WHAT GOES TO MAKE UP A MODERN FIRE DEPARTMENT.

WHAT GOES TO MAKE UP A MODERN FIRE DEPARTMENT.

GLANCE at the advertisements of fire apparatus and other equipment connected with fire service and fire protection cannot but cause the fireman of the olden time to congratulate his brother of today on the progress made in the evolution of new appliances, and to marvel at the good work he and his comrades were able to effect under the ancient regime of handtubs, leather hose, and rude hook and ladder arrangements. From the medieval fire squirt and oaken bucket to the hand engine of two or three generations back was a long stride; another was that from the handtub to the early steam fire engines of the Latta and later types—each a great advance upon its predecessor, and all sinking into insignificance when compared with the New Yorker and_____other fireboate, or the wonderful creations of the La France Fire Engine company, the American Fire Engine company, the Amoskeag engines of the Manchester Locomotive works, those of the Waterous type, or the simple, light, and powerful steamers turned out by Thomas Manning, jr., & Co., of Cleveland, Ohio, any one of which will discharge in one minute a flood of water, compared with which the feeble stream thrown by their predecessors was as that of a squirt to a handpump.

Or to take the hose of previous generations and compare it with that in use by modernly equipped fire departments. Made of unyielding leather, heavily studded with copper nails, and overweighted with unwieldy couplings, how did it ever come to pass that any fire could be extinguished by its means; or how, considering all these disadvantages, could it be handled as it was by the firemen of forty or fifty years ago—seeing that it is sometimes no easy task for the nowaday firemen to manipulate even the light and flexible Centaur brand of rubber, Cotton or linen fire hose, as supplied by the Manhattan Rubber Manufacturing company, the Jacket cotton, rubber-lined fire hose of the New York Belting and Packing company, New York, the rubberlined cotton fire hose manufactured by Cornelius Callahan, of Canton Junction, Mass., the ChapmanMcLean Rubber company, of New York, or the recognized standards in hose of the Boston Woven Hose and Rubber company, the Chicago Fire Hose company, the Cornelius Callahan company, of Boston, or the Eureka Fire Hose company and the Fabric Hose company, of New York?