FIRE AND WATER
BALTIMORE’S fire department is too much much the victim of politics. It would seem as if its members are now to be coerced into voting the gold ticket. At least, that is the prevailing impression since the last pay day,when all received their salaries in silver dollars—as an object lesson! Of course, the men did not kick at receiving their full salaries in “ lawful money of the United States; ’ but some were inclined to resent the bulldozing thus practised upon them. It does seem going out of their way on the part of the municipal authorities even indirectly to interfere with the firemen's right and their liberty as American citizens to vote for whatever side in politics they lean to. At the same time “there are others,” especially at Tacoma, Wash., serving in the fire departments, who would gladly receive their salaries in full paid them in silver dollars—even in nickels and cents.
J /HILE Newark, N. J., gives a reward of lAl $50 for the arrest of anyone caught turning in a bogus fire alarm, it seems the city has no ordinance empowering it to punish the offender-even to bring him to trial. This is most unfortunate, considering that the fire department has recently been very much harassed by false alarms sent in at all hours night and day, whereby men and horses have been obliged to turn out and the apparatus exposed to wear and tear and the risk of damage to no purpose—merely to gratify the mischievous or malicious propensities of some loafer. If the law cannot touch an idiot, the sooner a statute to that effect is passed the better for the city of Newark. The penalty for such an offence ought to fit the crime.
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