Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/506

492 a paid department, which she did in 1860. New York did the same in 1865, and Philadelphia in 1871. Other eastern cities rapidly fell into line, but some of the southern cities, though equipped with the most modern apparatus, continue to the present day with volunteer firemen, New Orleans having only recently adopted a paid force.

When the success of the steam fire engine became an established fact the demand increased rapidly. Not only did many of the hand-engine builders begin their manufacture, but almost all the locomotive works and many machine shops did the same. Also many new firms sprang up. In almost every eastern and in many western States men went into the business, while in some cases the volunteer companies, notably one in Pittsburg, had the steamers built under their own supervision at the shop of one of the members. Philadelphia kept up her long-standing reputation by soon having ten or more competitive firms engaged in the work. Some of these numerous makers built but one engine, some of them only a few, while others continued in the business for several years.

The Portland Company Locomotive Works, of Portland, Me., made steam fire engines from 1859 until 1870. At the time their engines had the most powerful suctions of any in the market, and one of them, that is still on duty in Bangor, ably keeps up its reputation in this respect. The work was discontinued because the complicated nature of the machinery rendered it impossible to set a competitive price. In 1858 Thomas Scott and N. S. Bean, of Lawrence, Mass., made an engine for the Boston department. The business thus established was absorbed by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, of Manchester, N. H., and their engines are now built by the Manchester Locomotive Works.

Silsby, Mynderse & Company, of Seneca Falls, and Clapp & Jones, of Hudson, N. Y., were extensive builders, and their successors have combined with the successors of the Button Company and the Ahrens into the American Fire Engine Company. The multitude of firms in the eastern and a few in the western States that went into the business are too numerous to mention, and most of them soon discontinued the making of engines. The Philadelphia firms one by one dropped out, and that city's reputation in this line is a thing of the past. Ettenger & Edmund, of Richmond, made in 1860 an engine for St. Petersburg, Russia. This was one of the first American engines sent abroad.

These early machines were of all models and sizes, either large and cumbersome self-propellers or small and light to be drawn by men. Engines drawn by horses were not generally introduced until some years later. The different makers evidently made experiments to find the most satisfactory arrangement of the