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three or four, I think, largely because there were not very many employed there and because the explosion and fire was between the windows and the place where the girls had worked. The stairway was at the other end of the factory. So that when they ran to the stairway they were running away from the fire. Most of them had opportunity to get out.

However, that had caused me to make an investigation of what had been the cause of not only the fire, but the cause of the rapid spread of the fire and the cause of the loss of life. In that I had the help of the New York State Under-writers' Laboratories. Mr. Stewart was the head of it - a very distinguished engineer. I also had the help of Professor Ira Woolson. He was at Columbia University in the engineering school. He was doing some special research work for the Underwriters' Laboratories on fires. I suppose they referred me to him.

I also had the help of the National Fire Protection Association on Milk Street, Boston, which was one of those strange organizations formed by that peculiar genius called Edward Atkinson, who invented the Aladdin oven which was a form of fireless cooker, and who also invented the factory mutual fire insurance scheme, which was a mutual scheme by which cotton mills in New England insured themselves against the almost universal hazard of fire. They had so