THE FIHE-ENGIHEER, THE ARCHITECT, AND THE HNDERWEITER J^elations to lEaclj ©tl)er* AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE CONVENTION OF THE CHIEF ENGINEERS OF THE FIRE-DEPARTMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, SEPT. 14, 1880. BY EDWARD ^TKINSON, PRESIDENT OF THE BOSTON MANUFACTURERS’ MUTUAL FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY. BOSTON : FRANKLIN PRESS: RAND, AVERY, & COMPANY. 1880. «* ADDRESS GIVEN BY EDWARD ATKINSOX TO THE FIRE-ENGINEERS OF THE UNITED STATES AT THEIR CONVENTION IN BOSTON, MASS., SEPT. 14, 1880. zr. 5 . f Gentlemen, — In the days of my youth, when I lived upon the top of Beacon Hill, close to the State House, the old Hero hand-engine. No. 6, was housed in Derne Street, on the north side of the hill. Whenever an alarm of fire sounded, it was my ambition, as well as that of every other boy on the hill, to be the first at the door, and carr}^ the end of the rope up the steep slope of Temple Street, while the members of the company gathered in behind. I may therefore claim to have taken a lead in the service of the fire-department more than forty years ago. I may safely assume that the record of my early vigor has followed down the line, and to that I may owe Die distinguished honor of being called upon to address you to-day. Since that time I have not been in active service until now. You will doubtless admit that so ancient and varied an experience as I must have had in the arduous service to which I have referred, would not have failed to give me many memo- ries with which I might occupy the hour that you have assigned to me ; but I do not understand that reminiscences are the order of the day, and we will therefore skip the last forty years, and come down to the art of extinguishing fires at the present time. That this is one of the high arts, no one will deny ; and it is every day becoming higher as story is added to story, and the ladders grow longer. j, 29390 4 But at the very outset I am met by a grave difficulty. I am to address a corps of men whose duties demand courage, energy, discretion, cool deliberate judgment, endurance, so- briety, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a true man ; and yet, the more I recognize their merits, the more I must condemn other classes in the community who are, perhaps, awarded, or at least often assume, a higher standing, to which their merits do not entitle them. I am reminded of one of the many stories of President Lincoln : A boy had been condemned to prison for opening the letters of his employer, and abstracting money from them. He was a country boy who had not lived long in the city, and whose previous record had been very good. Presently a peti- tion for his pardon was forwarded to the President through the member of Congress for the district. The President read it carefully, noted how well bred the boy had been, how he had been to Sunday school, how he had never committed a fault before ; and all this was certified to by the best citizens of the district. Presently the President looked up, and said, “Well, I suppose I understand this case, and you say it is all right. I must pardon the boy, as I did another for the last man who went out as you came in ; but I will tell you what we must do, Mr. R : we must abolish these courts ; for, if I can believe all the petitions that come to me for pardon, all that the courts do is to put the best boys in each district in jail, in order that I may have the satisfaction of pardoning them.” Now, gentlemen, if I fully comprehend your position, we must abolish these architects ; for, so far as I can judge, all that they do is to put up the most perfect specimens of combustible architecture, in order that you may have the satisfaction of putting out the fires that are sure to occur in them. In the treatment of this subject, I must of necessity repeat in part what I have said elsewhere, and often ; but, as I have had no previous opportunity to present this whole subject in one essay before so able and influential a body of men as I now have before me, I may be permitted to state the case as fully as possible within the time allotted, and without regard to previous work. I would by no means undervalue the profession of the true architect; and I wish to say that there are a few conspicuous exceptions to the common rule. There are architects who are 5 masters of all that pertains to the art of building and construc- tion, and who know how to combine true taste and admirable design with safety, stability, and fitness for the use to which buildings are to be applied. They can build, as well as design; and to them my criticisms do not apply. But the vast majority of those who assume the title of archi- tect are masters only of the art of sham. Let us take as an example the modern stone church, so called. What is it but a structure of timber, kindling-wood, lath, and plaster, screened with stone on the outside ? — both timber frame and stone screen, each almost incapable of standing alone, but holding each other up by wooden ties and braces; each part of the wooden church within connected with the other part by wooden flues, where fire may pass at its will, fully protected from water, and with every provision so adequately made, that, even if the fire begins in the lowest part of the cellar, in the usual wooden air-box of the furnace, or from the usual pile of hot ashes in the usual corner, the first visible appearance will be at the peak of the roof, — seventy- five to one hundred feet in the air. You are, every one of you, familiar with these cases. I venture to say that there is hardly a single engineer representing a town or city of twenty thousand people, who has not risked his own life, or Avitnessed the risk of the firemen under his orders, in dealing with a fire in a brick or stone church constructed after this manner. The schoolhouses, hospitals, and almshouses are almost all of the same abominable order, — a network of hollow, wooden flues, connecting hollow floors with hollow walls, hollow walls with hollow ceilings, hollow ceilings with hollow roofs ; the inner sides of these flues presenting the largest possible number of sawed corners, and the maximum of danger. In warehouses the case is even worse. Vast amounts of money are absolutely wasted in modes of construction that only aggravate the hazard, until it seems as if, in place of ignorance, or utter want of consideration of the danger of fire, a malignant intelligence had been applied to the whole plan of the building in order to assure the very maximum of loss from the very mini- mum of cause. Within the last few months I have watched the construction of a great block of brick warehouses, intended for wholesale traffic. They are consistent in every respect with the bad 6 rules that now prevail ; they are a good deal higher than any of the buildings in the neighborhood, and are on a very narrow street. If a fire ever occurs in one of them, the wisest course for the engineers will be to protect the adjacent property, and to let them burn. I will only describe one feature : in each one is an open shaft for the elevator, reaching from cellar to attic, sheathed in the most stupid and costly way with wood through- out. There is no skylight over the elevator ; and, when the fire ascends, it will strike the inside of the roof of thin boards, which will hold it just long enough to deflect the flame toward the centre, and assure tlie complete combustion of the upper stoiy and roof. In the one of the several buildings into which this block is divided, which I examined, there are three recesses in the party walls for pipes of various kinds, faced in the basement and lower stories with wood, and open vertically. They communi- cate with each of the hollow floors, and will serve as flues for fire to extend through the middle parts of the building that are not so fully served with the means of communicating fire as the upper stories are by the front and rear elevators. The upper stories will doubtless be used for manufacturing purposes. If they should be used for the manufacture of cloth- ing, another oven for heating smoothing-irons may be placed on a brick hearth laid upon the hollow floor, as it was in the build- ing lately burned in Winthrop Square. In the warm and com- fortable quarters thus prepared for them, with convenient avenues provided behind the sheathing on the party walls, the rats of the neighborhood will establish their nursery, and build their nests of the scraps of oily waste that have been used to wipe the sewing-machines and shafting; and when the little ones are born, not being provided with diapers, they will piddle upon the waste, and thus you will have the exact conditions for spon- taneous combustion. The apparatus that we use in our experiments at the Insti- tute of Technology to tell whether an oil is liable to spontane- ous combustion, consists of just such a close chamber maintained at a uniform but quite moderate degree of heat. Into this we put some oily waste, and a little moisture only hastens the com- bustion. The occupants will again wonder what makes rats haunt a clothing factory. They will again pay fifty dollars to a profes- 7 sional rat-catcher without avail ; and when the dangerous fire occurs, making another loss of half a million dollars, they may rebuild in the same stupid way, because there is no official fire inquest, and no method on the part of the underwriters for ascertaining the precise cause of fire, and avoiding the repeti- tion of the danger. In the case that I have cited, where such a fire did occur, there happened to be a restless person who called public atten- tion to the faults ; and in the reconstruction they have been mostly remedied. But mark this, gentlemen : although the precise cause of danger may not have been foreseen in this case, yet the general bad construction of this building and the special danger of these ovens had been foreseen ; and the plan necessary to be followed when the inevitable fire should occur from them had all been noted by the assistant city fire-engi- neer in charge of this section of the cit}^ His plan of action to meet the attack which his enemy the architect had planned in the most combustible distribution of timber and board, faced with stone and screened by iron, was all decided. He knew that there was only a single, narrow, and dangerous stairway to reach the point where the fire would begin; he knew the danger of the thin board roof; and having thus foreseen the danger, which never ought to have existed (if for no other reason, yet because two hundred and fifty men, women, and children were employed on the very floors on which this danger was known to exist at the head of a single combustible stair- way, three feet wide only), he was able to direct the defensive force of firemen so that only half a million dollars was sacri- ficed in an attempt to combine a stately appearance and a fine architectural effect with false economy and utter disregard of safety in the interior construction. Had the building been under the supervision of the factory mutual underwriters, or had that engineer possessed an influ- ence by which he could have moved the owners or occupants to take the simple measures that would have prevented loss, the fire itself might never have occurred, or, if it had, this loss would have been less than five hundred dollars, instead of five hundred thousand dollars. Upon a neighboring corner another building has just been reconstructed within the outer shell, — all that was left after a great fire. It is the second building that has been almost 8 totally destroyed upon that spot, and a heavy previous loss had occurred but a little time before the first absolutely destructive fire. Three fires on that one spot! In the very first fire com- plete destruction had only been prevented by a singular acci- dent. In a flue in the party wall faced with wood, the soil and leaden water pipes had been placed. The fire took from spontaneous combustion in the basement just in front of this wooden facing ; the heat sufficed to melt the leaden water-pipe, and thus let the water on before the boards were burned through ; and this accidental automatic sprinkler stopped the flame passing to the attic, and prevented the destruction of the building. The first complete destruction of the building happened in the great fire. In the last case the fire came from the adjoin- ing building through inadequate iron doors on the upper story, but might have been stayed there, because the engineer in this case again knew the danger, and was on the spot in time to guard against it; but the equally treacherous iron shutters let the fire in below. The tenants had been warned of this dan- ger ; but the very conditions of their lease bound them to main- tain precautions that were worthless, and forbade the cheaper methods of safety. That building is now being prepared for a fourth conflagration, no attention having been paid to the lessons of either fire. If there was a system of insuring city buildings similar to that which I represent, none of the dan- gers tliat I have described would be tolerated, from which a loss of a million has occurred in two fires during the past year, and from which causes another million may be lost at any moment. Safe methods are cheaper as well as safe. The dangers in each of these cases were foreseen : the remedies Avere easy and simple. The new building that I have described, but which has not yet burned, has been made dangerous by an expenditure of money where it is not of the slightest use. We do not speak Avithout knoAvledge. One large building offered to us for insurance has been burned Avithin the year in the very manner that we foretold when Ave surveyed it, Avhich caused us to refuse to insure it ; and the delay of one year on the r part of the OAvners in adopting our suggestions for prevention of loss, because of alleged Avant of time, has cost them fifty thousand dollars above their insurance, and a 9 break in the conduct of their business hard to be estimated in money. Our heaviest loss for the year has occurred because we un- wisely assumed that a certain occupation — that of watch-mak- ing — was so safe that it could be tolerated in a hollow- walled building ; and, when the fire occurred, it cost us twenty-five thousand dollars : whereas, in a building of proper and cheaper construction, the loss would not have been five thousand dollars. Bear in mind, gentlemen, I am propounding no unproved theory. I am not suggesting expensive and futile attempts at ’ what is called fire-proof construction. I am merely giving you facts based on the observation and experience of the officers in charge of the most successful system of fire insurance in the world, — a system in which the first object aimed at is the pre- vention of loss, and not, as in the common system of insurance, to make money for the stockholders by incurring risks rather than by preventing them. ' From the point of view of the factory mutual underwriters, there is scarcely a commercial warehouse, store, or shop in this country, that is as safely constructed as it might have been 'for the same cost ; and r large portion of them could have been made substantially safe if some of the money expended in use- less, and often in bad attempts at architectural effect, internal and external, had been applied to true methods and for ade- quate means of preventing loss. Many of the modes of inter- nal construction, adopted for merely architectural or decorative effect, are themselves the cause of danger and of excessive loss. It has been contended that the fault lies with owners, and not with architects and builders, and this is true in part, but not wholly. Buildings can be designated in this and other cities where excessive expenditures have been made, many of them having reference to danger of fire, and yet where the most ordinary precautions have been neglected. I can point out to you buildings in which costly fires have occurred, where the stairways are of stone and the roofs of iron, but where interior party walls have been furred off with wood, and open elevators of the most dangerous construction have been the cause of heavy loss. You all know the danger of granite, full as it is of water in the hygroscopic form, and liable to be converted into gravel and 10 sand by a degree of heat that would have no effect at all on an oak plank or post sheathed with tin, or protected by a coat of plaster on wire lath. A stairway of granite or marble, in a building in which the adjacent walls and finish ai e of wood, or in which the contents are combustible, is dangerous to firemen. A much safer and less destructible stairway may be constructed' of plank and iron, properly protected on the underside with wire and plaster. You all know that an incombustible shell often becomes an oven, in which the combustible structure within or the combus- tible contents are consumed as in an oven, under a heavy draught of air passing through windows and doors, and out through the thin and miserable board roofs with which very many brick, stone, and iron buildings are covered. ' From the stand-point of the mutual underwriter, the lesson needed to be learned by those who build city structures is the right disposition and use of timber and plank with carefully protected use of iron. Let us assume the simplest problem : an isolated storehouse for cotton or wool, free from any danger from the proximity of other buildings. Let this problem be presented to an ordinary architect with the request that he shall make a safe building, and in nine cases out of ten he will specify brick walls, iron posts, iron doors ; often a roof of iron, or else a roof of matched boards one inch thick, supported on two-inch plank rafters, to be covered with gravel or tin. In every point he will be wrong : he will ignore the danger within. It will not occur to him that such a building is nothing but an oven ; that the iron will warp or curl in the first five minutes of exposure to very moderate heat from the burning of the contents, or that the thin roof will soon be full of holes making good draughts, while the brick walls and iron shutters keep the firemen away from the fire. We should make this plan in an utterly different way. We should prescribe a frame for sides and roof of heavy timber ; but in the timbers of the roof there would be no more material than in the rafters customarily used. Upon the roof-timbers we should place two to three inch plank, laid flat, tongued and splined, slow to burn through, and making a safe deck on which firemen may work for a long time ; oak posts ; the sides of tlfin boards laid clapboard fashion, or, if appearances are not considered, shingled. If shingled in 11 mortar, such a building is almost fire-proof from without. Such sides may be easily tom away with fire-hooks, and the contents reached at any point. If the proximity of adjacent buildings or appearances require the use of brick for the walls, we would prescribe the solid plank roof, the oak posts, wide doors on each accessible side made of two thicknesses of one-inch boards covered or sheathed with tin. From this example the whole case may be understood. There is practically no such thing as a fire-proof building. Brick comes nearer to being a fire-proof material than any other substance ; but even an iron furnace lined with fire-brick may be destroyed by fire. Iron is treacherous in the extreme, and almost worthless in many places where it is commonly used. Granite is one of the most dangerous of all materials, marble nearly as bad, and sandstone not much better. The much-abused stucco made of calcined plaster, so repug- nant to the taste of the sesthetic architect, is one of the safest and most valuable materials to check the spread of fire ; and good solid wood may be so used for interior construction, that instead of screening fire from Avater, and providing the easiest and speediest way for a fire to spread throughout a building, it will hold a fire in the room where it starts until even an ineffi- cient fire-department has time to put it out. Another common waste of money in city warehouses is in the provision made for inside stand-pipes and fire-apparatus. Such fittings may be of the utmost service ; but, as a rule, they are a mere delusion and sham. Private fire-apparatus, in order to be of any material use, must be in the charge of a private fire-department adequately trained and accustomed to act together. It is seldom of any service to the public fire-department, because they can adjust their own apparatus much more quickly. How often do you see the hose on an inside stand-pipe wound round the neck of the hy- drant ! from which it would take about ten minutes to unwind it, and then as many more to untwist it. Do not think I undervalue private fire-apparatus, however. It is the very key to our success as mutual underwriters ; but in all our factories we have men, like yourselves, competent to direct its use, with trained men under them. There is no sub- stitute for brains. Our heaviest losses have occurred in prem- 12 ises furnished with the most adequate apparatus, all of which has broken down from unskilful use, for want of a chief. You may build as safely as you may ; you may provide the best apparatus public or private for extinguishing fires that can be devised ; you may have the most perfect and the strongest S3^stem of underwriting ; and you may have the most capable men to constitute your corps of firemen, — yet fires will happen, and the heaviest losses will occur, if the one man is missing, if the chief is not there. If the steady head is not on the shoul- ders of the right man, who controls the whole service, all the rest goes for nothing. Your service, gentlemen, can never be dispensed with ; but, the more adequate the measures taken to provide you with the tools of your trade, the more judgment, coolness, courage, and occasional audacity will you be called upon to exert. But now jmu may say to me, “ You have pictured the dan- gers with which we are called upon to contend ; you have put into words, without exaggeration or malice, the faults and fol- lies, the criminal stupidity and negligence, by which lives and property are endangered and lost ; you have recorded the waste of fire that causes every year in the loss and expense a tax upon the whole community much greater than the cost of sustaining the largest standing army maintained by any nation in Europe, being a tax, directly or indirectly, of one hundred and thirty million to one hundred and fift}^ million dollars : but what are the remedies? It is easy to find fault, but almost as useless as it is easy, unless a way to avoid the faults can be indicated at the same time.” In this rejoinder you are right ; and my criticism of the present methods of building and protecting cities would be nothing but an arrogant impertinence, if I were not in some degree prepared to meet your comment. I say, in some degree prepared, because the complete remedy for all these faults must be the slow evolution of more than one generation. It has taken more than forty years to bring the right con- struction of the textile factory, the paper-mill, and the machine- shop to its present rule, and to perfect the apparatus and means of preventing loss from the fires that must occur in them ; yet hardly a month passes without some new and instructive fact coming to our notice, or some new method proving to be expe- dient. 13 You know the hazard of the factories that we insure in the factory mutuals, — the almost explosive nature of cotton-fibre in the picker and card rooms; the extreme danger of wool saturated with oil ; the liability to heated bearings in machinery operating at the highest speed ; the hazard of raw material in the pro- cesses of drying; the spontaneous combustion even of the goods themselves from the oxydation of the dye-stuffs used in them : yet, subject as we are to all these extra hazards, our losses since I became president of the company — a period of two years and eight months — have been only one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars on one hundred and twenty-five million dol- lars of risks insured, absorbing only a little more than ten hun- dredths of one per cent on the amount of the risks taken. During the whole period in which the company has existed, and while its members and officers were learning how to build and how to protect the property, the cost of insurance has been less than one third of one per cent; and the amount of pre- mium returned to the members, after deducting all losses and expenses, even though levied at rates much less than any stock companies ever did charge, or could ever have afforded to charge under their system of mere betting against the chances of loss in badly built and badly guarded buildings, — I say our actual returns in money, if annually compounded at six per cent in- terest, gives back to the members the whole insurable value of their property in thirt3^-five years. This success has been secured, not by statute, not by means of building acts and compulsory methods, but through the simple force of the self-interest of the members themselves. We do not say to them, “ You must do this or that.” We have no control over their acts. They may build in any way they please ; they may let dangerous waste accumulate, and neglect * their pumps and hydrants. All that we can do, when our inspect- ors find out these faults in their quarterly inspections, is to write to the manager, “ Please return the policy of insurance issued by this company, on such a day, after which your un- earned premium will be returned to you, and you will cease to be a member of this compan3\” No manufacturer of any standing can afford to incur the risk of such a notice. It is cheaper for him to remedy the faults to which his notice has been called by the inspector, and to improve his apparatus if it is defective. This method cannot, perhaps, 14 be applied to the concentrated risks of great cities ; but there are many points suggested by it that can be so applied, as well as some other methods. 1. Adequate building acts can be drawn so as to cover the grosser faults of construction. This is about all that can be done by statute. 2. In place of the private examination, such as we make, there should be a public inquest by a competent expert as to the cause and course of every fire. Such an officer should be empowered to compel the attendance of witnesses, and to take testimony; to summon special assistants in obscure cases; and should be bound to publish officially a statement of all the facts in each case, with names of owners, tenants, and occupants. In this way a wholesome public opinion would be created; and he who from ignorance or greed should expose life and property to unnecessary risk would be held to a stern account. 3. If the bad construction and special points of danger to particular buildings are now well known to the chief and to the district engineers, even before the inevitable fire occurs;, if, as they do, tiiey have their plans laid as if for a battle ; and if, as they do, they marshal their forces to meet a well-known but perfectly avoidable danger, — why should there not be some or- ganized method by which owners, builders, and architects could also be informed in advance of the prospective hazard ? Their own interest would soon bring them to a habit of consulting such an officer as soon as the custom had become established. I beg to suggest to you as a practical measure that you prepare a memorial to be sent to the Legislature of each of your respec- tive States, asking the passage of promissive acts under which every city, and perhaps each county, may appoint a fire-marshal to investigate every fire and publish the results of such an in- quest, and under which each town or city may empower its fire-engineers to watch the construction of buildings and advise methods of safety. No man would be fool enough, after he had been warned, to put granite posts to support a basement-floor and the whole structure above it ; as in that fatal case in New York, where brave men met their fearful death in consequence of the crimi- nal ignorance of those who owned, planned, and built the ware- house. No man would be so foolish, after he had been informed of 15 the difference, as to lay a thin board roof on plank rafters eighteen inches or two feet on centres, unsafe and unfit to keep out heat and cold, when, by using the same quantity of material disposed in a proper way at the same or less cost, he could make a solid deck-roof two and a half inches thick, substantially impervious to heat and cold. No owner would be so idiotic as to sheathe an elevator-shaft with thin boards, and provide a wooden flue for fire behind them, after his attention had once been called to the stupidity of such a method; nor would he ever employ a second time an architect who had misled him into such a blunder, however effective the elevation of the building might be, or however true to high art the design of the terra-cotta tiles with which the front of the fire-trap was decorated. No owner or tenant would ever dare employ women and children, by scores or hundreds, on fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, at the head of single flights of combustible stairways, three feet wide on the treads, after the danger to his own pocket had been called to his attention. Yet some of the subscribers to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children are and have been the owners of such premises in this city. No owner would ever permit himself or his tenant to store combustible goods or to follow dangerous occupations in the upper stories of our high city buildings, without adequate pro- vision for checking a fire at its Yery beginning, after he had been instructed how to fit the premises with automatic sprink- lers or other means of preventing loss, and had learned how cheap and how effective such appliances were. No sane person would fail to cut off the wooden flues from intercommunication with each other in buildings where hollow walls and ceiled floors cannot be dispensed with, if his attention had once been called to the facility with which it can be done at very little cost. Especially would this be true in dwelling- houses or warehouses intended to be occupied by their owners. In calling these interspaces or hollow spaces in walls and floors by the name of “ flues,” persons who are not in the habit of thinking about fires may be confused. If we consider the relation to each other of all the walls, floors, and roof of a brick or stone building of common con- struction, we find theni connected not only by the contact of the solid materials, but also by air-passages or spaces, which I have called “flues.” 16 These air-spaces have their use and also their danger ; and the utter failure of the great majorit}^ of so-called architects is in their want of discrimination in respect to use and danger. An air-space between the outer wall of a building composed of brick or stone, and the inner structure composed of timber and sheathing or plastering, is often, perhaps always, a necessity in dwelling-houses and in shops that must be expensively finished in order to be adapted to their use ; but in most whole- sale warehouses even such an air-space in the outer wall is not required, and in a factory it is worse than useless. But even these air-spaces should contain only still or dead air, and not circulating air, in order that they may serve the purpose of a non-conductor of heat and cold, or of moisture, which con- stitutes their use. Yet in nine buildings out of ten there is an open passage from the air-spaces of the outer walls to those on the party walls, thence to those in the floors and to those in the roof ; so that there is an almost unobstructed circulation of air, rats, mice, or fire. Most architects give so little consideration to this point, that they sacrifice the main object of the air-space in greater part by a mode of construction that assures the maximum of danger in case of fire. But, even where air-spaces are required on outer walls, they are intolerable on party walls of shops and warehouses, or even in dwelling-houses where the party walls are of moderately good construction. Such walls can be plastered solid without harm, as there is no liability to the condensation of moisture on them. If sheathing is required on party walls, it can be so put on that no fire can possibly pass behind it ; or the wall can be finished with wire lath and plastering at as low a cost as for sheathing. In respect to floors, the air-space is alleged to be needed in dwelling-houses and office-buildings to deaden sound ; but sound can be deadened by putting sheathing-felt between the plank and boards of a solid floor constructed on the factory plan. Air-spaces in floors are, however, subject to comparatively little objection if they are not connected with vertical air-spaces, or flues, in the walls. If wire lath is used for ceilings, and the air-space in the floor is not connected with vertical flues, I suppose such a construc- tion is actually safer than the open construction on the factory plan, if the building is not to be used for manufacturing. In that case no hollow floor can be tolerated. 17 In fact, I suppose the nearest approach to fire-proof construc- tion, or to a construction in which the combustion of the con- tents would impair the buildiDg least, would be a building constructed, as to the outer walls, of brick ; the windows pro- tected with wooden shutters covered with tin ; the walls plastered inside on wire ; the floors and stairways of timber, three-inch plank, and one-iuch top boards ; the ceilings plas- tered on wire, the wire following the line of the timber and plank, the top boards laid in mortar, and the stairways plastered on wire ; each floor cut off from the one below by passage-way and wooden doors both sheathed with tin; elevators to be in brick shafts, furnished with self-closing hatches, and lighted from above by a skylight of two thin plates of glass set in one sash, with wire netting between the plates. Such a sliaft would serve as a safe flue in case a fire should ever get into it, and the skylight would not expose firemen to the danger that ensues from the use of thick plates of glass when broken by heat ; while the wire netting would keep out sparks from adjacent fires quite as effectively as thick glass, or more so. I mean to say that by the right disposition of timber and plank (boards being used only for top floors), and by the com- mon-sense use of wire lath, plastering, and tin, a city warehouse can be built in which the ordinary contents of any floor could be separately consumed to the extent to which combustion could possibly reach before a moderately effective fire-depart- ment would get into action, and with less injury to the building from fire or water than if only brick and iron were used. In other words, we have reached the conviction that the abundance of wood in the United States may not only be made to serve economy in construction, but may be made as safe as the so-called fire-proof buildings of Europe, if architects and builders are rightly instructed in the use of the material. There is less loss in the cotton factories of New England than in those of Lancashire, although the latter are mostly of the so-called fire-proof construction, because our means of prevent- ing the extension of a fire are better, and our mills are immeas- urably cleaner. I venture to ask you, if a discussion ensues upon this paper, if you are not subjected to greater danger in dealing with fires, from the ignorant use of stone and iron, than you are from the 18 use of wood for inside^ purposes, where a moderate degree, of skill has been used in the disposition of the wood ; and also if you are not more retarded than aided by the use of iron for roofs, doors, and shutters. It may be true that, if the demand were made for the materials for the building that I have described, their unusual sizes and shapes might cause a single building to be more costly than the common combustible construction ; but as soon as attention is given to the subject, and common sense displaces the present bad custom, I cannot doubt that incombustible construction will be the cheapest, because there will then be a demand for materials cut in such form as to adapt them to safe use. ..In expressing these opinions as to the feasibility of construct- ing very safe buildings, in which wood may be a component material to as great or even a greater extent than at present, I do not, of course, intend to compare these structures with post- offices, custom-houses, or other government buildings, nor with such structures as have been erected by life-insurance compa- nies, in which classes of structure the prime cost appears to be little regarded. I merely give the judgment of myself, based on a compilation of results, and of the officers and inspectors of factory mutual- insurance companies, based on many years of observation and experience, that brick, timber, plaster, and tin may be so com- bined in a structure for any ordinary purpose as to make even the complete destruction of one building very improbable, and a great conflagration substantially impossible. If a fire-engineer were only authorized and instructed to watch the construction of warehouses, and to advise the owners not to commit the faults against which he is now obliged to prepare to defend them after they are committed, surely no person of sufficient common sense to have become the owner of real estate could disregard the warning. And if it became the practice to watch the modes of construction, as the mutual underwriters watch the building of the factories which they are to insure, incompetent architects would soon cease to be employed, and careless builders would no longer leave combus- tible rubbish in concealed spaces. 4. I am not without hope of a better method of supervision by underwriters. The futile attempt to supervise the contract of insurance tlirough State commissioners will some time be given 19 r lip. When that time comes, weak insurance companies will no longer be able to compete with strong ones, being enabled to do so only because they have met a fallacious standard of solvency, and received a qumi guaranty of the State in their license to do business within its limits. Strong companies may then impose conditions, charge ade- quate rates, and have a margin for abatement of rate when measures of protection are taken. It may then become more profitable for owners to build safe buildings, and attend to safety in their use, than to rely upon an insurance company for indemnity. I would even say that while there would be great hardship to individuals, and great interference with credit, if all contracts of insurance, except upon the mutual sj^stem, were prohibited by law, I am^ satisfied that there would be a national saving. I Avould therefore cease to give any State supervision to this contract ; and then it would be as important for the assured to examine into the character and standing of their underwriters, as it is in regard to their tenants or other customers. I know of no branch of business to which so little care and attention is commonly given, or that is so expensively and wastefully conducted, as that of insurance ; and I can see no remedy until States give up the futile undertaking of protecting the contract by special supervision, except to the extent of re- quiring quarterly statements to be ihade and publicly adver- tised in newspapers selected for the purpose. But this matter is only indirectly before you. I refer to it because I am inclined to attribute the excessive losses by fire in this country to an apparently cheap, but really very costly and unfit method of insurance. 5. Your own departments may be supplemented by addi- tional apparatus, subject to your own control. I have had the honor of suggesting a plan for the protection of the high, fiat- roofed warehouses, now so common in all cities, by conducting the water through outside stand-pipes, and thence through a horizontal pipe-service upon the roofs, — furnished with frequent hydrants at the party or parapet walls dividing the 'warehouses from each other ; such roof-service to be connected from block to block, and served either by the pressure of water from a high reservoir, or by a steam fire-engine coupled on at the base of the stand-pipe. My plan was rejected by the committee on fire- 20 departments and by the city council, although approved by the fire-commissioners ; but yet I say I had the honor of pre- senting it. I claim it as an honor, because of the reasons assigned for its rejection. The first reason published was, that, if the plan was adopted, the city would become so safe as to cause the withdrawal of insurance capital from it. The second reason, given by the president of an insurance company, was, that, if it was adopted, the water would be let on the fire so quickly from above, that the protective department would not have time to cover the goods below with their rubber blankets, and the water damage would be excessive. • The third reason — which, I was credibly informed, was the one that caused the rejection of a specific proposal to the city government, on my part, to protect one block of about three- quarters of an acre in extent of flat roofs at a cost of twelve hundred dollars — was, that the service would prove so com- pletely effective, that the city would be obliged to carry it out throughout the remainder of the area of high buildings, about fifty acres in extent. 6. Tenants and occupants are learning to protect themselves better; the combinations for electric fire-alarms are extending; and the Parmalee automatic sprinkler — the most effective instrument for extinguishing fire that there is in existence to-day — is beginning to be introduced in some premises besides those that are insured in the mutual companies, in spite of the tacit or active opposition of that class of underwriters — small, I hope, in number — who discourage all improvement in this direction, and who prefer the chances of betting on bad risks to the more certain prospect of smaller immediate gains from safer methods. These sprinklers are generally used, of course, as a self-oper- ating fire-extinguisher, with water standing in the system of pipes to which they are attached, ready for distribution by the action of heat ; but I wish especially to suggest to you their use as a means of distributing water into the upper stories of high buildings from your steam fire-engines. ' The arrangement would consist of the usual distribution of automatic sprinklers in the building, attached to a system of pipe, with a connection on the main supply-pipe at or near the m-ouiid to which hose from the steamers can be attached. O 21 The great advantage of saving the time necessary to gain ac- cess to such buildings, putting all the available water just where the fire is and nowhere else, and this without admitting air to support combustion, must be apparent to you all. They cannot waste any water, or by any possibility delay or interfere with any other efforts that may be deemed necessary to save property. The admitted need of some more certain and effective means of extinguishing fire in the more inaccessible portions of our lofty city buildings, seems to justify attention to an appliance which has repeatedly proved itself a success by practical work- ing. 7. The fact is beginning to be understood that all insurance is but a system of mutual protection, — that the capital of a stock company only serves as a guaranty, the premiums being the real fund provided for indemnity. When this becomes clear, men begin to ask themselves whether it is not a clumsy method of co-operation, in which thirty to forty per cent of the pre- mium or indemnity fund is absorbed on the average by ex- penses, and only sixty to seventy per cent — often only thirty to forty — is available for indemnity. Then comes the question. Cannot a system be established by which the whole benefit of the premiums may be enjoyed by those who pay them ? The answer is found as yet only in a mutual system in which the prevention of fire is the paramount object ; but there are other methods that are sure to be adopted ere long. The present wasteful method cannot long be toler- ated ; and the next great conflagration, after it has bankrupted a third or a half of the companies now struggling for existence, can hardly fail to be sufficient to assure reform. If that fire strikes the dry-goods district in New York, it will be a costly lesson, against which provision ought now to be made. The equipment of a cotton factory with means of preventing destructive fire usually costs a sum equal to one to two 3 ^ears’ premiums of insurance on the premises at the regular rates. The average dividends in the mutual offices for two years, or at the utmost for three, rarely fail to reimburse the cost of prepar- ing buildings for admission when they are rightly constructed. It is safe to affirm, that, if the young engineers who are employed in the work of inspection in the compan^^ under my charge 22 could have the use of the sum of money paid for one year for the insurance in the dry-goods district of New York or in the rebuilt burnt district of Boston, they could make a great con- flagration impossible, and witli two years’ premiums they could make the total destruction of a single building almost equally impossible. In the last seven years we have had but four total losses, and none of these were in the main factory buildings. The propor- tion of loss in fires on which we have been called to pay over a thousand dollars has been less than one-half the amount insured. I have computed, in a rough way, that this company has insured property in thirty years equal to thirty thousand sepa- rate risks insured for one year ; or, rather, we have insured ten thousand risks in groups of three buildings, each within less than one hundred feet of the other. Fire has been prevented from extending from one detached building to another of those insured by us, with one single exception ; fire has been communicated from other buildings to those insured by us in two cases only. In all three of these instances adequate apparatus was misused or broken for want of a competent chief to control it. In the whole period, since the establishment of the company in 1855, we have had but twenty-four total losses of the whole amount insured on any one risk. I give 3mu these facts from our own experience merely to prove the efBciency of good apparatus, worked by trained men under competent chiefs, in saving property of a most hazardous kind. I do not give them in order to advertise the company or the system ; for that we never do. I assume that I really owe the honor of addressing you only to the fact that I hold the position of president of the Boston Manufacturers’ Mutual Fire-Insurance Company, and that I have thereby been enabled to compile the results of the ex- ' peiience of that and other companies. I can claim no other qualification. My own personal and official experience has not been long, although I have been interested as a director and member for very many years. In my own judgment, the one practical idea that I have pre- sented to you is the suggestion that measures shall be taken to make it a part of the official duties of fire-engineers and their assistants to observe the construction of buildings in process of 23 erection ; to take note of the faults and dangers, and of the insufficient means of egress for operatives employed therein ; to make and maintain a record of the facts ; and to call the attention of owners, builders, and architects to the points of danger and of false construction at the time they are threatened or actually committed, — such records to be open to the inspec- tion of underwriters and their agents. When the fires thereafter occur, the fault will lie at the doors of those who might have applied the remedy. It will make it more difficult for them to collect their losses; and if they have not complied with the statute in respect to the means of escape, and loss of life or limb has happened, the record will tell heavily against them in the trials for damages. I have little faith in legal compulsion, but the utmost faith in the force of public opinion, and in making it for the self-interest of the owners and occupants of estates to protect themselves. It is by such self-interest that we have made cotton and woollen factories, paper-mills, and machine-shops, better risks than stone churches, brick hospitals and asylums, and iron warehouses. The questions before you are of national importance. The annual cost of fires in the United States, direct and indirect, is, as I have stated, one hundred and thirty million to one hun- dred and fifty million dollars a year. The actual destruction by fire annually amounts to a sum equal to the cost of sustaining the largest standing army now maintained by any nation in Europe. Can we afford such a waste ? If such a direct tax were im- posed, should we bear it? Yet this tax is distributed with unerring certainty on every man, woman, and child in this broad land. One-half of this sum at the very least is a shameful, useless, and ignorant waste. How much you save the nation by your skill and courage, I should not dare compute. It would be a vast sum. Your de- partments are marked examples of all that skill can make them ; but, while they give the best evidence of our capacity as a nation to cope with danger and provide against it, yet the very necessit}^ for your perfect work, and your inability, with all your force, skill, and courage, to prevent a loss that constitutes the heaviest single tax upon this nation, is either evidence of igno- 24 ranee and incapacity in other directions, or of criminal and wasteful negligence. > If we show how to save only one-half of the vast sum now lost, we may add to the resources of the country every year a sum nearly equal to the interest on the national debt. This we may do, I confidently believe, by simple methods such as I have sketched; and by so doing we may enhance the importance of our own position ; we may add to the dignity of our calling, if not for ourselves, for those who come after us ; and we may thus serve our country, our cities, our towns, and our neighbors, in the most effective way that is open to us. Among the subjects assigned to special committees, I observe several to which we have been obliged to give great attention. The quality and durability of hose is one of these. The con- ditions of use of hose in factories and by private fire-depart- ments vary so essentially from that of regular fire-departments, that our standard will not fully serve your purpose. At the same time our tests may not be without value to you, and I submit them. The subject is still under investigation ; but some of our methods take many months of trial. The samples tried are at our office, where any of you will be welcome. We have there, also, various models of automatic doors, shutters, and hatchways, — tinned wooden doors that have saved heavy loss where iron has failed, — and other matters. The possibility of fire being caused b}^ contact of wood with steam-pipes may also be conclusively proved to you by many examples that we have gathered. Here is one, — a portion of the sill of a hotel in Woonsocket, less than one year old, through which a heating pipe was carried in contact, from a boiler that was never subjected to over twelve pounds pressure, and where superheated steam could never have been present. The building was not insured by us ; but after the fire, which was put out with small loss, I sent a young man, who cut this piece of burned wood from the sill, and mounted it on the pipe in the exact manner in which it had been placed. Any one who denies the possibility of combustion from the contact of wood with a steam-heating pipe is an ignoramus. But there is a much more serious and as common a cause of danger of fire from steam-pipes used for the distribution of heat in factories, workshops, and the like, where they are arranged 25 in lines or coils at the sides of the rooms, under the win- dows. This is, as you are well aware, the customary place for them ; and when so placed they are apt to become encumbered with lint, shavings, and rubbish of all sorts, especially behind work- benches. They also serve as receptacles for rags, brushes, old slippers, overalls, and all sorts of combustible material; and they are a frequent and constant cause of fires. The remedy is to place the pipes overhead^ either on the wall above the windows, or, what is far better, hung on brackets or hooks one or two .feet below the beams, and eight or ten feet above the floor. When so placed, they are in sight, and are not liable to become encumbered with combustible rubbish. When over the windows, they heat as well as when below in all rooms where there is even but a very little shafting and belting to start the circulation. When hung in the rooms away from the walls and below the beams, they are safer, cheaper, and better in every way. You will many of you receive this statement with the in- credulity to which we are accustomed ; but I can assure you it is not an open question : the facts as I have given them are absolutely proved. This method has been advised by our vice-president, Mr. William B. Whitney, for many years, and has been adopted in many first-class factories. Spontaneous combustion is one of the subjects referred to a special committee. This is a subject of grave interest to the factory underwriter. Oil and grease are our great enemies, and have, in one way or another, been the cause of about one-half our losses. Another great danger of spontaneous combustion is to be found in dyed yarns and goods in which some of the more modern dyes and mordants are used. Chromic acid and iron, cutch, gambier, and some of the combinations of aniline colors, are very dangerous. Rats’ nests I have referred to, and I have little doubt they are the cause of many unexplained fires. For two years past we have been making a thorough scientific investigation of oil, both for lubrication and for use on wool. Time would not suffice me to give you the details ; but it may interest you to know, that, while we have entirely abated many of the most serious causes of danger in the use of oil, we 26 have also saved to our members an annual sum more than equal to all the -losses and expenses of our company each year for the last two years, such saving being not less than one hundred thousand dollars a year. The introduction of the oils made from petroleum has been in many ways a great benefit. About one-fonrth part of the fac- tories that we insure are lighted with kerosene oil. It will surprise you to learn that we have never met a loss from this cause, because we see to it that safe lamps and safe oils are used. We will not insure premises that are lighted by the vapor of gasoline mixed with air, at any rate whatever. The oils made from petroleum are absolutely free from liability to spontaneous combustion, and, as they are now used more than any others for lubrication, one of our great dangers has been removed by their introduction. There are mineral oils used for lubrication that are dangerous In other ways ; but they are readily detected and easily avoided. There is one other subject referred to a committee, whose report I shall await with great interest ; and that is, political appointments on the board of engineers or fire-department. We have occasion to inform ourselves in regard to the water- supply and fire-departments in many cities ; and in several we avoid taking risks, either because the water-supply is insufficient, or because the department, being under mere political control, is worse than inefficient. In such cases we expect fraud in the purchase of hose and other apparatus, and incompetency in the men. We prefer, if we do take a risk in such a place, that our members should lock their gates in case of fire, and manage their own apparatus with their own men. In conclusion, gentlemen, I am compelled to say to you, that, invaluable as your services are, and however great your skill and courage may be, you cannot cope unaided with this great problem. No matter what improvement you may make, the mastery of the art of combustible architecture keeps in advance of you. I have compiled some of the statements given in the most carefully prepared tables of “ The Chronicle ” (145 Broadway, New York), and I find that among what insurance men call “specials,” burned in five years and a half from Jan. 1, 1875, to July 1, 1880, within the limits of the United States, there have been, — 27 1,911 Hotels. 400 Churches. 327 Schoolhouses, libraries, and college-buildings. 142 Court-houses, custom-houses, jails, and town-halls. 89 Asylums, almshouses, and hospitals. 2,869 in all. Ten buildings in each week of the classes which may be con- sidered those to which the greatest attention should be given in order to protect them from the danger of fire. I wish we could say that in these five years and a half there had been much progress ; but I am very sure you will warrant me in the statement, that the measures that have been taken to secure greater safety have been more than offset by the in- creased dangers caused by the introduction of elevators, the greater height of buildings, and the establishment of hazardous occupations in the upper stories. I am compelled to say that the danger of a repetition of great conflagrations, like those of Chicago and Boston, is greater to- day than ever before, although perhaps not in the same cities. I have taken as examples of bad construction some buildings in this city ; but I would by no means have it inferred that the reconstructed portion of Boston is not safer than before the great fire. Many of the most obvious lessons were taught by that great lesson ; but the changes in the use of the buildings, and the introduction of manufacturing in the upper stories, have brought new dangers, and our present danger here is in the minor, not in the major, faults. How much greater these dan- gers are elsewhere, you can tell better than I can. The annual losses by fire in cities as now constructed will increase in greater ratio than ever before, unless instant meas- ures are taken to correct the faults of construction, and to sup- plement your present apparatus with other means and appli- ances for checking the extension of fires, such as I have de- scribed, or others yet to be invented. I thank you for your attention, and cordially invite you to visit the office of our company if yon desire further information as to our methods or apparatus.