Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-08-19
Aanrastcr fntelLQerrrer.
FRIDAY EVENING, AUGUST 10, 1881.
Put Us to The Fore.

The Examiner recommends the council
committee, towhich has been referred
the question of paid fire department,
to examine the working Of the paid
system in neighboriDg cities of Ian
casters size, before making up its re-
port. This is good advice, and the
money and time expended for such pur-
pose will be judiciously employed.
knowledge is what the committee and
the citizens want; and no better way of
getting it could be suggested than the
observation of the experience of other
towns where about the same conditions
prevail. What we desire in our depart
ment is efficiency and economy. We
must expend whatever money is needed
to give our property such protection
from fire as can he afforded it; but we
want to get value for it. We are ex-
pending, directly or Indirectly, great
desi of money now for such protection
without getting it.
The suppression Of fires is business :;
and one that requires businesslike at
tentiOn and skill. Good apparatus is
needed, always in good order, with good
men to use it, under the intelligent direc-
ton of competent chief and the ques-
ton for the committee is whether these
needs will not he better supplied in a
paid system. But their inquiry will not
end here. They will want to see what
appliances we need to make our fire sys.
TEN properly protective. They will find
that other cities, even with volunteer
fire service, are very far ahead of Ian
caster in their apparatus. In Reading,
for instance, the engines are on the road
to a fire in less than five minutes after an
alarm. At the beginning Of the conlla-
grafton, the moment that it is most easily
managed, it is most important that the
firemcn should he Oh hand and there
can be no system worthy of name where,
at all hours of the day and night, some
one does not stand by telegraphic in
strument, ready to he advised the moment
that fire breaks out and able to in
stantly summon the force to suppress it.
There must he electrical connection be-
tween parts of the city and the central
station, and between that and the en-
gine houses, where the men and the
horses are ready for duty at a moments
notice.
There is an old and true adage that
what is worth doing at all is worth doing
well. Lancaster has certainly not OBJ
served this injunction in its fire arrange
ments. They were out of date long ago.
It is astonishing that we should have
been SO long content with system in
which we consider ourselves prompt
when we get water on a fire within an
hour after its breaking out-a length of
time which is generally sufficient for the
building fired to comfortably burn down.
We rejoice that the city authorities
have now appointed a committee to take
our fire affairs into consideration, and
we join our contemporary in urging
them to make their examination thor
ough, to the end that they may be able
to enlighten the councils as to the pro-
gress of neighboring towns, and enable
it to know what measures may best he
taken to put us III the forefront in guar
anteeing safety to our property; aposi-
tiOn which our wealth and prosperity
certainly enable us to take.