stricken. Chances of a thing like that happening again are very slight. Oh, so it is, isn't it? And how about my own nephew, Timmy Ryan, who's been struck with a Benz and Fulton Street on his day off only last week? Well, there are still isolated cases. And what do you think you're smart, Mr. Holland, when he found out Timmy had been took to the hospital? What did he do? Well, he comes over there and gives the doctors the cussing out and takes Timmy back into that foul pressure lock that caused all his troubles to begin with. Well, I better look into this. Holland? Yes, what is it? Come into my office, will you? Right away, sir. Oh, I'm telling you, if that man comes in here, I'll not be responsible for my action. Well, calm yourself, Mrs. O'Rourke. At least wait till you hear what he has to say. Oh, he must put my Michael in a hospital bed. You want to see me, sir? Yes, come in, Holland. This is Mrs. O'Rourke. Oh, you're Mike's mother, aren't you? Well, this is a pleasure. The pleasure is your own, Mr. Holland. I'm at the hospital. I'm putting him in the air lock. That's our standard procedure now. First, I heard of it. Your nephew's responding very well, Mrs. O'Rourke. In fact, it's a very interesting case. You talked like my Timmy was a guinea pig. No, Mrs. O'Rourke. There's one important difference between Timmy and a guinea pig. Timmy has a will of his own. He chose to leave the hospital. You mean you talked him into it with your big sound and talk? Well, I can talk big too, Mr. Holland. And the assemblyman in my district says if I want to talk big enough, I can put the lot of you in jail for what you're tunneled under Michael O'Rourke and the others. I don't doubt that you can, Mrs. O'Rourke. But what about Mike? Would he want you to? Maybe not for that. Don't change what you've done to him and the others as I see it. I can see it, doesn't it? But it should, shouldn't it? What do you mean? Would you rather have Mike digging a ditch somewhere or doing something he thinks is important? Oh, you're trying to get me mixed up. No, I'm not. But why? Why does it have to be like this, Mr. Holland? Why can't people be safe and live their lives? Oh, it's men like you that cause all the trouble in the world. People was just as happy without a tunnel. Why do you do it? If I knew the answer to that question, Mrs. O'Rourke, I wouldn't be building a tunnel. I'd be sitting on a cloud telling the wind which way to blow. What a bad duty, sir. Mike, I knew you'd be back in the job before we hold through. Had with Tim Ryan me causing the tunnel, sir. Well, how's that? Tim and his bragging. Oh, his gang tunneling from Brooklyn was the head of our gang, tunneling from Manhattan. It ain't true, is it, Mr. Holland? Well, if it is, it won't be for long with you back in the job. Are you coming below, sir? Yes, I thought I'd have a look in. See how things are going. Come on, let's go. Oh, uh, find a way, Mike. Did they give you that bag you're supposed to carry? Yeah, oh, sure, sure, Tim. What's it all about? Well, read what it says on it. Compressed air worker. If this man is stricken with bends or staggers in the street, do not send him to a hospital. Send him at once to Brooklyn Tunnel Hospital Lock. I think that's a good idea, don't you? Yes, I do. That stands to reason. Say you've learned a lot of things since I've been gone, haven't you, Mr. Holland? Yes, Mike. I'm afraid we have. You bombed out of my way there. Mike O'Rourke's gonna bolt this section in place. Hey, when'd you get back? Never mind that. Hand me that lug, you lug. Here you are, Mike. Thank you kindly. Hey, Mike, look out. He's buckling there. It should be the big one, too. All right. Stay back from that opening, all of you. Keep quiet. What is it, Mike? I don't know, Mr. Holland. Tim, hand me a bag of that straw. Yeah. Here's the move, Mike. No use, Mr. Holland. Don't do no good. But this guard just sucks into there like it was a... Come down from there, Mike. Okay, I... We get a soft spot in the play. The air pressure on the shield must have made a perfect vent pipe to the bed of the river. Mike and the others sucked right into it. Hey, the poor guy. That means there won't be no tunnel, Mr. Holland? Yes, yes. No, no, no. There'll be a tunnel. I guess we can stop that hole by dumping a clay blanket on the barge on top. Right now, I'm not thinking about the tunnel. I'm thinking of those men. Funny. I've been looking forward to holding through for weeks. Now that the day is here, my heart's not in it. Yeah, I guess I know what you're thinking. Mike and the other boys. Yeah. Well, I guess we may as well go on below. All right. Hey, Mr. Holland. Wait for me. Mike! You didn't think you were going to hold through without me now, did you, Mr. Holland? But you're dead. You can't be Mike. Dead I was or so I thought, sir. But what happened? Come on, tell us. Well, when I left you fellows, I didn't know anything more than a little zingo. I popped like a cork up through the water. Might you near scare the crew of Jersey Colbarge out of their wits? What way have you been since then, Mike? Well, I wouldn't want it known generally, Mr. Holland, but I've been in the kind of nut house over in Jersey. Trying to convince a gang of doctors that I'm not crazy, but I really did pop out of the river bed. I hate to see it in your face, but this is the first time I was ever glad to see a relative from Brooklyn. Clifford Milburn Holland had achieved in his lifetime what engineers had been attempting since Ralph Dodd planned the world's first sub-aqueous tunnel under the Thames River in 1798. But Clifford Holland's greatest monument is not any of the six great tunnels built under his guidance or even the amazing Hudson River tunnel which bears his name, but rather the medical report on the construction of his last tunnel completed the year he died at the age of 41. Of the 2,500 sand hogs who drove the famed Holland Tunnel through to completion, not one met death due to compressed air. The Cavalcade of America thanks William Johnstone and the Cavalcade players for their performance of the story of Clifford Holland. In addition to his great contribution to the safety of men on the job, one of Holland's achievements was greater mechanical speed in the assembling of tunnel segments made possible by an automatic ratchet which he himself perfected. Today both safety and speed are of vital importance in all aspects of national defense and in the field of production science is playing a major role. Now in our story of chemistry at work in our world we're going to tell you about a new explosive rivet that is speeding up airplane construction. A rivet is a pin that clamps two sheets of metal together. It may be large like the white hot steel rivets used in putting up a structural steel building or it may be smaller than the tip of your little finger. These small rivets made of aluminum alloy are what are used to fasten an airplane together. Here is good news of a startling innovation. An explosive rivet perfected by Dupont is speeding up American aircraft production today. Now being manufactured in commercial quantities this rivet is of an entirely new type. A small charge of high explosive is locked away in a hollow at the end of the shank. Applied to the head of the rivet by a specially designed electric gun detonates the charge. The explosion expands the charged end of the shank and forms a blind head setting the rivet. Numerous safety tests have shown that these rivets in the hands of trained operators are very safe to handle and may be used without fear of injury. Airplanes of all metal construction require some 40,000 to 500,000 rivets per plane according to size. This riveting job is one of the most exacting and tedious confronting plane builders. For example, the new B-19 Douglas bomber, the largest ship of its kind ever built has something like 3 million rivets. Gang riveting machines, automatic hole punching and rivet driving devices and high amperage spot welding are used wherever they can be but by and large these shortcuts can be used only in places that allow access to both sides. And engineers estimate that from 800 fastening points to a metal pursuit plane to as many as 10,000 and the largest all metal bomber are accessible from one side alone. Here is one place where Dupont's explosive rivets are widening the bottleneck. At the Glenel Martin plant in Baltimore where America's new B-26 medium bombers are made, riveters simply insert a rivet into a hole and touch it with a tip of a Dupont riveting iron. Installation time has been cut to a few seconds. A man can seat 15 to 20 of the new rivets in one minute and so accurate is the explosive charge that expansion of the shank may be controlled within 20,000 of an inch, meeting the exacting demands of American precision manufacture. An additional advantage is that the new rivets weigh only one quarter as much as the old blind fasteners that were used in tight corners where riveting from one side was necessary. In supplying plane producers with explosive rivets a major problem has been solved by the men who bring you in the words of the Dupont pledge better things for better living through chemistry. And now a word about next week's program. Next week, Cavalcade stars Agnes Morehead in the role of Josephine Baker, the great living American woman doctor. Her work in establishing public health clinics and care for children forms a stirring chapter in American medical history. In our weekly story of chemistry at work in our world we will tell you about man-made spinarets that spin delicate fibers that make lovely fabrics possible. Fabrics made from American raw materials right here at home. We hope you'll listen at this same time next week when Dupont again presents the Cavalcade of America. Cavalcade wishes to thank officials of the Port of New York authority for their generous assistance in the technical preparation and direction of this program. On the Cavalcade of America your announcer is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from Dupont. This is the red network of the National Broadcasting Company.