Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/503

Rh he began the manufacture of hand engines, and in 1861 added the making of steam fire engines to his business. Crockett, E. B. Juckett, Henry Waterman, Pake & Kells, John R. Adams, John Agnew, and several others were well-known names connected with the building of hand fire engines, but it is difficult to obtain the dates at which they entered the field. Many of them made steam engines at a later date.

It is hard to realize that at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century the fire departments of this country were still far behind the times both in organization and in apparatus. Stearn railroads were pushing out in every direction, steam vessels were crossing the ocean, steam power was being used in countless mills, the electric telegraph had been invented, the equipments of the army and navy were being continually improved, and machinery was taking the place of hand work in every kind of manufactory. The firemen, on the other hand, were using manual engines drawn by hand, small and inadequate ladder trucks and hose reels, also dragged to fires by the firemen themselves. Their apparatus was removed but a few steps



from the old squirting syringes. The men were brave, but did their work of their own free will. After the city government had paid for the engines the firemen assumed all other expenses. It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the organization of the volunteer fire departments, but simply to show how handicapped they were by apparatus that was out of date, and entirely unfit to cope with the fires that were sure to occur in the inflammable and rapidly growing cities.