760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mous sum includes estimates of the amounts paid by insurance com- 

 panies foi- losses and expenses ; of the losses for which there was no 

 insurance ; and of the outlay in maintaining fire departments in towns 

 and cities. The devastation by fire during the past year equaled in 

 value the insurable property in, say, so large and wealthy a city as 

 Buffalo. Still more woful than the destruction of property by fire 

 were the sufferings of thousands by bodily injuries, and the losses of 

 hundi-eds of human lives. Of minor but considerable importance is 

 the prevailing dread of fire which its imminent risk creates — a dread 

 deducting so much from comfort and peace of mind, particularly 

 among the people who work or live in tall and unsafe buildings. 



All competent students of the subject are agreed that this tax on 

 life and treasure is largely avoidable — avoidable by care in construc- 

 tion and use of buildings, and attention to tried and proved means of 

 extinguishing fire. The fire-tax is the most onerous one paid by the 

 nation, and it was but natural that the first scientific attempt to re- 

 duce it should have been made by a class of capitalists upon whom 

 the cost of insurance was most oppressive. 



The textile manufacturers of New England have shown how best 

 the risks, losses, and expenses of fire can be reduced to a minimum. 

 In 1835, when Hon. Zachariah Allen, of Providence, established mutual 

 insurance among the mills of Rhode Island, the rates charged by 

 stock companies varied from 1| to 2| per cent. Even at these high 

 figures the business was unprofitable, and the placing of risks often a 

 matter of difiiculty. Within the fifty years since 1835, the cost of 

 insurance to the factories of New England has been reduced to two- 

 sevenths of one per cent. This, too, while the ordinary rate of insur- 

 ance throughout the United States is nearly one per cent on property 

 considered to be on an average less hazardous in character. I will 

 endeavor to state how this result has been brought about. 



Principally by full inquiry into the causes of mill fires, which has 

 shown that the three elements of safety are good construction, ade- 

 quate quenching apparatus, and thorough discipline in its use. Safe 

 construction can not always claim the much-abused term " fire-proof," 

 but it may be practically the same thing, " slow-burning." It need be 

 but little more expensive than the customary bad methods, and pro- 

 ceeds on a few simple rules : 



1. Timbers for the frame of both floors and roofs should be 

 made in such solid manner as to burn slowly ; all should be open, 

 smooth, with the corners chamfered off. 



2. Floors and roofs should be of thick plank, with mortar or 

 sheathing-felt between the planks and boards of floors. No boxed, 

 hollow cornices should ever be constructed. 



3. There must be no concealed space xmder a door, behind a 

 furring, or in a partition, where a fire can lurk out of the reach of 

 water, or where a rat or mouse can build a nest. 



