FIRE'S HAVOC ^ 263 



Denmark the general average is a trifle less than 33 cents per capita. 

 In Italy it is as low as 12 cents and in Germany it has never been 

 above 49 cents. In thirty of the principal foreign cities the average 

 was 51 cents, while in 25'2 of our cities the average was $3.10 ! In 

 New York City in 1908 there were 14,000 fires and -the property loss 

 amovnited to $7,250,000, and the cost of maintaining the city fire de- 

 partment was $7,000,000 ; in St. Louis, there were 3,200 fires with a loss 

 of $1,298,000, and the cost of the fire department was $1,018,000, and 

 so our cities run with a general average of the cost of fire departments 

 almost equalling the actual combustion of property. In Europe, Eome 

 may be taken as a fair example, an average. There fire losses amounted 

 to $56,000 in a year in 270 fires and the maintenance of its 200 firemen 

 costs $50,000 and Eome is a city of 500,000 people, or nearly the size 

 of St. Louis. 



Let me add just one more comparison and then we will leave tabu- 

 lations alone, for statistics are always more or less wearying. In this 

 country in January of 1908 the total amount of building and repairs 

 done scarcely reached $16,000,000; during that same month fire de- 

 stroyed $24,000,000 worth of property. 



Surely we have had figures enough to clearly establish and to firmly 

 impress even the layman that fire can be said literally " to be eating at 

 the very vitals " of our economic structure. Many causes have con- 

 tributed to this deplorable condition. One is that our people are nat- 

 urally reckless and careless and build as they do much else, merely for 

 the moment, temporarily. Then, too, until very recently our lumber 

 supply has seemed inexhaustible and it was the material with which 

 buildings could be erected with greatest rapidity and least initial cost. 

 The pioneer couldn't be expected to haul brick and steel into the wilder- 

 ness when he had trees all about him from which he could fashion his 

 rude habitation. Pioneer settlements grew into villages and the villages 

 into cities and the habit of building of wood stuck to them. Why, even 

 last year, with the j^rice of lumber a hundred per cent, higher than it 

 was ten years ago and with incombustible materials available every- 

 where and at low cost we still built 61 per cent, of the year's, construc- 

 tion of wood. In the older communities, in Europe, they have got 

 well over their pioneerdom and lumber has never been so plentiful 

 as with us and the authorities have had more forethought and realized 

 the necessity of better construction so that the general average of the 

 buildings in cities, towns and villages is infinitely less inflammable 

 than is the average here. But from that it must not be deduced that 

 the science of building is carried to greater perfection there than here. 

 That seems an anomalous condition but it's a fact nevertheless that our 

 architects and engineers know a great deal more about fire-proof con- 

 struction and practise it to a far higher degree of perfection than do 



