FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING

FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING

Recently some facts as to the connection with the International Association of Fire Engineers were given in this journal, with a view to lifting it out of its present stagnant condition and putting it upon the plane of a great, influential, educational and beneficial organisation, whose actions should have undoubted influence in everything pertaining to the grand calling in which its members are engaged. The association may practically he said to have made little or no progress in any material way since it was formed. In membership it is almost at a standstill; in topics, as was shown at the Atlantic City convention last year, it is nearly barren ; in legislation and power its members are so few that they are not able to command attention; and in finances the credit balance is always so close as not to warrant necessary expenditures for improvement. We trust some active steps will be taken to infuse new life into the association, to adopt new methods for its management, and to make rules which may be the means of inducing more chiefs to join, until the roll call shall show one thousand interested members present at every meeting, instead of the one hundred and odd who, as at present, respond to their names. To bring these things about a new constitution and new bye-laws, if necessary, might be framed, which would suit modern methods and ideas. A committee on membership consisting of members from all the States should be appointed, whose duty it would he to increase the roll of members by whatever means it decided upon as best for this purpose. Vicepresidents and directors should be selected, with the understanding that they work for the good of the association, and not be satisfied only with having their names printed in a compli mentary way. The method of selecting the directors should be by ballot, when the best men would most likely be selected for these positions. The president elected should be chosen because lie is the best man in the association to work for and further its interests. It is to be hoped that these suggestions may he acted upon, and that a sufficient number of the members may become so interested in the future welfare of the association that they will make a timely effort to raise it to the importance of the great organisation it ought to be.

上个星期天早上,可怕的屠杀的when fifteen persons perished and twenty were more or less seriously injured—two, one a fireman, fatally hurt—during a tenement house fire in Attorney street, Manhattan, New York, certainly two city departments are gravely responsible. For permitting the removal of the fire escapes from the third floor of the tenement house, as well as for the insecurity of that on the fifth, for neglecting to pass upon the alterations to be carried out without the required permission being granted, the building department was the offender. For allowing the fire escapes to be removed, for not hat ing the proposed alterations filed, for the presence of but one stairway, and that a flimsy concern of wood, for the cutting off of all means of escape from the roof owing to the locked door to the scuttle, for suffering the owners of the building not only to go on renting the apartments in a tottering house that rested solely on stilts, but, also, to reduce the rents so as to admit more tenants and thereby to make more money while the alterations were being made, and for allowing the fire escapes, halls and the one stairway to he obstructed by tenants and contractors, the tenement house bureau is even more censurable. So it has always been ; so apparently it will always be in this city, and it is utterly hopeless to look for any reformation in these last two departments. In previous disasters of a precisely similar kind, each department, especially the building, has had warning upon warning as to the venality and the incompetency and corruption of its officials. Not only, however, have these warnings been unheeded and in vain, hut, in more than one instance, officials who have been proved most criminal and most deeply implicated in the guilt of passing over those violations of the law which have led up to such catastrophes have been retained in office, and either promoted to higher positions or had their salaries increased by way of encouragement to others to go and do likewise— always provided, of course, that they are staunch upholders of the party in power. How long New Yorkers will stand this sort of thing no one dares venture even to guess at. That this latest disaster should have happened when the city and country arc in the throes of a presidential and gubernatorial election is the luckiest thing possible for all the offenders concerned, and, if the owners of the property have the same influence with the district leaders as the officials of these two municipal departments, the only sufferers will be the relatives and friends of those who have liecn killed, or those who have been injured. Instead of the politicians, who have been placed at the heads of these bureaus, being removed and competent men, independent enough to defy political pull in the administration of these offices being appointed in their stead, they will, of course, he kept where they are, while a thick coat of whitewash will he liberally distributed over those who have proved themselves either neglectful of their duty or incompetent to perform it. Why New York, the metropolis of the Western world, should give occasion to outsiders, especially in the old world, to hold her up as a city, round whose neck there hangs as a millstone a mass of municipal corruption, venality and incompetence, is a conundrum. Will not, or cannot Mayor McClellan understand what a blot such an infamy is upon his name as the city's chief executive, and how greatly it will injure his political prospects to tolerate such abuses?