I30 NINTH REPORT OF THE 



know what can be done in regard to raising money, but I tell him I don't see as 

 anything can be done at present. He has paid his men, upon my orders on bills, 

 about $1,000, and he does not want to wait until the town audits the bills for his 

 pay. I wish you would see him in regard to the matter. Many of the fires are 

 greatly exaggerated by people who tell what they hear but who do not go near 

 the fires at all. They say the fires burn over more land than they actually do. 

 A report was made to-day of 1,000 acres when it did not exceed 250 acres that 

 were burned. 



Mr. Riley Parsons, Old Forge, Herkimer County.- — The way I have done so 

 far is to give the men a regular voucher okayed by me and have them paid by the 

 individuals upon whose land the fire occurred. The latter can turn these vouchers 

 ov ( er with the duplicate to the town board when they audit accounts, and I will 

 see that they correspond to the abstract sheet which I keep of them. 



Mr. Duane Norton, Brantingham, Lewis County. — -We take our tents with 

 us and stay right at the fire line. I tell you we don't lose much ground where we 

 drive our stakes. I have been at work along the Lewis County line and have 

 not been driven back more than half a mile at any time. Mr. Marvin admitted 

 that he set his fallow* on fire Thursday, the seventh. The district firewarden 

 discovered it, and calling out all the available men stopped it in the face of a heavy 

 wind. An hour's delay and it would have been beyond control. He did excellent 

 work and at the right time. We paid our men two dollars per day and board, as we 

 had to keep them in camps and tents along our fire line. Our town board, at my 

 request, came together and borrowed $500, and I got two other parties to advance 

 as much more. So, you see, our men knew they would get their pay as soon as 

 they were through. I tell you I could do as much with that class of men as could 

 be done with a trainload of city men. We took none but thorough woodsmen. 



Mr. D. D. Graham, Harrisville, Lewis County. — The air was so full of smoke 

 that we could not see a fresh fire when it started. The whole country seemed to 

 be on fire at once. 



Mr. Charles Corbett, Osceola, Lewis County. — I went to the fire as soon as I 

 could, on the fourteenth, and got help from the sawmills and three men — a clerk 

 in a store, a minister and a farmer. These three men do not want any pay. 

 This fire (May fourth) was on the farm of Adelbert Kinney. He lost thirty cords 

 of stovewood and all of his pasture. The pasture was an old slash that had 

 been burned over and sown to grass seed. 



Mr. Eugene Hathaway, Diana, Lewis County. — The situation here is bad. 

 We have been on the fire line since April twenty-eighth with no signs of a let up. 

 It is hard for me to get help enough to take care of the fires; we have to employ 



*This man was arrested and fined for burning a fallow in the close season. — W. F. F. 



