WORTHY OF THEIR HIRE.

WORTHY OF THEIR HIRE.

Mayor Howell, of Brooklyn, in his recent message, expresses the opinion that, among other retrenchments the city should make, the pay of Firemen should be reduced. Their pay was recently cut down from $950 to $900, and Mayor Howell is confident plenty of men can be found to fill the places at $700 a year. No doubt this is true. He might have gone further and said that as this is a hard time for mechanics and laboring men, thousands of whom can find no employment, the great city of Brooklyn might take advantage of their distress, and employ them as Firemen for fifty cents or $1 a day. Probably men could be found who would be glad of the opportunity to work for such wages, hut would it be honest or humane for a wealthy city like Brooklyn to pursue such a course? Would it even be policy to do so ? The men now in the service have spent years to perfect themselves in their business-; they perform their duty faithfully and well, and they are entitled to a fair and just compensation. Such compensation the city has no right to refuse them, even though a cheaper and wholly inexperienced class of men offer to do the work for less. A city has moral obligations equally with individuals, and he is accounted a very mean and cowardly man who will take advantage of the necessity of his employes and rob them of what they arc honestly entitled to.

While Mayor Howell’s message was still fresh in type, the Firemen in Brooklyn and other cities were illustrating their devotion to duty by performing some of the hardest and most dangerous service that can be required of men. In New York, one man offered up his life, and eight others had a narrow escape from death ; in St. Louis and Chicago the Firemen battled bravely with great fires that threatened destruction to great areas of property. They did it simply as a portion of their daily duty, and are ready to repeat that service every day in the week if necessary. Their experience, which saves millions i f dollars annually, is worth paying for. Without it a city is in constant peril. Men who work so faithfully, and who carry their lives in their hands on all occasions, should not be classed with the ignorant and uneducated labor of the common laborer, who takes no risk and has no responsibility. Brooklyn, or any other city, that undertakes to run its Fire Department on the cheap and cowardly basis suggested by Mayor Howell, will soon find that it has made a great mistake. The fact that “ the laborer is worthy cf his hire” was proclaimed centuries ago, and no mayor’s message can alter or amend it.