Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-06-15

"WEDNESDAY BVENlN0. JUNE 10. 1851.
The Fire Department.
Our daily contemporaries seem at last
to have opened their eyes to the need of
a paid fire department. We advocated
this year or two ago, without any sup
port from either the Ner Era or the E1.
aniner, and We gave up the task OF en-
deavoring to enlighten and emboaden the
city authorities, with as much disgust
for their weakness in enduring the pres
ent absurd fire department and subsidiz-
ing it yearly, as we cannot but feel for
that department itself. When members
of the fire Observation-Disclosures fire.
men, forsooth discovered to be
volunteer incendiaries as well, and to
have started out on their burning ex-
ploits from the hose house itself, We
thought it was high time that
the fire department was reorganized.
So did everyone else but they were
afraid to speak lest they should encoun-
ter the ill-will of the rascals.!: The worst
men in the city connect themselves with
fire companies, along with the best.
There seems to be no way of keeping
them out. At least they are not kept
out. In all the companies are many good
men, but the few bad ones belonging to
them affect the whole with their evil
repute. The hose houses are places were
the idle may assemble, and they are used
chiefly by the evil members, who justify
the truth of the old adage that satan
finds works for idle hands to do.
We believe that among the most respect
able of ourivolunteer iremen, even those
who have given their lives to an enthu-
siastic devotion to the philanthropic
duty, the opinion prevails that the evils
are now greater than the benefits, and
that the city would profit by abolishing
the volunteer system at once. The idea
OF the system is u noble one, and the
town is under great obligations to the
men who cheerfully encounter the peril
and the labor of the work, their only
satisfaction being the consciousness of
the good they do. But when had men
become volunteer firemen to do evil and
not good, and when they even are he.
lieved to kindle the fires they are organ
lied to extinguish, it is certainly high
time that good men should abandon such
associations and devise other measures
to protect their property from burning.
We do not speak rashly in saying that
incendiarics have been found among the
habitues of our hose houses. 1t is well
known fact, and many of the men are
marked. And another well-known fact
is that nearly all the fires in Lancaster
are of incendiary origin. Who remem-
bers a fire within five years past of GER
tainly accidental origin ? There have
been some probably but they have been
very few. That don't prove that fire.
men lighted the fires but it does prove
that the evil disposed did and these are
just the men who infest hose houses and
impose themselves upon the decent men,
bcrs, who have no way, or lack the cOur-
age, to keep them out.
What this town needs is small force
of active and paid liremen with three,
or not more than four, engines, drawn
by horses and connected with the Gen.
trail police office by electricity. All this
we have before said. We are tired of
repeating it. We do not believe in con-
tinually denouncing the fire organiza-
tion, because of the bad men in it and its
lack of cohesion. We do not want to be
constantly hurting the feelings Of the
many respectable firemen by continually
declaring how bad the repute of the de-
partment has become on account of the
dOings of the black sheep and by show
ing how inefficient it is through its jeal-
Ousies and insuborlination. We have
said what We thought. 1t is for the au-
thorities to act whenever they can get to-
getller the needed sense and courage.
Our contemporaries may keep on advising
them if they think it will be profitable.
But we know we'll enough that our
councilmen are perfectly aware of the
defects of our present system and the
need of a new one. What they lack is
backbone and that the newspapers
can't supply them with if the Almighty
has not.
A Matter OF Law aLd Interest.
Tho fpy,1 hot Waan tha a,1miniSf raf ion