SENATOR FORD AND THE FIREMEN.

SENATOR FORD AND THE FIREMEN.

SENATOR FORD’S bill, which creates ten-hour shifts for the firemen of New York and some other cities in the State, is almost sure to pass, as there is no body of men in the country who are so hard worked and so poorly privileged asthesemen. Without adverting to the dangers to which they are constantly exposed, or appealing to the heroic acts of personal bravery— many of them never heard of at all, and the majority of them forgotten within a few hours after they have been reported in the public press—we would ask why firemen should be discriminated against, and the police so highly favored as regards both pay and hours of duty. The former have three days of twenty-four hours each and three days of twelve hours each off duty every month, and ten days’ vacationevery year. But many of them are married men with families— all of them have some home ties or domestic affiliations, and commonsense, as well as common humanity, demands that they should be put on the same footing as the police, and allowed at least a much liberty and as many opportunities of spending a few hours daily with their family circle, or of taking that healthful recreation which is good for both body and soul and tends to make a man feel that he is less of a mere machine, and more of a sentient, intelligent, and responsible being. Itis urged that by allowing the firemen more liberty, and permitting them to exchange the monotonous imprisonment of the fire house for the greater freedom of the world outside, the men will become demoralized, will fre quent saloons and other questionable resorts, and will thus be rendered unreliable factors in the work of fire protection. But that is to pay a very poor compliment to the moraleof the fire department, and to throw suspicion on the capabilities of the higher officers to maintain discipline; and the fact that it should ever have been put forward as an argument may one day be used as a club wherewith to club these officers for inefficiency. The argument, if argument it may be called, would be equally effective if employed against the police. Yet we have yet to hear a word in favor of abi idging the liberty of these civic guardians of the peace, or to discover that these officers, who, presumably, are fashioned out of the same clay as the firemen, abuse the privileges accorded them It is also urged that the personnel of the department would have to be so largely increased as to involve a greatincrease in the annual appropriation and the introduction

into the department of a number of inexperienced men, under conditions which would prevent them from acquiring the skill which they ought to possess. The men (it is claimed) get none too much experience as matters now stand, and it cannot be said justly that they have too much to do.