94 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



February 



little or no increased expense to the 

 state ? 



Under the present system a fire 

 warden is paid only for the time spent 

 in actually fighting the fire. He can- 

 not afford to neglect his own work to 

 look for fires in the places where they 

 are most likely to occur, nor even to 

 waste an afternoon in hurrying to in- 

 spect a rumor which may turn out to 

 be a false alarm, and consequently no 

 pay. In this way a fire almost neces- 

 sarily grows to dangerous proportions 

 before anyone can afford to take any 

 notice of it. and a large number of 

 men are then required to fight it. 



Every forest fire has a small begin- 

 ning and a very large per cent of these 

 beginnings would be found by a man 

 who was paid to look for them ; and 

 would be found in such time that he 

 could put them out alone with the aid 

 of one or two helpers. Without look- 

 ing into the value of the property 

 which would be saved in this way, it 

 is an open question whether a paid 

 regular patrol would not nip in the 

 bud a sufficient number of fires to 

 make that plan actually cheaper than 

 paying the crowds of temporary la- 

 borers who have to be called in at 

 extra high wages to fight the fires 

 after they have gotten well under 

 way. For example : It would not re- 

 quire a very large fire to force a war- 

 den to hire thirty men for two days at 

 $2 per day. One hundred and twenty 

 dollars is spent in putting out this 

 one little fire which has nevertheless 

 done considerable damage before it 

 was gotten under control. That $120 

 would pay one man to patrol a large 

 territory for three months of the sum- 

 mer danger season April, May, and 

 June. Such a patrol would probably 

 have caught this fire together with 

 dozens of others in the incipient 

 stage, saved several thousands of feet 

 of lumber, and the expense of several 

 hundred fire fighters. 



That millions of feet of timber 

 would be saved in this way is beyond 

 question, but would it not also be 

 cheaper in the actual cash outlay? 



APPOINTMENT OP WARDENS. 



Another mistake, though not nearly 

 so important as the first, is the ap- 

 pointment of elected men, such as the 

 Selectmen of a town, to the position of 

 fire warden. A man will not leave his 

 own work to go fight a fire on some 

 one else's ground and probably for 

 some one else's benefit, unless he has 

 to, and forcing men to do such things 

 is not a business calculated to make a 

 man popular. Consequently the elect- 

 ed fire warden is not going to do it. 

 or can he be greatly blamed for refus- 

 ing. He does not care about losing 

 the position as fire warden, but the 

 more paying or more honorary posi- 

 tion by virtue of which he is fire war- 

 den. One or two of the states have 

 realized this and found a very good so- 

 lution of it in the appointment of the 

 wardens by the courts. 



THE MATTER OP PAY. 



This difficulty which the fire warden 

 has in obtaining aid in time of fire a 

 question which seems to puzzle some 

 people unduly is the result of an- 

 other great weakness in the fire laws. 

 They usually offer higher pay than is 

 Sfiven for other work, but men do not 

 volunteer for their work. The causes 

 are not far to seek. The job is a per- 

 emptory and temporary one which 

 does not matter so much, though 

 both these characteristics go against 

 the grain of the average Ameri- 

 can and the pay comes somewhere 

 in the far future which matters 

 a great deal. To the class of 

 men hired on such occasions pay in 

 the future is no pay at all ; they would 

 rather work for fifty cents and get it 

 at once, than for two dollars to come 

 a month hence. And lucky is the man 

 who gets his money through the gov- 

 ernment red tape in a month ! The 

 Pocono Protective Fire Association, in 

 Pennsylvania, though they do not pay 

 as high wages as the state, have no' 

 trouble in getting men for this work 

 because they pay cash. This has been 

 pretty generally acknowledged as a 



