Page:Fires and Fire-fighters (1913).djvu/38

14 the purchase of one hundred leather buckets, hooks and ladders. A body of volunteers was organized to patrol the streets at night and watch for outbreaks, who from their persistent, painstaking and sometimes rather indiscreet efforts were christened suggestively, "The Prowlers." Their work was, however, appreciated, and in 1678 the town of Boston organized the first regular fire company under municipal control and imported from England a species of hand pump. Only in 1808 did a Philadelphia firm put on the market riveted leather hose, and soon afterwards an ingenious hose carriage of American invention was adopted and remains in use in a modified form to the present day. England was the first country to manufacture rubber hose, about 1820, and its employment with certain improvements has become general. The application of steam as a means of obtaining power was responsible for a revolution in fire apparatus as it was in all other lines of mechanical effort. It has contributed in no small degree to the construction of effective portable machinery with which to fight fires, and the benefits derived from its use have been almost incalculable.

Obviously, it is the endeavour of all firemen to check a fire in its early stage, since generally speaking, its commencement is small and progress comparatively slow. It is no exaggeration to say that some of the great conflagrations which for hours and even days have baffled the combined efforts of huge fire departments with scores of determined firemen equipped with much powerful apparatus, could have been extinguished in a few seconds by the cool-headed and well-directed work of one man armed with but a single pail of water, had he arrived in time. In other words, if ready means of suppressing a fire in its infancy were at hand many serious outbreaks might be averted, and hence it is that so much depends upon effective apparatus and the speed with which it is conveyed to the scene of action.

For imagine what happened in the old days before the adoption of the steam fire engine. First, consider the