Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/268

264 the architects and engineers of Europe. They really have nothing to compare with our superior buildings. Take, for instance, the Singer Tower in New York and regardless of its height, there is nothing in Europe to compare with it in the way of fire-resisting qualities. The trouble with us is that there are so few of those buildings. We have something like 12,000,000 structures in the country, but of that vast number there are but 8,000 in which even the slightest effort has been made at fire-prevention! It is our average construction that is so poor and that makes such a bad showing compared with Europe. You can readily see that in a city composed of buildings that are not fire-proof, but that are comparatively incombustible, the fire hazard is much less than it is in a city of fire-traps with a few perfect buildings scattered here and there. And, too, in order to resist fire those fire-proof buildings have to be superlatively perfect because there is so much fuel all around them that a fire attack against them is vigorous in the extreme. In the European cities the big and important buildings need not to be so perfectly constructed because the danger of fire from within is always the minimum and the danger of fire from without is not very great on account of the superior general quality of construction. There it is seldom that a fire gets beyond the building in which it originates. Here, in spite of our splendid fire departments—and there are none superior to them, for none have the practise and the experience they have—fires frequently extend to neighboring buildings, entire blocks and indeed whole sections of cities.

Municipalities, states and even the country at large are beginning to realize the gravity of this fire waste and that something drastic has to be done towards fire-prevention. The great trouble is that whatever we may do now can simply be an abstaining from adding fresh fuel to burn because we have received such a heritage of combustible buildings that it will be yet many years before those old fire-traps will have all been destroyed or torn down to be replaced with better buildings. But a beginning has to be made some time and most of our cities have so revamped their building regulations that at least within certain districts nothing of an inflammable nature may not be erected. But that is not enough, because immediately outside of those districts we are permitting fire-trap construction that, in turn, will be the inheritance of our successors and will be in congested districts and prove almost insuperable barriers to real progress. The thing to do is to absolutely prohibit inflammable construction, the use of wood, in the structural parts of buildings erected anywhere within the jurisdiction of a city.

Many may deem this a great hardship upon the poor man and that it would be almost prohibitive in cost. That is a most popular mistake. The first cost of a fire-proof building is but 12 per cent, or 15 per cent, more than that of ordinary construction. But, considering the