Arizona republican., 1905-12-19

ibeen used, all of them sheet metal All the doors are of filled copper or steel. Large sections of hollow terra cotta form the steps and landings.
 The first design for the building called for "slow burning construction but it was later decided that the un- derwriters laboratories, of all places, ought to be a model of fireproof de- sign. Then followed the change of Iplans in which hollow tile was substi- Ituted for mill construction. In other words, there was a change from the kind of construction that would burn slowly to the kind that will not burn at all.
 Americans need this lesson in fire proof building as well as the aid which the laboratories will give in passing upon the value of fire fighting devices and non burnable building materials.
 The colossal fire loss in the United States, at the rate of $250,00O,000 a year, is equivalent to a tax of $20 on every American family. The total gold production of the United States would pay only one-third of it. Besides the money loss, there is the death loss last year the fire Moloch claimed total of 6,672 human lives.
 One of the most appalling elements in the fire loss is the number of public fire traps consumed. Figures for an average period covering three years show that in that time there were de- stroyed by fire: 427 theaters, 544 halls, 1921 churches, 1,5S2 schools, ATT hos pitals and asylums, 312 colleges and schools, 4S libraries, 4,162 hotels.
 The way to stop all this waste is to build houses that will not burn down. 1 There is no other way. Conditions are improving, but only slowly, and a vast amount of work remains to be done and undone before the fire peril will be materially lessened. Outside of New York City and Brooklyn, according to | statistics collected by the New York Fire Insurance exchange, there are only | 1 1,400 buildings of fireproof construc- | tion-less than 1,5OO out of thousands upon thousands of fire-traps. The only wonder is that the fire loss in dollars and lives Is not even greater. | The skyscraper and the great hotels | of New York point the way toward | the era of unburnable buildings and negligible fire loss. The forms of con- struction adopted in this class of build | ings after terrible tests prove that the ! indestructible house is a possibility.
 
 enough stone and cement to hold the structure together, eliminate infam- mable materials wherever possible, in- stal up-tO-da date fire-fighting apparatus, your office building, hotel, or dwelling house can never become a tomb for its | inhabitants.
 | The greatest enemies of fire loss pre- vention are the Jerry builder" on the one hand, and on the other the man who does not know what fireproOf con- struction is. It costs about ten per cent more to build freproof than to build a burnable structure For this ten per cent the speculative builder is willing to run any risk. His object is to get his fire-trap off his hands as soon as possible. But the campaign , of education carried on by the fire un- derwriters, the National Fireproof Pro- tection association and by the more en- frightened municipal building depart ments, is bearing fruit in many direc- tions.
 People are more and more insistent upon the fireproof qualities of their public buildings, and the time is not far off when the fireproof private dwelling will be as common as the fire proof hotel and office building. People who lend money for building purposes and without these people building would practically stop-are also awak- ening to the importance of fireproof construction.
 Corrupt and inefficient building de- partments are also responsible for much of the cheap and dangerous con- struction in our cities, put up only 10 burn down at the first menace by fire. | Most of the building codes of our large ! cities are antiquated and insufficient l to secure safety even if they were hon. | estly enforced.
 Realizing this the International So- |