The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1877-04-12

The CONGREGATIONS of Chicago and of
odically REQUIRED within the last five years
lead us to reflect that such calamities arc
among tho peculiar institutions of this very
great country. No such losses of life and
property are recorded in England, France
or Germany. Fire is the familiar fend of
the United States. He underlies the oil
region, or, leaping from city to city, makes an
excursion into the prairies, jumps over the
Rocky Mountains to alight in the silver
mines of Nevada; then skips from one far
Western town to another and alights on st.
Louis. Why is this country so particularly
favored? The answer is ready on the
lip of every reader. We invoke the demon
by our recklessness and carelessness We
give him house room by the reckless man.
ner in which we build our houses. We ex-
pose his food to him in every corner.
We encourage him by the careless
and ignorant way in which our servants
treat all matters where fire and lights
are concerned. Bad building and careless
service are the two procreants Of disaster.
To one or the other or to both the cause of
the destruction of the Southern Hotel at st.
Louis will be inevitably traced. Our full
and graphic special description of the dis
aster, published this morning, shows that
the fire originated on the ground floor, but
we are not yet fully informed rs to the
source of the calamity, yet we feel assured
that it will be ascribed to one of the above
mentioned causes. The service Of the
Southern Hotel was partly Irish, partly
African. System, order, carefulness are not
conspicuous in the character Of these races.
But it seems to us that in SO immense
building as an American hotel there should
be in each district we'll proven and reliable
overseer, man of intelligence and order
much superior to the lower grade of help
that we find in this condition. These Of
fcers should always be on guard and on the
watch, accessible to complaints from the
guests and ready for every emergency.
There is too much Capitalization in our
hotel system, and much mischief, as we'll as
discomfort, may be traced to it.
But the most fruitful source of fire lies in
the defective principle of building. How
frequently we hear Of what is called de-
fective fue The defect is not in the fue
but in the blockheads, architects and
builders who allowed the ends Of half q
dozen joists to be stepped in the breast
work of chimney with those ends ex-
posed to the highway of fire, or SO close
to the fue that they are heated sufficiently
to generate their own flame. Then
we build hollow floors, leaving Dir ways
beneath our feet, and we build hollow
partitions to enable the fire to run like YER
min under US, above us, around us, unseen,
unknown, until it bursts out and we find
ourselves hopelessly enveloped. All floors
should be packed solid between the joists
with light concrete, and oil partitions SIM
ilarly filed in. Thus by excluding the air
the floor becomes practically fireproof and
neither rats nor mice can annoy us by their
ranging over the building. There is no rea-
son why chimneys should not be abolished
and replaced with iron or earthenware
tubes glnzed on the inside--they clean
themselves If buried in breastwork they
occupy little room and no joist can poke
it's end into such a fue to the danger of the
building Fundamental reforms must be
instituted both in the much Wanted system
of American hotel keeping and the safety of
the construction of all such buildings where
five hundred human beings and upward are
liable to present a holocaust to the most
insidious, destructive and terrible fend that
walks the earth.