NEWS
HARPER'S WEEKLY
New York, Saturday, October 30, 1858

scans from newspaper collection of
Ruth Adams-Battle

transcribed by Liz Stratton

FIRE DEPARTMENT OF CINCINNATI

The exhibition in Wall Street last week of a steam fire-engine from Philadelphia, naturally directs attention to the Fire Department of a city where steam long ago superseded manual labor in driving fire-engines.  We allude of course, to Cincinnati.

 The first move made in Cincinnati toward the establishment of the existing system was in 1852, when Mr. A. B. Latta, of that city, invented and constructed a fire-engine to be run and worked by steam.  After many disappointments and delays, an appropriation was obtained from the City Council to aid in its construction; and it was finally brought out for public trial in January, 1853.  This engine the city bought, and its performance at fires gave such general satisfaction that, in October following, Mr. Griffin Taylor, a wealthy citizen of Cincinnati, agreed to advance the builder ten thousand dollars for the construction of another of the same kin, modified by several important improvements of the inventor's devising.  This second machine was finished in 1854; and its performance so far exceeded the promise of the first, and exhibited so much power and capacity of service, that several of the citizens, with the aid of some of the insurance companies, made up the requisite sum and bought it, and presented it to the city.  It hence took the name of "Citizens' Gift."  This is a fine, heavy, strong, and reliable machine.  As is seen in the cuts she has the locomotive power attached and by this, when steam is raised, she is chiefly propelled.  Four powerful horses are generally attached to her, however, to drag her home and to move her out before the steam is up.  This splendid machine works a double cylinder and a double pump, and is of herself capable of extinguishing any ordinary fire, not under very destructive headway, in a few minutes.

 The performance of this energetic engine is not equaled by that of any other in the world.  In an experimental trial of her capabilities, at the time of the great Railroad Celebration in Cincinnati, last year, she ran four squares and was throwing two fine streams through two hundred feet of hose that has been laid and run up a ladder five stories high, in precisely six minutes from the tap of the bell, at which moment she was standing cold and unhitched in the engine-house.  Her best throw was a horizontal stream from an inch and a half nozzle a distance of two hundred and eighty-seven feet.  To work this machine, including the horsement, requires the service of ten men.

 Mr. Latta, soon after the construction of this engine, designed and constructed one of a smaller size, represented in our second cut.  Steam may be got up in these in five minutes, and they do not require so copious a supply of water, two ordinary fire-plugs being sufficient for their demand.  The larger machines must depend upon the immense cisterns with which Cincinnati is so well supplied.  Where there are no such cisterns they would fail for want of water.  Four of this class of engines are capable of throwing upon a fire, in ten minutes after an alarm, nearly 71,500 gallons of water per hour.  Of the larger class Cincinnati has now three, whose united power is equal to the discharge – without weariness, interruption, or cessation – of 107,150 gallons an hour.  The full power of the twenty-eight hand-engines in use previous to the introduction of these steam machines, which required the constantly renewed labor of several hundred men, was only equal to the discharge of 121,200 gallons an hour.  The smaller engines require the services of one engineer, one fireman, and five men to managed the hose-reel and hose, of which each is provided with one thousand feet.  A small tender is attached to carry fuel.  This size may be drawn by men; but horses, for any species of apparatus, are so much more efficient and desirable that the labor of men in this branch of the fire service may profitably be dispensed with.

 In the Cincinnati department the entire round of the fire apparatus – the steam-engines, hose reels, hand-engines, and hook-and-ladder carriages – are all drawn by horses.  This save the men a heavy amount of labor, which, under the old system, often exhausted their strength before they arrived at the fire.

 A few months after the efficiency of steam fire-engine had been well established to the public satisfaction, the grand movement was made in Cincinnati in favor of a total reorganization of the fire department.  An ordinance was passed through the City Council abolishing the volunteer companies, and establishing the pay system, by which course all the fire apparatus became the property of the city, the men who worked them were employed and paid by the city, and its authorities assumed entire control of the department in every branch of its service.  This was a reformatory measure of the most salutary character, and was attended with the most beneficial results.

 The change encountered much opposition at first from the incredulous adherents to the old system, and was only finally carried through and established on a firm and successful basis by the perseverance and ability of one man – a man of tried energy and experience, and who, happily possessed the unrestricted confidence of all parties to the controversy to which the introduction of so radical a change in a long-established custom had given rise.   To Miles Greenwood, a public-spirited manufacturer who gave the time and labor of two years to its government and organization, the city of Cincinnati, and prospectively, the whole country, is indebted for the triumphant introduction of that admirable fire-system for which the city has been now for several years distinguished.  Not only was all opposition to the innovation speedily silenced, but the entire voice and approbation of the community was heartily won over to its support.  Not a man could now be found to consent to even a temporary return to the old irresponsible and turbulent volunteer system.

 The management of matters at a fire is as orderly, and we had almost said as quiet, as the commencement of exercises in a church.  We might be forced to admit a little exaggeration here; but if we had said town-meeting instead of church, we should have maintained the fairness of the comparison.  The truth is, there is very little noise at a fire now, and no confusion.  Any disorder or misconduct among the firement themselves is altogether out of the question.  The Mayor can as certainly rely upon the firemen – not only for keeping orderly themselves, but for resisting and checking disorder in others – as he can upon his own police.  A finer, and more trustworthy and intelligent body of men can not get got together, for any municipal occasion, than the tap of the fire-bell will call out in ten minutes upon any square of the city of Cincinnati.
 The Fire Department of Cincinnati consists of on Chief Engineer and two Assistant Engineers, elected every two years by the City Council, and on Captain and two Lieutenants for each company of thirty men.  The Chief Engineer has a salary of one thousand dollars a year, and exercises exclusive command over all other officers and men.  He is to superintend and systematize the work at fires, and examine into the condition of the apparatus, and watch over the general force.  The Captains are appointed by a Board of Supervisors, and have jurisdiction over their respective companies; and are to preserve order and enforce discipline, and make periodical returns of the condition of their engines and men, and of all other matters intrusted to their care.  The men are engaged and paid by the Board of supervisors, and may be discharged any moment on complaint of misconduct.  No one must absent himself from the city for forty eight hours without providing a substitute; and for absence from duty, in case of fire, each member is subject to a deduction from his pay.  Of the thirty men belonging to each company, five are attached to the engine-house, and of them two must be always on duty at each house.  No independent associations, or companies or clubs of firemen, are permitted.  The alarm system is very simple and effective.  There is a central watch-tower overlooking the city, to which is attached an immense alarm-bell whose deep toll may be heard in any corner of the city.  The town is also provided with an indicator, consisting of four red balls, corresponding with the number of fire-districts into which the city is divided.  These are illuminated at night, and may be seen from a great distance.  The taps on the different alarm-bells distributed over the city of course correspond, in case of fire, to the number of balls exhibited on the main tower, and the location of the fire is readily traced.

 The excellence of this system, including the estimation of the auxiliary value of steam as the chief element of power, is developed in its economical and effective working.  It accomplishes, in the most thorough and expeditious manner, the prime objective of any fire system, which is to put out the fires as soon as they break out.  It does not prevent them – this could scarcely be expected – but it arrests their progress, and prevents the destruction of property.  Under the Cincinnati system a fire is promptly subdued.  It is a standing rule with the Cincinnati firemen never to let a fire get beyond the house in which it may have originated; and in this design their efforts are generally, we had almost said uniformly, successful.  What is wanted to suppress a fire is water, promptly applied; and this can be poured on by the unwearying steam-engines in an irresitible deluge, adequate, in a reasonable period, to the extinguishment of the flames of Vesuvius.  A fire must have seized on some uncommonly combustible material if it is not put down in the building in which it originated.  Steam fire-engines are capital inventions for insurance companies.  They could well afford to furnish and support two or three in every large city in the country.  An experienced underwriter of Cincinnati lately remarked that his company "felt a great deal more secure against seriuos loss with a hundred thousand dollars at risk in a block than they formerly did with forty thousand."  And with reason.  The annual average loss in that city, under the old hand-engine system, was about six hundred thousand dollars; the introduction of steam machines has reduced the average to two hundred thousand – notwithstanding the enlargement of the city limits, and the great increase in manufactories and other public and private buildings.  From reports of the Chief Engineer of Cincinnati we make up the following table of comparative results:  (see table in article).
 It will be observed that the aggregate of losses for the three years ending in April, 1857, was $?81,030; being $26,876 less than for the single year ending in April, 1854.

 Of the sum lost in 1858, $250,000 occurred in three fires; one of them a large furniture warehouse, six stories high, and two squares from any competent supply of water; in which $100,00 worth of property was destroyed, of the most combustible description; $60,000 of the same amount was lost in the machinery and materials of a sugar refinery.  These cases do not, therefore, affect the estimate was have indicated of the comparative protective advantages of the new system.  The annual cost to the city of the Cincinnati Department is about $90,000; but his is regarded as the maximum expense, many items included in the cost of the first few years being of the nature of permanent expenditures, which will not soon require to be repeated.

 On the evidence, then, we are constrained to conclude as we began; the steam fire-engine is not only a success, it is a splendid triumph.  It is the surest protection against the spread of fire that a city can possess.  We may add the statement that has recently come to our knowledge, that the Board of Underwriters of the city of Louisville have purchased one of the Latta engines for the use of the Department of that city. and that the St. Louis Board have also ordered two as a donation to their city. Both bodies will doubtless find their profit in these prudential yet generous donations.