TOPICS OF THE DAY

TOPICS OF THE DAY

LAST week a member of the New York Fire Department was sentenced by the Commissioners to pay a fine of thirty days’ pay, for being drunk and absent from duty without leave. Short of absolute dismissal from the department this punishment is the heaviest, if we are not mistaken, which has ever been inflicted upon a New York fireman. Its severity indicates the earnestness of the Fire Board in its endeavor to check the drinking habit among the men—a practice which for some reason appears of late to have been on the increase. A few such reminders as this may, however, be expected to have a beneficial effect.

THE decision of the Supreme Court of New Jersey in the case of the “call” men who were dropped from the Newark Fire Department about eighteen months ago, is one to which other cities contemplating the reorganization of their fire service will do well to give heed. At the time that the Newark department became a fully paid force, in June, 1889, about fifty of the “call” men, who had been receiving $150 yearly, were notified that their services would no longer be needed, and their names were dropped from the rolls. They protested that the fire commissioners had no right to discharge them without first convicting them on duly preferred charges, and two test cases for reinstatement were brought against the commissioners. The decision just rendered declares essentially that the discharge of the men was illegal, consequently, although they have done no duty for a year and a half, it is claimed that they are still virtually members of the department, and entitled to their pay for that time. Of course it is not to be supposed that Newark will now return to a partly paid fire seivice, and it looks as if about the only course of the fire commissioners would be to obtain the proper legal authority to retire the “call” men, which, according to the court, they lacked before. The omission to get this, however, seems likely to cost the city a matter of $12,000 or so for back pay.