MAX BLA!

\CK AND ISAAC HARRIS

THE PROPRIETORS OF THr. TRIA!\GI.E SHIRTWAIST FACTORY, I'll WHOSE 'tMPLOY ONE HD;[)RED AND FORTY-SIX GIRLS AND MEN MET THEIR DI:ATH, MARCH 25. 1911.

HARRIS AND BLANCK WERE INDICTED FOR MAl\SLAUGHTER IN THE FIRST ANI) SECOND DEGREES

M'cCLURE'S

VO L. XXXV II

MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER, 1911

NO·5

~·FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

THE

PROBLEM IN NEW

OF PROTECTING THE WORKERS YORK'S TOWER FACTORIES

BY

ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

NEW YORK is the largest factory town in America, but it has no factory district. Its manufactories are disguised behind facades of stone and marble - splendidly lodged in the tallest. most costly and imposing buildings that line Fifth Avenueand Broadway. The great skyscrapers which within the last ten years have shot up like a tropical growth from the famous old residential quarter about lower Fifth Avenue and Washington Square to the great retail shopping district about Twenty-third Street and Madison Square (and on up to the Waldorf and above it) - these-are New York's factory buildings. They are factories in exactly the same sense as the brick and wooden buildings in Fall River and Lynn. But in this factory district there are no tall chimneys belching smoke, and the pushcart takes the place of the dinner-pail. The buildings in which the factories are housed look like great hotels or office buildings. and the stranger in New York daily comes and goes through the factory district without knowing it. Yet in these splendid skyscrapers there are more factory hands at work than are to be found in Pa terson, Lowell, and Fall River all put together.

I f you stand at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street and look south, or stop on Sixth Avenue among the big department-stores and look east or west, your eye will follow, block after block, a succession of great buildings running from twelve to twenty stories in height. Loft buildings were never constructed to be Their fronts are of granite, stone, terra-cotta, factories, and they first came to be used as such

Cohrir"'. /911. by Tire S. S. McClure Co. All rir"'s reserfJed 467

T

or ornamental brick, dressed with burnished copper and bronze. The agents' signs upon them describe them as "loft buildings."

A modern loft building is - to gather together several trade definitions - a building from six to twenty stories high, of iron or steel frame, the floors or lofts rising one above another, alike and undivided, for the storing or display of goods. Enter one of these buildings and explore. You will feel at once that you are looking at the most modern fire-proof construction. Everywhere is stone and tiling and metal sheathing; and there is a masonry-surrounded stairway which contains no wood whatever save its hand-rail. Go up in one of the elevators. While you are still in the car you will begin to hear a low, vicious hum, which, when the elevator door is opened. becomes a snarling roar. You stand bewildered, unable to see what is going on because of the wooden partitions that ramify in every direction. But, if you are allowed access to the "loft" itself, you will find yourself in a single great room, its floor area that of a concert-hall, filled from end to end with men and girls working at motor-driven machines - a hundred, two hundred, five hundred to a floor. You are now in one of New York's factories.

Loft Buildings Never Constructed to Be Factories

FI RE AN D THE SKYSCRAPER

almost by accident. Some fifteen years ago certain garment-makers from the tenements of the East Side and the old dark warehouses of Canal and Grand streets began to look for factories in the regulation sense. The "tenement-made" label was coming, and they wanted cheaper light and power and insurance. But there were no regular factories to be had. They tried the loft buildings, and in these " lofts" they found exactly what they wanted. They got cheaper insurance, because loft buildings were fire-proof. The installation of motors and shafting allowed them to use electricity instead of the old gasolenc engines, and electricity was cheaper. There was daylight until five o'clock, even in winter, which meant a saving of gas. Their subcontractors, or sweat masters, could put a quarter more operatives into the same space, and for this reason: The New York factory laws say that every factory worker shall have 250 cubic feet of air. A tenement ceiling is not more than eight feet high; a loft ceiling ten or eleven. And obviously the more space there is above the worker, the less need there legally bearound him. Considering the very great amount of floor area always taken up by tables, men and girls and machines could be packed as closely as the chairs could be put and the factory owncr still be within the law. There was a saving on even' side.

The c1oak- and suit-makers began the emigration into the loft towers. They were followed by the manufacturers of waists and white wear, by the hat and straw-braid makers, the celluloid manufacturers, the hair and feather workers, the furriers, the lace and necktie and novelty and fancy-goods manufacturers. They filled up all the lofts available, and the speculative builder began to erect more. Tower factories went up from Canal Street to Fortieth. The higher the building, the cheaper it could profitably scale its rentals; the more central it was, the easier to attract employees; and in this way New York got its "mid-town loft zonc"its factory district.

The .Average Factory Employee in {]\few York Works Seven Stories Above

the Ground

Under the building code, apartment-houses were limited to a height equal to one and a half times the width of the street. But loft buildings might go up to the sky. Above twelve stories, or one hundred and fiftv feet, there were certain restrictions, and accordingly the twelvestory loft has become the type. Many, however, lift themselves six or eight stories higher. In the ten years between '9<>' and '910, 79<>

tower loft buildings were erected, representing, without the tremendously valuable land they stood on, an investment of "37#ig,ooo. Not all of these became factory lofts; and, indeed, in practically all of them the lower and darker floors were used for their original purpose - for the sale or display of goods. But as early as 1906 a labor census showed that one three-and-ahalf-acre block on Broadway contained seventyseven loft factories, with 4,007 employees. In September, 1910, there were 29,9<>' factories, in all, in Greater New York, and 611,738 employees - fifty thousand more than there are in the whole State of Massachusetts. There is no authoritative statement of what the emigration into the "towers" has been up to the present time. But this may furnish some indication:

Figures compiled at the beginning of the present year by the Women's Trade Union League indicated that the average factory worker in New York is now working seven stories above the ground. The average loft worker would probably be between nine and ten stories above ground. This condition made a new industrial problem.

No Fire Department Will Guarantee /0 Fight Fire Successfully AbO'Ve

the Seventh Story

And, up to the time of the Triangle fire, New York did nothing whatever to meet it. The Committee on Congestion pointed out that this meant congestion worse congested. The Fifth Avenue Association demonstrated that at the noon hour thirty-five thousand garmentworkers crowded a short half mile of this chosen thoroughfare alone. One big retail store after another indignantly closed its doors and moved uptown. In tcrested property-owners protested loudly, or built lofts themselves. But in the ten years between '9<>1 and 1910 neither the city nor the State enacted a single new building or factory law that recognized that there was a new situation to meet.

For example, when you permit five hundred workers, four fifths of them women, to be put into a single room one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet above the asphalt, it is necessary to know wha t you are going to do in case of fire. The most efficient of fire departments will guarantee to fight" fire successfully only to a height of eighty-five feet - about that of the seventh story - the height to which water-towcrs can reach and throw their streams in /tully. Streams can be th.own much higher, but they then have no penetrating power. As firemen say, they merely "hit the windows." Chief Croker of the New York department would guarantee to

WATER.TOWER EXTENDED TO ITS FULL HEIGHT, PLAYING ON THE ASCH BUILDING. WATER·TOWERS CAN FIGHT FIRE SUCCESSFULLY ONLY AS HIGH AS THE SEVENTH STO({Y. BY THE TIME THE WATER REACHED THE EIGHTH AND NINTH FLOORS IT WAS LITTLE MORE THAN SPRAY

take care of nothing above the seventh story. He said this to everyone who would listen to him. But New York did, in the case of her loft factories, what it has become our national habit to do in the matter of danger from fire - decided that there really was no danger, or

that, if there were, one could always "take a chance on it. "

And this attitude was perfectly na'tural on the part of the New York Bureau of Buildings. For, officially, there were, and are, no loft factories in New York.

rte69 Digitized by Goo l'

A CORNER OF THE WOllK·1l00M ON TJj~: NINTH fLOOR OF THE A5Qi BUilDING. IT WAS FROM

THESE WINDOWS THAT MANY OF THE GIRLS JUMPED. "EW JUMPED •

UNTIL THEIR CLOTHING WAS ON FIRE

The structures that housed them were erected as loft buildings - buildings for" the storing or display of goods." As such they were inspected and passed. And, though the machinerywasput into them the day after, loft buildings, in the opinion of the Bureau of Buildings, they immutably remained. The truckman and the elevator-man and the push-cart man on the' corner knew that thev had been turned into factories. But to know; thing officially it is necessary to be officiallv informed. And so far as the Building Department went, they were loft buildings - warehouses containing watchmen by night, and by day half a dozen wholesale customers and salesmen. And this will explain the paragraphs to follow.

Being merely buildings for the storing and display of goods, with elevators giving access to the same, there was no need of taking any great thought as to stairways. But there is a sense of fltnl~S in giving a building a stairway, and loft t:ui.Wings were given stairways. Even if your .. .i1 b.li';ding covered only a single city lot, ~-:-: ~--xt by a hundred,- and there are "':..<t'. ~- it had to have a stairway. But

~'~:-oe -'~~i~ was said about the height t '-.~ -,.....,..;.-r:~ 'd rle.:\ing the stairway- ... :.. -. -.,_ ''_. ~enty floors or more;

nor about the number of people that might be upon these floors -legally there might be more than fourteen hundred; nor about the width o( that single stairway. And in consequence we find the stairways averaging about three feet in width, with "winders" or wedge-shaped treads at the turns, so that one can fall down even in the daylight. For loft buildings of a floor area greater than 2,500 square feet more stairways were required. But a fire-escape might be substituted for one of them.

Loft Factories Not Required to Hase Any Fire-Escapes

Regarding fire-escapes themselves the New York building code was non-committal. It did not, apparently, wish to go too far. I t said that the above buildings .. shall be provided with such good and sufficient means of egress in case of fire as shall be directed by the department of buildings." This is what, in law-making, is known as a "joker." Some speculative builders decided to build their loft buildings without any fire-escapes at all. Others put them in the air-shaft, which in case of fire becomes its natural flue. Others bolted on tl-. - antique, all but vertical, eighteen-inch

~

Digitized by Coogle

THE ONLY FIRE·ESCAPE ON THE ASCH BUILDING. IT HUNG IN A CLOSED COURT WHICH WAS

FULL OF FIRE IN A FEW MOMENTS. BY THIS FIRE.ESCAPE IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN

TIIREE HOURS TO EMPTY THE THREE UPPER FLOORS OF THE BUILDING

ladder escapes, such as could not legally have been placed upon even a three-story tenement house. I n the Asch Building, hereafter to be described, it was estimated bv the Fire Commissioner that the occupants of the three upper floors could not have got down by the fire-escape in less than three hours.

Furthermore, in 11)03 a decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, in what is known as the Sailors' Snug Harbor case, took the jurisdiction over factory fire-escapes in New York City - and consequently their after inspa/ion - out of the hands of the State Department of Labor, and vested it, likewise, in the Bureau of Buildings. But, save for elevators, the Bureau of Buildings does 110 after inspecting, I t passes upon a building, and the fire-escape appertaining thereto, when the building is opened. Unless some specific complaint is made, that fire-escape is held to be good for all time.

Passasetcays to the Exits .Are Purposely {Made Narrow

When a factory building is not a factory building, it can, manifestly, make no great difference what you put into it. Even celluloid can be manufactured in these unrecognized

factory buildings. Suppose you visit a loft factory of the most common type - one where waists or white goods are made.

You are stopped at first by the partitions about the doors,- flimsy oak veneer or plain deal board,- turning the crooked alleyways leading to the exits into a kind of labvrinth. If there are two sets of stairways and elevators, you will soon learn that one is set aside, by caste prerogative, for the use of the management and staff. The machine operatives, cutters, and pressers have to use the second. And the partitions generally keep the operatives from knowing that there is any but the one exit. When the girls go home at night, they have to pass through a narrow door or down a narrow allevwav of their own, one by one; it is made narrow purposely, so that the watchman outside it can look into their open hand-bags as they pass.

Rooms Crammed with Tissue-Paper, Lace, and {Muslin Goods

The labor laws call for a c1earway of four feet around the exits. If the factory has only one floor, the space for twenty feet about this c1earway will be occupied by the .. stock- and shipping-rooms." And not infrequently they

G 14t'1

Digitized by oog e

472

FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

contain pasteboard boxes and pine packingcases enough to fill a freight-car. Box shelving is everywhere, loaded with rolls of flimsy lawn. and muslin, cards of lace, and tissue-paper. It would be hard to say what is most inflammable. At the windows hang great bunches of paper patterns. The wooden machine-tables, forty inches wide and stretching from one side of the room to the other, leave at their ends little more aisle space than is needed for the motors and the shafting. The latter is carried to and fro under the table, and, of course, supplies power for the machines. Down the top of the table runs a big wooden trough for the garments to be sewed. And beside every operative stands a large pasteboard or pine box, or a wickerwork basket, for the finished garments. Girls do most of the machine work, and thev are seated back to back like the "double two"'in dominoes; there is so little room in the aisles that their chairs dovetail. In some factories the high-class garments. when finished, are hung upon lines crossing the room above the heads of the girls. Often gas is used for lighting; and, to get a draft of fresh air through rooms so large, the windows must be kept open .. The pressing is done with gas irons; that is, the flame is inside the open iron. within an inch of the goods to be pressed. Some factories do their cutting with an electric knife.

THIS LOCK. WITH THE BOLT SHOT, WAS FOUND AFTER THE FIRE. IS THE DEIlRIS AIlOUT THE ~INTH·FLOOR DOOR. THROUGH WHICH MORE THAX A Hl·~DRED GIRLS ATTEMPTED VAINLY TO ESCAPE. THE LOCKING OF THIS DOOR

W AS ONE OF THE CHARGES ON WHICH ~lAX BI.AXCK AND ISAAC HARRIS WERE

1l'D1CTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER

DOOR ON THE EIGHTH FLOOR OPENING UPON THE GREENE STREET STAIRWAY. THE DOOR IS BURNED AWAY, THE STAIRWAY AND CASINGS CHARRED.

ON THE FLOOR IS THE ROTTEN HOSE WITH WHICH THE EMPLOYEES TRIED

TO PUT OUT THE FIRE

Wooden Floors Soaked willz Oft

In a loft factory containing two or three hundred machines a great deal of oil is needed. There is ordinarily one thirty-gallon safety can - about a barrelful- to a floor, with smaller cans for hand use. The shaft gearings act at high speed; they must be given oil frequently, and there is a constant drip from them; in front of every operative hangs a heavy cloth apron. to prevent her work from being spotted. But the floor, which up to the twelfth story may be of wood, becomes so oil-soaked that it will hold no more. The rags, too, which get under the tables or around the motors and oil cans, become oil-soaked. In a factory turning out lawn and muslin garments by the thousand dozen, the floors are littered deep within a few hours. In some lofts they are swept up every night, or twice daily, and left at the door in bags. In some they are allowed to accumulate for a week or more, until it is worth while for the ragman to come for them. I n others thev arc sorted for size in the bins under the men's cutting-tables. Almost all of the cutters are inveterate cigarettesmokers. They smoke in the halls and washrooms. And after the Triangle fire it did not take the Fire Marshal long to find out that, whenever there is an opportunity, they smokeat work.

Digitized by Coogle

HOI.E IN THE GLASS AND CONCI{ETE WINDOWS OF THE SIDEWALKS, BROKEN BY THE IMPACT OF Tile BODIES OF THE GIRLS WHO JUMPED FROM THE EIGHTH AND NINTH FLOORS OF THE ASCH BUILDING. THE GIRLS WERE UN FIRE WHEN THEY JUMPED. AND WHEN THEY BROKE THROUGH THE SIDEWALKS THEIR BURNING CLOTHING STARTED A CELLAR FIRE

They hide the cigarette in the palms of their hands, and blow the smokeunder their coats. .. You would get little work out of your men if you would prevent it," explained a boss on thc floor below the Triangle factory. And some of the bosses themselves smoke .

.

Ninety-seven per Cent of the Doors Open Inwardly, and in Many Cases

the 'Doors Are Locked

As you work your way back to thc door you will see that it opens inwardly -In ninetyseven per cent of the factories devoted to one trade it was shown that they opened inwardly. And in many cases the door is locked ..

There you have it - goods more inflammable than paper, the whole great room crammed with them, pine tables and boxes and partitions, spitting motors, oil and rags and cigarettes. And, remembering all the while that you are a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet in the air, what do you think about it? In New York alone there are hundreds of factories like this. And, as always, other cities are already aping her. We are assured by the builders of these loft factories that they are the factories of the future. Manhattan has had them for more than ten years, and there have been countless little

fires in them. Is it not by the pure mercy of Providence that, so far, there has been only one unspeakable holocaust? Newark gave us a fire in the factory that was not fire-proof, New York the fire in the one that was. The story of it is told here to show just what these New York tower factories are, and to give the country a chance to decide what is going to be done about them.

The Ascb 73uilding Safer than Most Loft Buildings

The Asch Building was, and is, safer than most loft buildings. It is a handsome ten-story structure just otT Washington Square. It is only a hundred feet by a hundred in area, without irregularities. I t has a stairway and two elevators side by side on its Washington Place front, and the same equipmen t diagonally across the building on its Greene Street side, the latter elevators being used for freight and the operatives. I t had a four-inch stand-pipe with hose in racks on every stairway landing, and on every floor there were fire-pails. I t had no sprin kler system - without which no cotton mill in New England can buy insurance. But sprinkler 515- terns are not compulsory in New York factories. And the owner, Joseph J. Asch, took a chance on it.

"

G 1413

Digitized by oog e

474

FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

.About Fi/teen Hundred People at Work on the Afternoon of the Fire

The Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. I t was in this shop that the New York shirtwaist-makers' strike of 1909 first started. The officers of the Women's Trade Union League stated that the proprietors Harris & Blanck, had stood for all the bad conditions which brought this strike about. I n the actual matter of danger from fire, the Triangle' factory was safer than the average. I t had no clotheslines of combustibles, or gas-lights, or electric knives. Its stock- and shipping- rooms were on the tenth floor, where only about sixty people were employed; and its gas-iron pressing was also done there. It had automatic alarms. On the day of the fire fifty or sixty of the employees were at home, because of Saturday being the Jewish holiday; but Max Blanck, the senior partner, estimated that ordinarily there were 22, operatives on the eighth floor and 350 on the ninth, besides the sixty people on the tenth floor. I t was the rush season. The factory was under a pressure that kept it working till late Saturday afternoons and even on Sundays. And when the law allows a factory owner to ha ve three hundred and fifty' people on the ninth floor, that is exactly how many he is going to have. Many of the girls were constantly in fear. There are stories enough to make that evident. And in 1909 an insurance inspector suggested that it would be the part of safety to arrange fire drills. He had Mr. H. F. J. Porter, the father of factory. fire drills, write to Harris & Blanck offering to organize one. His letter was not answered. Of 1,243 cloak and suit factories investigated two years later bv the Joint Board of Sanitary Control, a fire drill was found in only one. There might, legally, have been 1,100 people working in the Triangle factory instead of 625; and in the whole building 3,600 instead of the 1-,200 or 1,500 that there actually were. Again, the Triangle factory was tile only one at work after four o'clock that Saturday afternoon. Throughout this story you are to remember what would have happened had this fire broken out on the second floor or the third when the whole building was full.

The Fire Starts on the Eighth Floor, Just at ClosinK Hour

There have been various explanations of how the fire started. .. A cutter let a match fall on some old waste." "Some one stepped on a match on the floor." .. A man was cleaning his

coat with gasolene." It really does not make much difference how the fire started, when there are so many ways in which it could have started. On the cutting-tables of the eighth floor the "stretches" of lawn -one hundred and seventvfive or eighty layers of the flimsy stuff to' a "stretch," with as many alternating layers of tissue-paper - were waiting ready for the Sunday work. I t was a quarter to five. The bell had just rung for "power off," and most of the girls had left the tables for the dressing- and wash-rooms, when one of them, Eva Harris, ran to tell the superintendent, Samuel Bernstein, that the boys were putting out a fire over between two tables on the Greene Street side. (There had been fires before. Blanck had put out one himself with his coat.) Bernstein caught up two fire-pails and went over to putthisfireout.

But this was not the fire that was put out.

"It was in a rag-bin, and it jumped right up." Some -of the girls got pails and tried to help. .. But it was like there was kerosene in the water; it just seemed to spread it." Frank Formalek, one of the elevator-men, left his car and ran in to help. Louis Senderman and a boy, Leo Todor, tried to use the stand-pipe hose in the hall. They couldn't turn the valve-wheel. .. I t was rusted," they said, "and the hose, wherever it was folded, 'was rotten." The whole Greene Street side was burning now, and the fire had begun to come over the tables. Diana Lipschitz, the bookkeeper, sent in an alarm, and then telautographed up to the office staff on the tenth floor to run for their lives. The girl who received the message thought that Diana was "stringing" her. Already the fifty cutters had begun to run for tbeir lives. I t was what firemen call a .. flash fire"; and all such factorv fires, when once they get started, are going to be flash fires. Bernstein yelled to Louis Brown, a machinist, that they couldn't do anything, to get the girls out.

On the street, a hundred feet below, the fire was heard before it was seen. An Italian named Cardiane, standing at the Greene Street entrance, heard a sound "like a big puff." He saw smoke and flame come out with it, and a noise of falling glass started a horse to running away. The falling glass came from the first" eighth-floor windows that blew out.

The Flames Spread to the Ninth and Tenth Floors Inside of Three Minutes

You will be told that when a building is fire-proof the fire can't spread from one floor to another. Foreman Howard Ruch, of Engine Company 18, arrived on a high-pressure truck two or three minutes after the eighth-floor win-

Digitized by Coogle

ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

dows blew ou t. "I saw a sheet of name come out from the eighth floor," he testified." "It veiled into the street, and then it veiled into the windows of the ninth and tenth floors as if drawn by II magnet." Firemen generally call that "lapping in." The flame will suck straight into the windows if they are open; if they are closed - unless they are of wire glass - it will crack them. Inside the ninth-floor windows of the Triangle factory, bunches of paper patterns were hanging. On both the ninth and tenth floors the Greene Street door to the stairs was open, and by this time a door to the roof on the Greene Street side was ajar also. Taking everything together, it was much the same as the opening of the dampers and the pipe drafts on two hollow-tile stoves, one above the other, and both filled with every sort of thing that will catch fire and burn most rapidly.

For all three floors it was now a question of getting out.

Triangle Employees Could Not Have Got 'Dot .. tm by the Fire-Escape in Less titan Three Hours

On the eighth floor the boy Todor and an operative named Starkofsky ran for the fireescape. For there was a fire-escape - a series of landings, eighteen inches in the clear, leading to stairways little better than ladders. It ended five feet from the ground in a closed court. The court itself was soon to be full of fire, and on some of the landings the fire-escape was blocked by iron shutters which had been fastened open. As we have said before, the employees on those three upper floors could not have got to the ground by such an escape in less than three hours; and the fire allowed them perhaps three minutes.

Yet ten or twelve girls and men threw themselves out after Todor and Starkofsky, and began to fight their way down, one upon another. Several fell from landing to landing. One man let himself down by knotting two sections of machine belting together. Most of them managed to break their way in through the windows of the sixth floor, where they were found later, bleeding and moaning. But the boy Todor went all the way to the bottom; falling most of the way, he broke the skylight in the court and got out through the cellar. From the ninth floor one girl, Comella Vetere, got down the fireescape, shielding her head from the flame with her big hat. But that belch of smoke and flame

• Aft~r the fire there were investieaticns by the Board of Coro .. ners, the Fire Marshal, .. nd the Bureau of Buildings. AU that Ippe-ars hereafter in quotation marks cernes lrom the evidence of witnt'5,st's and survivors, taken under oath: or, in cues where there Wa. vagueness, of amplifying statements made to the writer.

475

TYPICAL TOWER LOFT BUILDING WITH OCTSIDE fIRE.ESCAPE, TO WHICH FIRE HAS DIRECT ACCESS. IT TAKES THREE AND A HALF MINUTES TO COME DOWN THIS FIRE· ESCAPE WHEN THERE IS NO FIRE TO MAKE THE DESCENT DIFFICULT

Digitized by Coogle

FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

" PHILADELPHIA FIRE-TOWER." THE TWO DOOR WINDOWS WHICH GIVE UPON THE BALCONIES FROM THE RIGHT AND LEFT OPEN OUTWARDI.Y FROM THE BUILDING PROPER. OR COULO GIVE EGKESS FROM TWO SEPARATE BUILDINGS. THE CENTRAL DOOR OPENS INWARDLY INTO THE MASONRY-SURROUNDED "TOWER"

from the eighth floor did not let many more get down. Out of nearly six hundred, this .. good and sufficient means of egress" (to quote the Building Code again) saved fewer than twenty.

There is no more to tell about the fire-escape.

I ts condition after the fire, as shown in the photograph on page 471, was caused, not by the weight thrown upon it, which was little enough, but by a heat that warped the iron shutters on the building across the court, twenty feet away. It must be plain that it would be the same with any fire-escape, however large and stairway-like, if it opens directly from the nest of fire itself. The writer has been able to find onlv one factory in New York where the fire-escape does not so open. And, where doors give access to them, most of those doors open inwardly.

Again, if the weight of five hundred or a thousand people were suddenly thrown upon one of these" trellis" escapes it is very doubtful if it would support their burden. No New York factory escape is tested for weight, and it would be quite possible for a fire, trifling enough in itself, to produce a horror such as would make the death list of the Asch Building seem almost commonplace.

Girls TestifY that the Doors Were Locked

Some of the girls on the eighth floor had followed the fleeing cutters to the Greene Street door. But to get to it they had to go through one of those narrow passages where their handbags were examined at night. The fire was already over the top of it; in another minute it was entirely cut off. Blocked on the Greene Street side, the girls who knew where the Washington Place door and elevators were ran screaming to them. Downstairs the elevator bells began to ring,- they never stopped ringing,- and then the wire glass of one of the elevator doors was pushed in.

The door into the Washington Place stairway opened inwardly,- that is, toward the girls.and they testified that it was, as always, locked." They screamed and beat upon it with their fists, but it would not open. Louis Brown, the machinist, denies that it was fastened. But he "wanted to see if it was locked," he says queerly. "I tried to turn the key, and it would not turn. I seen I could not turn the door (sic). I pulled the knob open. and the girls rushed out." Behind them the superintendent, Bernstein, kept telling them to .. go nice."

• There were two stairways. one on the Greene Street s.ide and one on the Washington Place side. The charge is th.I on the ninth Ooor Harris & Blanck kepI the doors on the Washington Plac. side locked. compelli] aU the girls to teave the bUddinL,b,· ~:r::-x'::t!:~ge on the reene Stre-et side where the hand- is

Digitized by Coogle

ARTHUR E. McFARLA!\E

There were about a hundred and twenty-five girls to go down by that stairway. It was thirty-three inches wide, and practically a winding stair. According to both the girls and the firemen, no lights were burning in it. Even when people are cool, they can hardly go down a stairway such as that without stumbling. One of the girls fainted or fell at the seventh floor, others fell on top of her, and that" backed them up,"_ that, too, when most of the girls were still in the room and the fire rapidly coming nearer.

"There were many girls at the door," says Irene Szivos, a Hungarian tucker. "They were screaming and crying. There were so many I could not get out. I went ona window and I would like to jump. But on the other side of the street I saw some girls that was working there wave their hands that I must not." "A girl's clothes caught fire"and a man's, and they jumped," says Rose Bernstein; "I seen one girl run to a window, and when I got down to the sidewalk I had to step over her," Brown, and a policeman named Meehan who had run in and up the stairs, managed to break that jam on the seventh floor, and every girl who got into the stairway from the eighth floor got out alive. It must be remembered that below the eighth floor the stairs were empty,

The Rush for the Roof

The tenth floor received the alarm before I he ninth, And on the tenth nearly everyone ,escaped, most of them through the Greene Street stairway to the roof. "Never go to the roof," Chief Bonner used to say. But here the roof sa ved lives. Both partners were on the tenth floor. Blanck had two of his children with him. That day he was taking a chance, like everybody else. But studerlts of the University of New York climbed over from their roof adjoining and helped. One of them, Frederick Newman, groped his way down into that tenth-floor loft itself. And they thought they had taken out everybody. Four girls, however, had been left behind in the dressing-room. "When I came out," says one of them. Anna Dorrity, an Irish girl, "I saw them all gone, and I didn't know what was the matter," Thev went to the Greene Street door, and saw th~ Greene Street stairway below them full of smoke and fire. They didn't know that there were any exits 011 the Washington Place side, and they didn't know that the Greene Street stairs would take them to the roof. One girl jumped at once, The others started to pile up chairs and tables, in the hope of getting out through the skylight.

477

.. FIRE· TOWER " UPON THE BRUNSWICK BUII.DING, NEW YORK, ON EVERY FI.OOR THE SMALL BALCONY GIVES ACCESS THROUGH ITS MIDDLt: DOOR TO THE

"TOWER" WI7'HIN THE BUILDING, WHILE NOT RECOGNIZABI.E FROM WITHOUT AS A FIRE· ESCAPE AT ALI., THIS IS THE BEST FORM OF FIRE·ESCAPE AS YET INVENTED

Digitized by Coogle

What Happened on the Ninth Floor

FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

•

On the ninth floor, after that first "lapping in" of the flames from below, there were two or three minutes in which almost everyone who was going to escape, escaped. The passage leading to the Greene Street door and to the elevators was just twenty inches wide. The little door in it opened inward, and men and girls tore the clothes from one another, trying to get through. Yet a hundred and fifty or more did get through, and three fourths of that hundred and fifty got down alive.

But on the ninth floor, as on the eighth, it was the Greene Street door, the OPUI door, that was cut off first. And nearly two hundred people, most of them girls, remained inside. The thing that was to happen, happened there.

Natie Weiner, a thick-set little Jewish girl, who with eight others worked in one of the aisles cutting out lace, "saw a fellow who knew there was a door on the Washington Place side." And she joined a rush of girls for it. Once more, those girls had no way of knowing for themselves that there were two doors. The partitions hid them, as they do in all such factories. And there were no ruby incandescents and red arrows pointing the way to fire exits, such as you have even on the ground floors of theaters. .. We run first to the elevator," says Natie Weiner, .. and he was not up. We knocked on the door, and he didn't come." Then they turned to the stairway door. "It was locked and there was no key there. . . . I tried to break it open, and I couldn't .... There was a woman forty y~ars old there who was burned - Mary Herman - and Bessie Bischofsky, and there was others, and they were next to me and with me at the door; and I said to the woman, 'You try. You may be stronger.' She said, 'I can't.' So then I said, 'Let us all go at it!' And we did."

By that time, even had they been able to get the door open, could they have got past the fire now pouring itself up that stairway from the eighth floor? However, they never got it open. The lock, with the bolt shot, was found later in the debris, a few paces in front of where the charred remnants of floor-board and panelingstill held together till the firemen burst them in.

Elevators Run Until Broken by the Falling 'Bodies

But why talk of fire-escapes and stairways when there were elevators? Everyone knows it is upon their elevators that high buildings depend, just as it is the elevator that has made the high building possible.

On the Greene Street side one of the elevatormen ran away at the first cry of fire. His car stood useless till an elevator-man from the street, a young fellow named John T. Gregory, who happened to be passing, threw himself into the car and made trip after trip in a building that was already a nightmare. He ran the car until he was half dead himself, and until the bodies of those who could not wait and flung themselves down the shaft kept the car from running any longer.

Thomas Horton, a negro porter, helped keep the machines going in the basement. "They ran until they couldn't run," he testified; "we were putting in the switch cables till they were overrun with water. Thev stuck. The circuitbreakers were blowing out."

On the Washington Place side, to which the hundreds cut off on the eighth and ninth floors were crowding, there were two elevators, measuring five feet by six. They went first to the eighth floor, because it wa~ on that floor that the fire broke out; and then to the tenth, to save the proprietors and staff. One of the elevator-men, Giuseppe lito, .ran his car until he fainted; and he still shows the effects of what he went through. But his companion, Gaspar Mortillaro, tells the story:

"I had too much on the car. The car gave way. They jumped down and everything, on top of me." (Because of the smoke the operators could not see where the floor levels were, and had to open their doors at random.) "They were holding my hands and pulling my hair and jabbing me in the face. I do not know what I hit. The door would not close and all the glass came down on me. They fell on me and I could not stop them. They slid down the ropes." (Many tried to slide down the "ropes." An Italian woman, Levantina, gave another the center cable" because it would be easier." And when somehow she got to the bottom herself, she found herself putting' her foot on a dying girl who said, "Please don't step on me.") "They jumped on the roof of my car. About twenty jumped on top of the roof." Even when the cars were far below them, the girls continued to jump, and their bodies wedged in between car and shaft. Above one elevator on the Greene Street side nineteen bodies were found so. It did not take long to finish with the elevators.

•

....

The Fire Department Helpless

But the New York Fire Department,four thousand men, with aerial trucks and water-towers and a high-pressure systemwhy wasn't it doing anything?

There was a delay of only two or three min-

Digitized by Coogle

ARTHLJR E. McFARLA~E

utes in sending in the alarm. The pipemen of Engine Company 72 met the first mob of men and girls at the bottom of the stairs. But some had jumped, by then. "They were down quicker one way than the other," said a truckman. And more were crowding out on the sills. Battalion Chief Worth used his first two lines to cool down the building above their heads. "That was the only reassurance we could give," he said. And a minute later, when the wind swung the flames around, that was of no avail. There was hardly time to get the scalingladders out of the truck. And when they ran up the extension-ladder, that reached only to the sixth story. High-Pressure Company 18, with some citizens helping, stretched a new fourteen-foot rope net. Three girls jumped together from the ninth - and firemen and citizens together were jerked headlong in upon their mangled bodies. A mathematical calculation made afterward showed that the impact of those three bodies was equal to a dead weight of sixteen tons. Within two minutes, so many bodies had piled themselves on top of the first high-pressure line that it had to be left where it was and another was stretched in. Hook and Ladder Company 20 spread its big twenty-foot Browder net. "There were so many bodies hitting the ground," Worth testified, "that it was impossible to see them. You did not see them. You heard the sound of the impact of the body hitting the ground. They came down entwined in bunches and with their arms around each other. 1 t tore the springs out of the canvas of the net and tore open the steel frame." They broke holes that a horse could have fallen into through the glass and concrete vault lights over the cellar. You might as well have sent a fire department to handle a powder-mill explosion. Why talk of fire departments, when fire departments have no power to take those measures that will prevent fires, when the fireman is not called in until the case is hopeless?

Stories of the Girls Who Escaped

But the storv is still to tell of what was taking place within those ninth- and tenth-floor lofts. I t is told by five or six survivors who escaped, they themselves know not how.

The day after the fire there were a great many people who hastened to explain that the loss of life was due almost entirely to panic. Panic has always been a good explanation. When those girls saw themselves trapped a hundred feet above the street, some of them tried to fight the fire with the pails. One little girl was still holding fast to her pail when her body was

479

taken up from the sidewalk. But the flames were coming in from outside, and there wasn't anything to fight. "I broke thewindowwith my pail," says Anna Gullo, of the ninth floor, "and more came in." "We started to run all around," says Yetta Lubitz, .. and the flames came out all around." Some of them began to catch fire. Almost none jumped till they were on fire. And those who weren't had to keep away from those who were. "The flames were near me. My mouth was full of smoke," says Natie Weiner; '" wanted to get on a table and· jump. But the windows were too crowded, and I seen so many bodies laying dead on the ground that I thought I would bedead, too .... But the smoke and flames were terrible, and some of the girls said it was better to be smashed than burned; and they wanted to be identified." "They didn't want to jump," says little Rosie Yusum; "they was afraid. They was saying their prayers first, and putting rags over their eyes so they should not see." Up on the tenth they were jumping, too. II Her name was Clotilde," says the Irish girl, Anna Dorrity. "She was an I talian. She said, 'You jump first.' Rut when she had said her prayers she said, 'No; let me jump now.'''

On the ninth floor fifty-eight girls crawled into a little corridor or cloak-room. "I saw them piled," testified fireman Jacob Wohl, one of the first to enter. "They had their faces toward a little window." In the Black Hole, which a whole empire has never forgotten, there was only the heat of an Indian midsummer night.

The Jewish Girl, Sallie Weintraub, Who jumped from the Nintn Story

They were still jumping. I t was all happening together, it is necessary to remember. A Jewish girl, Sallie Weintraub, had got out on a ledge on the Washington Place side. " For a minute," says an onlooker, "she held her hands rigid, her face upward, looking toward the sky." The fire was coming nearer to her. But, before she jumped, "she began to raise he. arms and make gestures, as if she were addressing a crowd above her."

What was she saying? We have all of us a pretty good idea of what she was saying. But it isn't the kind of thing we want to let ourselves think about. If we were in war, and one of our torpedo-boats had been surrounded by the enemy, and her crew would not surrender - if after they had been ringed around and shot to pieces, sent to the bottom smashed and drowned and burned till it came to the last man of them - and if he, as he went down, raised his hands for

Digitized by Coogle

FIRE A'D THE SKYSCRAPER

a token, we would know what he was saying. and he would get his answer. But Sallie Weintraub and her comrades "'ere not in war, and the" had not the least chance in the world. Or, to 'put it another way, the chance that "'e thought we "'ere taking ourselves we were making them take.

In ~ew York. two days after the fire, the officials of the Bureau of Buildings posted a notice on the door of the Asch Building to infonn its owner, as was their official duty, that, under the requirements of the department, his building could no longer be regarded as safe. It was unsafe, among other reasons, .. because the treads on the rear stairs from the tenth floor were cracked and broken"; because" the fire-escape on the rear was warped, twisted, and unsafe"; because "the doors of the elevator shafts were burned, damaged, and in an unsafe condition"; because "the r:aMII liKhts em Washi,,(Icm Piau aM Greene Street, toKetheT with the supports for the same, were broke,. and u'lSa/e." These were the vault lights that were broken by the impact of the falling bodies. I f those holes had been left open, and anyone had fallen into them, the said owner, Joseph J. Asch, would almost certainly have been held to be responsible. Damages might have been collected from him. I t is even possible that responsibility might have attached to the great city of New York itself. Therefore, before he could open his building for loft factories again, the said owner must make these detailed and necessary repairs."

Ex-Chief Croker's Statement

Chief Croker was present at the Asch fire; and he says:

"There are certain things that should be done at once, things that do not require either new laws or building alterations.

.. Every exit should be plainly marked, and all employees should be made" familiar with every exit. All passages should be at least as wide as the door they lead to. And if in future any factory owner locks his doors in working hours, the case is one that calls for a penalty so prompt and drastic that there will be no need of inflicting it a second time.

.. Fire drills in factories should be made compulsory. They are so now in Pennsylvania. Five days after the Triangle fire there weretwo

• The domage done to the Asch Building amounted to a liltle more than "0.000. The building w .. insured (or ')00.000, and .he contents of the Tn.ngle Waist Factory for '200,500. Under an employers' liability law aetting a price o( only ".000 upon the life o( a workerl the additional I .... would have amounted to "46."?D' With a aw preventing the factory owner from transferring hIS liability, could any employer afford to take the chance which brought tile Triangle lire about?

small fires in Xe-- Y <wk schools. Between them they contained DWe than 3.300 pupils. But. as a result of regular drills. both schools ~ emptied within two minutes. And what CilD be done by children can be done by g:r'O'"1I peopie. In the case of our schools. too, fin.!rills have Sh01""11 ,.-hether the old stairways "ere physically capable of emptying the bo!l..~ within a period of safety. And co~· drills, with some one to time them. ,.-OClJ. tell the truth about even' kind of factorv _ t

.. Elevator-men s~ld be instructed. in case of fire, to carry their loads mJT to thi floor ~ t.~ fire. The time that wouli be gained by such :1 rule is obvious. When a fire occurs on a Io.-er floor, the elevator-s are practically useless.

"In many factories, as they are built no ... to make the doors open outwardly "'QUld onh block the stairs. But it is an easy matter to install some simple form of sliding door.

SprinlUers Com/JImMY itt 77rellt~rs - Why Not itt Loft Factories?

"Sprinklers should be made compuJson.

It is claimed that the first death is vet to be recorded in a sprinklered factory; ~nd tbei« value in a hundred ways is beyond all qwstion. No man can now build a theater without them; and what is enforced by law for places of ammement ought to be enforced for places where people have to go to earn their living. What is more, a theater is three stories high. and a loft factory may be ten or fifteen. If the manufacturers of certain sprinkler systems have formed a combination, there are other sprinkler systems that are not controlled by a combination; and nine in all have been tested and approved by the National Board of Underwriters. Sprinklers add about four per cent to the cost of a building. But they increase the renting value of a building. and they so decrease the price of insurance as to pay for themselves within five years. When the mere raising of the temperature of a room to '40 or 150 degrees first sends in an automatic alarm, and then turns the whole ceiling into a. sort of spray cascade, that is bound to have its effect. The Triangle fire might not have been extinguished altogether, but it would almost certainlv have been held in check till the employees 'got out and the firemen arrived .

.. There is no excuse for passing upon the structure of a building and ignoring the contents. When we keep our library books in stack-rooms that contain no wood, why not our working-girls? It ought to go without saying that in loft factories doors and flooring,

t The whole subject of Coctory drill. wtll be taken up in • subsequent article.

Digitized by Coogle

ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

window trim, and machine boxings should be fire-proof. Section 105 of the New York Building Code says that if a loft is divided for renting to two different tenants, the partition between

- them must be of fire-proof material. That means simply this: The use of any other material would allow one tenant to put another to uncalled-for risk. But what of inside partitions, and the tenant's own people?

How Inflammable Stock May Be Saferuarded

"If it is necessary for a loft factory to keep a freight-car full of in flammables in stock, there is no reason why stock- and shipping-rooms should not be inclosed and divided off so as to constitute no risk. Partitions of metal and wire glass now cost very little; and wire glass will stand fire like metal itself. When every kind of office furniture is now reproduced in steel, and at a moderate price, why not plain machine tables? Those for the cutters could be given a half-inch skin of wood. Wicker baskets should be replaced by metal boxes; tin plate is cheap enough. Cans for rags should have spring covers; and the rags should be gathered twice a day. Oil and gasolene should in all cases be kept in safety cans. A loft factory so equipped would reduce the danger from fire to a quarter. Why allow people to go on taking a chance?

"If a factory is equipped with the old-style fire-escape, or even with one of the new, wide, steel-stairway constructions. to which the fire can get direct access. the risk is plain. The Triangle fire showed New York what that risk is, and the time has come to think about these things.

"Some cities have thought about them. In Section }8 of the Philadelphia Building Code, a code going back twelve years, we read:

The Philadelphia Fire- Tower - the FireEscape of the Future

'" Stores in which any of the stories above the second have a clear floor-space of four thousand (4.000) square feet. and manufactories three or 11)0re stories in height, of the floor area. per story. of three thousand (3.000) square feet [the Asch building had more than 9.000], shall have a tower stairway, completely inclosed, on tbe interior of the building. with brick walls or other such fire-proof materials as shall be accepted by the Bureau of Building Inspection.'

"This is what is known as the 'Philadelphia fire-tower.' Lives are not lost in it. And when the building containing one burns down, the fire-

tower stands up behind it like a monument. I t is the form of fire-escape recommended by the National Fire Protection Association, the National Board of Underwriters, and by every architect, engineer, and fire chief who knows his business.

"The diagram on page 476 will show how the tower is used. On every floor the employees can walk out through floor-level, outwardly opening, fire-proof doors to a wide outside balcony, and in the middle of that balcony turn back' into a solidly built stairway shaft into which no fire can possibly follow them. The stairway is wide and well lit and opens upon the street; and one such is worth three ordinary stairways, if only because of the sense of absolute security it gives. Moreover, it requires no more space. One Philadelphia department-store has five of them. Another has an excellent practice of making its employees use the 'towers,' from time to time, instead of the regular exits.

"Architects have always complained that fire-escapes of the old style spoil the appearance of a building. The fire-tower balcony escape is an ornament. The illustration on page 479 shows such balconies giving access to the tower which Mr. Francis H. Kimball, a well-known

- New York architect, has put into the Brunswick Building on Fifth Avenue. But, in all New York. it is one of only two or three buildings so equipped. On every loft factory to be erected in the future, such tower escapes should be-made compulsory.

Fire-Proof Partitions [or Loft Factories

"Under the Philadelphia laws, all loft and factory buildings, exceeding a certain area, must be divided vertically by a fire-proof wall, pierced by fire-proof doors. If fire, breaks out on one side of the building, the employees need only pass through to the other side. This is, of course, another almost perfect form of escape. And both it and the Philadelphia tower have a double value from the fact that their principles can be readily worked out in loft and office buildings already erected. For example:

"If the Brunswick Building were cut into two buildings, the fire-tower, being between them, could, plainly, be used by both. If there were no fire-tower there at all, but access by balcony could be had on every floor from the windows of one building to those of the next, that, too, would plainly be a splendid form of escape. The New York Tenement House Department regards it as the best of all fire-escapes, and has had numbers of such "connecting balconies" installed by law. And the same idea

Digitized by Coogle

FIRE AND THE SKYSCRAPER

can be applied to every pair of high loft or office structures that adjoin. The expenditure of a few dollars and a little natural neighborliness can make them both secure. Or - making use of the principle of the fire-proof bisecting wall- the knocking away of a little masonry and the setting in of fire-proof doors on every floor can make every pair of adjoining buildings mutual fire-towers. If there is a court between them, bridges can be used. But access to both bridges and • balconies' should be had through

wide 'door windows' on the floor-level. .

"Where a loft building stands alone, the firetower principle can still be applied. I t is only a matter of building a masonry vestibule about the stairs, with swinging or other self-closing doors on the side toward the interior. In this way a 'fire-proof stairway' (which is not fireproof) can be turned into something which is at least the next thing to a 'tower:

"After every bad fire a certain number of buildings are voluntarily made right. After the Triangle fire the managers of the oldest hotel in New York decided to put up fire-escapes. But they had been seventy-nine years deciding to do it. We all of us just let things slip along. We need laws; we have to be compelled, or we want to be able to compel each other.

Factory Owners Who Fight Fire Laws

.. For factory owners who figbt fire laws there is one thing that can be done. On the New

York East Side, when a baker continues to keep his premises in a filthy condition after he has had his warnings from the factory inspectors, they go down there with a square of red cardboard on which is printed the word 'Unclean: It is nailed on his bakery door, the door is locked, and the trade of that bakery comes to an end. And that one red card is quite enough to reform all the dirty bakeries in the vicinity. Now, if a city has fire-trap factories, that city can be certain that its fire department knows about them. I t has them marked. because, sooner or later, they are going to cause the death of some of its best men. And if, while State legislatures are passing general legislatioh, fire departments were provided with red labels reading' Unsafe: the work of State legislatures would be very greatly expedited. Every architect and builder knows what ought to be done, and how easily it can be done. It all comes down to dollars and cents against human lives. There is no 'fire-proof' building that can not be made death-proof as wen."

A month after the Triangle fire, Chief Croker resigned. For twelve years he had been our most famous fire-fighter; and he had, by common consent, brought the New York department to the highest point of fire-fighting effIciency. It is significant that he resigned to go into the work of fire prevention. .. Fire-fighting has gone as far as it can go," he said. "We've come to the place where we've got to keep fires from starting."

THE FIRE QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES rEDITORIAL

•

IN 1910 the portion of the fire loss for the United States and Canada which came before the National Board of Underwriters amounted to $234,47°,650. The actual fire loss was more than '500,000,000, and this does not include mine, marine, and forest fires.

The Federal Government began, in 1907, an investigation, through our consulates, into fire conditions in Europe. Almost every consular reply stated, in effect. that our fire departments and fire-fighting methods are vastly superior, but tbat (ire losses in European countries are, of course, mucb smaller. For example, in 1910 we find that thirteen of the largest cities of Germany, with a combined population of 5,616,822, suffered a fire loss of '1,067,205. Five Ameri-

can cines, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, and San Francisco, with a combined population one hundred thousand less, 5,510,8<)7, suffered a fire loss, in the same year, Of,14.250,- 183! New York, with a population of 4,766,883, added its $8,591,831- about five times the loss for London and nine times that of Paris.

Between 1901 and 1910 it cost every man, 'woman, and child in the United States and Canada an average of $2.39 a year for fire. The European was paying thirty-three cents; the German, for his part, only nineteen. Between 1900 and 1909 our population increased 73 per cent; our fire Joss increased 134 per cent. What is more sinister, the number of our fires per capita is steadily increasing. The puzzled

Digitized by Coogle

THE FIRE QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES 483

foreigner may be pardoned for finding it hard to decide whether we are a nation of children playing with matches or a nation of incendiaries. We now burn up every year half the value of the buildings we erect in the same year.

But the loss of property is not the worst loss.

Figures gathered by the United States Geological Survey for 1907, and drawn from a little more than a third of our total population, give a loss of life from fire of 1,449, and a list of injured of 5,654. Mr. Charles Whiting Baker, editor of the Engineering Netus, has reduced this to a gruesome statistical image. "The buildings consumed," he writes, "would line both sides of a street extending from New York to Chicago. A person journeying along this street of desolation would pass in every thousand feet a ruin from which an injured person was taken. At everv three quarters of a mile in this journey he would encounter the charred remains of a human being who had been burned to death." Since 1903 five fires alone - the Collingwood schoolhouse, the Boyertown moving-picture show, the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, and the steamer General Slocum and the Asch Building in New York - give a total of more than 2,100 deaths! This is barbarism. What was merely a national waste has become a national shame.

And - human nature being substantially the same thing in America as it is in Europethose who are in a position to know place the blame upon our criminally lax fire laws, and upon the criminally bad construction of our buildings. "Most of the building laws now in force," reports the Chief I nspector of the Fire Prevention Bureau of St. Louis, "are inadequate and obsolete." And he is echoed by every fire chief, fire commissioner, and underwriting authority throughout the country. There is the same unanimity as to the remedy. In place of fire-fighting, heroic and inefficient, we need the quiet and effective methods of prevention. "New York is paying fS,ooo,ooo for the maintenance of its fire department," said ex-Chief Croker recently, "and about '15,000 a year to prevent fires!" In that lies the whole situation. Modern medicine takes all its broad and vital value from its power to prevent disease. What civilized country now waits for its citizens to develop smallpox or

cholera or yellow fever? Fires ought properly to be regarded as so many cases of a malignant disease, a disease fearfully contagious. In uncivilized countries certain diseases are endemic. In Yunnan, for instance, there is always bubonic plague; the natives have come to think of it as a natural thing. For about fifty years fire has been endemic in America.

Nor is it any matter of having to wait for the proper serum or anti-toxin to be discovered. The fire disease has long ago had its Pasteur and Koch. The New York tenement was once unsurpassed as a fire-trap; but for ten years a "new model" has been compulsory, and the first loss of life by fire in it has yet to be recorded. The" picker-room" of a New England cottonmill was formerly held to be, as a fire risk, about the equivalent of a badly protected powder magazine. But now New England cotton-mills, "picker-rooms" and all, can buy their insurance more cheaply than the palaces of our Newport millionaires. I t is not so long since the breaking out of fire on shipboard meant almost certainly the destruction of the ship; and cotton was the most dangerous of all bulk cargoes. Baled cotton is still inflammable; iron bands still chafe together, and the "spontaneous combustion" gases still accumulate. All modern ships carry cotton, some of them representing a value of ten millions of dollars, and there are few long voyages in which fires do not break out at some time in one of the cotton holds. But the very heat they generate at once starts the machinery that puts them out again.

We have the preventive medicine for fire.

I t can be administered by the youngest civil engineer out of the institute of technology. And the same logic which has compelled government, through its boards of health,- municipal, State, and federal,- to take up the practice of one sort of preventive medicine must in the end bring it to take up the practice of the other. In the meantime, much can be accomplished by the

individual. .

In a series of articles to follow, this magazine proposes, with the help of the best authorities obtainable, to show what the fire disease now is, what its outbreaks mean, and how upon every kind of fire we can most easily write the word " prevented."

Digitized by Coogle