FIRE APPARATUS
The old maxim that “the best is the cheapest” can be applied nowhere with more pertinency than to fire apparatus. In this is to be included everything pertaining to tho equipment ,u firstclass style, of a fire company, from the most improved steam fire engine to the minutest and most insignificant tool required for the perfect working of the apparatus and tho Firemen. It is impossible to do good work with poor tools, and the best organized body of Firemen in the world cannot be expected to protect the property of their neighbors unless they are provided with tho requisite appliances for doing the work. How often we read in accounts of fires of engines being totally disabled through the bursting of its cheap hose, or the disarrangement of some portion of its equipment that had been bought because it was cheap. This consideration of “cheapness” is too frequently given undue and fatal weight by those charged with the purchase of fire apparatus, Officials socking to gain a cheap reputation for economy in the interests of the community they represent, nre prone to “saving at the spigot and wasting at the bung;” of equipping their fire departments with cheap machinery rather than that which is durable, and of the most approved make. Nothing could be more short-sighted than this, or more fatal to the interests of tho community thus imposed upon. In many instances Firemen are blamed for not saving more property at fires, when, were the facts known, it would be found that some economically inclinod purchasing committee had provided them with insufficient appliances, or entirely neglected to supply those most needed. Citizens are very apt to think that where the Firemen are supplied with an engine nothing further is required to enable them to extinguish any fire that may occur. An engine, steam or hand, is well enough as far as it goes, but to render it efficient, a thousand other things are necessary. Men who have actual experience us Firemen, and have made themselves familiar with the best modes of extinguishing fires, are the only persons who should be entrusted with the important duty of equipping a fire company with its apparatus. Without good fire apparatus and efficient fire companies, no city or village is safe. A conflagration is liable to overwhelm them at a moment’s notice, and may result from an insignificant blaze, which, with proper apparatus at hand, might have been extinguished without anyany damage. The past few years have furnished numerous illustrations of this fact It is short sighted penuriosness, miscalled economy, which neglects providing the most effectual means of protection against fire, or fails to equip its fire department thoroughly, or palms off upon it cheap material which cannot be relied upon for an hour’s work. “The best is always the cheapest” in the long run, and a surplus is to be preferred to a scant supply ol hie extinguishing appliances.
