Los Angeles daily herald., 1874-03-26
PreventabIe Causes Of Fires.

The Insurance Journal and Real
Estate Gazette has the following very
sensible article, which should awaken
the readers cautiousness:
A gentleman has addressed letter
to a London journal on this subject,
in which he says that two-thirds of
the fires occurring in that city are at
tributable to oarelessness in the use of
matches. These matches are sad in
cendiaries, and general carelessness
in the use of them pervades all classes
of society. We regret to acknowledge
that we have witnessed as much reck-
lessness in the disposal of them by the
employer as by the employee, and it is
unlikely that unexemplary masters
will be served by exemplary men. A
stricter discipline in regard to the use
of both the match and the pipe should
be established and enforced, especially
in warehouses and stores, and work.
shops of every description where ignit-
ible articles are exposed, for the fire
from pipe or match may slumher for
some hours after it has fallen, and yet
burst forth in sudden flame, and des-
troy many thousand dollars worth of
property before it can be quenched.
Much more mischief is attributed to
spontaneous combustion in the late
cotton fires than is due to that princi-
pie of destruction; and if the proprie-
tors of storehOuseS were to refuse to
employ men who entered their prem
ises with either displayed pipes, unless
they were deposited in place of safe
ty until their egress, there would be
fewer OF those gigantic CONGREGATIONS
to which our city has been of late SUBJ
jected.
The following extract will explain
the state of the smoking mania in
London:
eve do not seek to deprive the lover
of the weed of his pipe, his meer-
schaum, or his cigar; but we are stong-
ly opposed to their admission into any
premises where there is the slightest
probability that carelessness in their
handling or relighting might occasion
fire. ns
at is well known that the habit of
smoking never prevailed to greater
extent than it now does in this coun-
try. Almost all bricklayers' boys,
upon going to and returning from their
daily labor, must, as they will tell you,
have their pipes; almost all office
boys, merchants and bankers clerks,
whether mounted on the 'knifeboard'
of an omnibus, or vending their way
on foot to the city, must have their
meerschaums; and so, in exercising
their right to do as others do, we find
that journeymen carpenters, who work
in shops strewed with shavings, ware
housemen, and porters employed in
docks and elsewhere, must carry in
their pockets pipes, tobacco and lucifer
matches. Bad.
lit Is by no means an uncommon
thing to see men employed in ware
houses, and carpenters in workshops,
striking their lucifers for light just
before leaving work, and closing doors
for the night. Lucifer matches being
both plentiful and cheap, if five out of
six do not give light quite as readily
as may be expected, they are thrown
to the ground as useless; but upon the
sixth giving light the pipe is put
on and away goes the smoker, little
dreaming that he has left on the floor
of the shop or warehouse what be-
lieve to be the common cause of many
a tremendous confiagration,' and
which has been occasioned either by
some half-scratched match having,
unobserved, fixed into a flame after
being thrown away, or else by some
one having trod upon it the following
day, and, by friction in so doing, sent
it smouldering down crevice, where
it is pretty certain to meeta collection
of burnable matter, and which, after
the men have left, often ends in the
total destruction of some warehouse or
other premises.'