The morning journal-courier., 1908-01-31
OUR FIRE-RELLS.

The New York Herald published on Monday morning of this week a clev- | erly expressive caricature which was drawn to illustrate the unsatisfactory | undef which the fire de- pertinent of our biggest city is work ing. Fire Chief Croker. of New York, | has stated that his men have to con tend with the poorest quality of rotten fire hose The caricature showed one of the big engines hurrying to fire, but hindered by the serpentine coils of the poor hose which are wound about the horses and the wheels and the men in true Laocoon fashion as of old. Another of Chief Crokers complaints was that he finds the fire alarm system In the big city much out of date that New York has outgrown if years ago and that whole new system should he installed at once.
 Professor Sumner gives a course in anthropology at the college that is one of the oldest existing electives in Yale, as we'll as one of the most in- teresting and popular courses that the younger sons of Eli find placed at their disposal. In this course in anthropolo- gy, as one young fellow once put it. Every other word is survival" The whole study of snthropology is. in great part. study of survivals Thus we have nub on the rim of our ears that is tell-tale of the aboriginal days when our ancestors were monks; thus the five bones in the fin of a whale show that it is not a fin at all but a survival of a fve-toed foot. and thus that Mir. Whale is not fish but land-animal
 The belief is growing with the years that pass that New Haven, too, has outgrown her system of fire alarms: that it is, in It's present form. sur vival" We refer to the fire bells which ring Cor not infrequently fail to rins) about the city. The system was inau- gurated in the early seventies by the then Chief A. C. Hendricks. At that time there were but a handful of men giving their entire attention to the protection of the city against fire. The majority of the fire department was made mp of men who worked at regu- lar trades about the city, but who ran to where there was fire to aid the regular men, whenever the bells gave them the warning New Haven is not the same, to-day that it was in the ear ly seventies The time must come when the present system of bell-ringing at the time of fires must go, just as if has long since gone in New York and all of our large cities As long as New Haven clngs to it, the city admits it. self to he of the town class and not a real metropolitan city.
 There are but three real arguments 1 in favor of the bells One is that the men who are off duty at the time of q fire can learn by counting the strokes where the fire Is and then re- spond to the correct place. Another is that the business men of the city, when not at their stores, can feel a certain satisfaction at knowing the particular location of a fire within the city limits And the last of all is that
 The bells are made good use of by the
 Board of Education to notify the chil- dren on stormy days whenever there is to he no school session. None of these arguments seems imperative, at least
 not so when compared with the other side of the question. The number of men off duty at any certain time Is ever insignificant The number of days
 that each of them gets off (seldom more than four a month) is few enough anyway. But if they must be reached, it is not impossible that they could arrange to be reached by tele- phone whenever they should be need ed, which would not he often. or the engines at the fire could sound some
 prearranged signal with their whistles.
 As for the business men, they too can make arrangements to be called in case of a fire at their shops, the same as the business men in New York and 1 elsewhere are. The messenger. service companies would probably find there a
 new and lucrative branch of their bus i mess Even now there is much com
 plaint about the bells being rung in { connection with the school sessions.
 With the Edwards street and the Goffe street bells out Of commission. as they
 are at present. there are left but
 three bells in active service Two large
 factories have generously lent their
 aid to the Board of Education in giv-
 ing the signals by blasts on their whis-
 ties when needed But even then
 there are many sections of the city
 where the signals cannot be heard at