FIRE APPLIANCES. All methods for the prevention of fires fall so short of the ideal of immunity that there is a necessity for fire-apparatus. The principle of defense of a manu factory against fire is that of self-protection by making the installation and management of the fire-apparatus of such a grade as to be able to cope with the progress of any fire which can possibly occur. The merits of fire organizations have already been considered as essen tial to the service of fire-apparatus.
Buckets of water are the most effectual fire-apparatus. They should be kept full and dis tributed in liberal profusion in the various rooms of a mill, being placed on shelves or hung on hooks, as circumstances may require. in order to assist in keeping them for fire purposes only they should be unlike otherpails used about the premises, and in some instances each pail and the wall or column behind its position bears the same number. It is a mistake to keep fire pails in dry-rooms, as the water in the pails evaporates rapidly, and also in so doing interferes with the drying processes. The pails should be placed in some convenient situation near to the dry-room, where they will not oppose the drying process, and will also be more accessible in case of fire than when hung inside of a dry-room. In unheated buildings the contents of fire-pails can be prevented from freezing in winter by adding chloride of magnesium to the water. Galvanized-iron pails are better than wood pails, and indurated fiber makes a very satisfactory pail, especially in places around bleacheries, chemical-pulp, or paper mills, where corrosive fumes rapidly injure metal pails. There are various expedients to insure the full condition of fire-pails, such as various floats or electrical contrivances, or sealing over the top of the pail some thin sheet of impervious material ; but the fact is that there is no fire-apparatus so simple and effective as a full pail of water in good hands. All automatic devices are not above contingencies, and they lead to lowering the standard of personal espionage, which is the controlling principle in the administration of affairs. Generally there
is also need of casks of water to furnish a further supply to the fire-pails. Garden-hose attached to a supply of water often constitutes a very useful portion of the fire-apparatus. Any cocks in the nozzles should be fixed in an open position by striking a heavy blow on the handle of the plug-cock commonly used far such fittings Automatic sprinklers have proved to be a most valuable form of fire-apparatus, operating with great efficiency at fires where their action was unaided by other fire-apparatus, particularly at night. In mill-fires the av erage loss for an experience of twelve years shows that in those fires where automatic sprink lers formed a part of the apparatus operating upon the tire the average loss amounted to only one nineteenth of the average of all other losses. If the difference between these two aver ages represents the amount saved by the operation of automatic sprinklers, then the total damage from the nulli ber of lbw in places in which automatic. spehlktees are accredited as forming a portion of the apparatus has hien reduced $6,225,000 by the operation of valuable device. Although there have been numerous patents granted to inventors of mane sprinklers since the early part of the present century, yet their practical use and intro duction has been subsequent to the invention of the sealed automatic sprinkler by Henry S. Parmelee. of New Haven. Conn., about twelve years ago. This device being the first. and for mane veers the only automatic sprinkler manufactured and sold, and actually performing service over accidental tires, to him belongs the distinction of being the pioneer and practi cally the orie.inator of the vast work done by automatic sprinklers in reducing destruction of property by fire. Although nearly or quite 200,000 Parmelee automatic sprinklers have been installed, their manufacture has been supplanted by other forms, and the total num ber of automatic sprinklers in at the present time must be about 2,000,000.