PIPE AND HYDRANT SERVICE FOR ROOFS.

PIPE AND HYDRANT SERVICE FOR ROOFS.

When the plan to afford protection to valuable business blocks in cities by a system of roof pipes and hydrants was first suggested it was generally looked upon as extremely visionary, if not impracticable. It deserves, however, serious consideration. Its principal advocate, Edward Atkinson, of Boston, President of the Manufacturers Mutual Fire Insurance Company, neglects no opportunity to strenuously urge its claims for adoption. He recently expressed himself as being more than ever impressed with its practicability and absolute necessity. There are acres of land upon which the insurable value of the property ranges from five to thirty-five million dollars, and a sum ranging from twentyfive to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year is paid out in premiums of insurance upon each of such acres. If from one to ten such acres should be burned, then, says Mr. Atkinson, from ten to fifty per cent of the indemnity promised under the policies of insurance would not be collected. As evidence of this, he cites the value of similar policies after the great fires in Boston and Chicago. Doubtless the condition of fire insurance companies, as a whole, is better now than ever before, so far as concerns their ability to pay losses, but for the mere purpose of insuring the insurance companies, it is asked whether it. would not be worth the comparatively small amount necessary for a service of roof pipes and hydrants. Few cities have the energy of Chicago, and should an extensive conflagration occasion losses which the insurance companies could not meet, the result would be fearful to contemplate. Take away the insurance companies, and all property would be as though risked in a great lottery. Such being the case, every effort should be made to reduce the hazard of loss.

唯一的缺点进行的乐趣system of insurance, the objective point of which is not merely to pay an indemnity for loss, but much more to save property from destruction by fire is, says Mr. Atkinson, that it becomes a habit to look at every building in process of construction with a critical eye, and one is apt to lose patience in witnessing the waste of pnoney in unsafe methods, where the simplest rules of safety would save large sums even in the cost of building. The handsome and well-composed fronts of warehouses and ho’els, and the apparent solidity of churches and school-houses, cease to give any pleasure or satisfaction, even as works of artistic design, when we know that every part of the interior is so constructed as to assure heavy damage or complete destruction if a fire happens in any part of the premises ; while the surveys which are occasionally made with a view to preventing the destruction of insane asylums and hospitals, leave an unpleasant impression of almost criminal stupidity and ignorance in their mode of construction, and in the arrangements of the fire apparatus. Not only does the danger to property demand attention, but the danger to life compels it; and any true man would lose all self-respect who did not use what little influence he might possess, and urgently present the lessons learned from his experience, in an endeavor to prevent disasters which may occur at any moment— such disasters as have lately occurred at the destruction of the theatre in Vienna, at the recent fire in New York, and in other recent instances which need not be mentioned. Destructive fires in theatres almost invariably begin amidst the combustible materials upon and over the stage ; the scenery is not only of necessity combustible, but the materials which are in constant use, such as paints, oils, light wood, canvas, and also the processes of use, of renewal, and of repair, are all of a nature which the mutual underwriters would regard with the utmost distrust, and would only insure at all when every available means of precaution had been taken for extinguishing the fires which experience has absolutely proved will occur at comparatively short intervals in such stock, either from accident from without or spontaneous combustion within the mass. This danger may be guarded against by placing automatic sprinklers over and around the stage of a theatre, and in any case the safety of an audience in theatres yet to be built may be assured by adopting improved methods of construction.