"Inclosed is the circular of November 22, 1914, for information and execution upon United States territory. We draw your attention to the possibility of recruiting destroying agents among the anarchist labor organization." This circular was signed by Dr. Fischer, Councillor General of the German Army.
In the first six months of 1915 the du Pont factories at Haskell, N. J., Carney's Point, N. J., Wayne, Pa., and Wilmington, Del., experienced explosions and fires; a chemical explosion occurred in a factory in East 19th Street, New York; the Anderson Chemical Company, at Wallington, N. J., was rocked on May 3 by an explosion of guncotton which cost three lives; five more lives were flashed out in a similar accident in the Equitable powder plant at Alton, Ill. On New Year's Day, the Buckthorne plant of the John A. Roebling Company, manufacturers of shell materials, at Trenton, was completely destroyed by fire, the property loss estimated at $1,500,000. And on June 26, the Ætna Powder plant at Pittsburgh suffered a chemical explosion which killed one man and injured ten others.
Most of these "accidents" had taken place near the Atlantic seaboard. Yet Germany was active in the far West. On May 30 a barge laden with a large cargo of dynamite lay in the harbor of Seattle, Washington. The dynamite was consigned to Russia and was about to be transferred to a steamer, when it exploded with a shock of earthquake violence felt many miles inland, and comparable to the explosion in the harbor of Halifax in December, 1917. Two counterfoils in von Papen's check-book cast some light on the activities of the consulate in Seattle, the first dated February 11, 1915, the amount $1,300, the payee "German Consulate, Seattle," the penned notation. "Angelegenheit" (affair) preceded by a mysterious "C"; the second dated May 11, 1915, for $500, payable to one "Schulenberg"[2] through the same consulate.
The month of July was a holocaust. A tank of phenol exploded in New York, the benzol plant of the Semet Solvay Company was destroyed at Solvay, N. Y.; on the 7th serious explosions occurred at the du Pont plant at Pompton Lakes and at the Philadelphia benzol plant of Harrison Brothers (the latter causing $500,000 damage); on the 16th five employees were killed in an explosion and fire at the Ætna plant at Sinnemahoning, Pa., three days later there was another at the du Pont plant in Wilmington; on the 25th a munitions train on the Pennsylvania line was wrecked at Metuchen, N. J.; on the 28th the du Pont works at Wilmington suffered again; and the month came to a fitting close with the destruction of a glaze mill in the American Powder Company at Acton, Mass., on the 29th. (The British army in Mesopotamia had just entered Kut-el-Amara at this time, and far to the northward Germany was prosecuting a successful campaign to force a Russian retirement from Poland.)