234 Transactions of the American Institute. 



comprehension. These facts are well known in almost every commu- 

 nity, and yet, although it is now twelve or thirteen years since this 

 class of oils came into general use, we have as yet no adequate legisla- 

 tion for the protection of life or property. 



It is now four years since the Metropolitan Board of Health took 

 up this subject and presented it to the public in its true light, and yet 

 to this day we have no results, no improvement in the character of 

 the oils sold. The blood of more than 1,000 women and children, 

 cruelly murdered in the United States during the past year, cries to 

 heaven for vengeance on those who sacrificed them for a profit of a 

 few cents on a gallon of oil. Where are our legislators? "Why do 

 they not enact efficient laws to protect us ? Look to Albany, where 

 they are peddling votes to rival railroad schemes, while their con- 

 stituents are writhing in the fatal flames of naphtha and patent safety 

 oil. 



Nothing but the most stringent laws — making it a State prison 

 offense to mix naphtha and illuminating oil, or to sell any product of 

 petroleum as an illuminating oil or fluid, to be used in lamps, or to be 

 burned except in air gas machines, that will evolve an inflammable 

 vapor below 100° F., or, better, 110° F. — will be effectual in remedy- 

 ing the evil. In "case of accident from the sale of oil below the 

 standard, the seller should be compelled to pay all damage to pro- 

 perty, and if a life is sacrificed should be punished for manslaughter. 

 It must be made extremely hazardous to sell such oils. 



Combustible Character of ouk Buildings. 

 The frequency of fires in this country is largely due to our peculiar 

 system of building, To be sure, this is to a great extent necessitated 

 by] the character of the materials which we are compelled by 

 economy to employ. Outside of a few large cities, where wooden 

 buildings are not permitted, the most available material is pine wood, 

 which is highly inflammable, much more so than the hard woods 

 generally used in Europe. But our system of building is unfortu- 

 nate ; we make our floors hollow, and our walls hollow, so that there 

 is free communication from cellar to roof within the walls, floors and 

 partitions, by which the flames are enabled almost unseen to wrap an 

 entire structure in their fatal embrace. Then we place smoke and 

 hot air flues in thin partitions and walls, in far too dangerous prox- 

 imity to wood work. Often the floor timbers are run into absolute 

 contact with bricks of flues which are liable to become over heated. 

 Even in laying the bricks of chimneys and flues great carelessness 



