T

HOSE who see the modern fire engine swaying down the street behind three laboring horses, with thin, white-wood smoke trailing back, and a few men calmly donning black rubber coats and grim black helmets, might think that the old-time mob of red-shirted, cheering, volunteer firemen dragging an old hand engine to a fire, has gone for

ever.

But such an opinion would be a huge mistake. Approximately six hundred and fifteen thousand men of the United States hold themselves in readiness at all hours day and night to respond to alarms of fire. They are the members of some thirty thousand volunteer fire companies in the country.

The day of the volunteer fireman is by no means done. Even today it is prob

LEARNING TO BE FIREMEN

able that more property owners are dependent for fire protection on the volunteer companies than upon the full paid departments in the large cities.

The volunteer fireman has not been driven out by the pressure of modern equipment and methods. He has adapted himself to them. He is business-like, efficient, hard-working; and he retains. his place and influence in the community he serves.

An instance of the change is found in the method of responding to alarms. In the old days, the person discovering the blaze was supposed to make it known through stentorian cries of "fire". The nearest gun owners then grabbed their guns and fired them as rapidly as possible until the entire municipality was aroused.

Now, while the gun or revolver fire alarm is still in vogue in some places, the general method is the whistle or siren signal. Long shrieks notify the dwellers of the fire and short blasts give the volunteer firemen the location of the blaze.

Equally great is the change in the method of getting to the fire.

Several years ago the

members of two volunteer companies in a central Illinois city were rather sportily inclined and wagered suppers on the runs to fires. This friendly wager ceased when one company, arriving at its house to respond to an alarm, discovered the doors

horse for pulling the engine to the blaze. The horse owner was to be paid two dollars for hauling the engine to the fire. But in one town that averaged less than three fires in one year, the first day the ordinance went into existence, there were eleven alarms of fire. All were false alarms, and the same horse pulled the engine each time. The same thing happening elsewhere caused a big reduction. in the fee paid.

But under pressure of modern methods, the companies now are acquiring their own horses, either from the State or city, or by purchase with money raised by contributions and receipts from dances and from entertainments of various sorts.

Most of the volunteer companies today are equipped with the two-wheeled chemical engine and they are of such great value that many of the larger cities depend upon them to a great extent. They obviate the necessity for a tremendous water supply, and authorities claim that forty gallons of chemical will do work just as effectively as four hundred gal

ment but the members also are in a position to learn the very latest thing in fire. fighting. Nearly all of the large cities of the country have "schools for firemen." The New York school probably is the best known. Here the volunteer firemen are taught, through observation, the newest wrinkles in the business. They are taught to scale walls, the proper method of jumping into life nets, life saving methods, resuscitation of persons. overcome by smoke, the best methods of attacking a building to get at the flames, and everything else that goes to make a finished fire fighter.

The one element in the position of the old-time volunteer fireman that has persisted, is his standing in the community. Years ago it was necessary that a man belong to a volunteer fire organization, if he wished to accomplish anything in political life. Nearly all of the early presidents of the United States were volunteer firemen, and even Grover Cleveland, according to tradition, used his membership in a volunteer company as the first step toward the presidency.