Minnesota Forestry Commissioner
Published: 2015-07-27
Total Pages: 198
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Excerpt from Fourth Annual Report of the Chief Fire Warden of Minnesota for the Year 1898 But such fire wardens would need to be paid, and if the state is to bear a part of the expense, as is now the case, there would need to be a state officer to see that the money was properly expended. To whom would such fire wardens make their reports of fires, and from whom receive instructions, if there were no supervising county or state officer? Who would determine when help should be furnished from adjoining districts? It is probable that such a system would be more expensive and less efficient than the present one. The argument that there is no need of a chief or supervising officer to administer the fire warden law is particularly unsound. Everyone will admit that military companies and regiments are organized in a way that will best promote efficiency. The men are generally of a character to perform their duties with alacrity and self-sacrifice; and yet each company of less than a hundred men, and when in the field averaging probably less than sixty men, is provided with a captain and two lieutenants to maintain -efficiency and see that they do their duty. And that a regiment shall be efficient it is provided with a colonel and two or three other field officers. How, then, can anyone say it is a needless expense to have an officer to overlook and direct several hundred local fire wardens? The duty of the principal officer in the fire warden system is to keep the local fire wardens instructed and on the alert in respect to their duties, so that they will warn careless people against causing fires, and in dangerous weather act with promptitude in extinguishing fires, and promptly report in regard to them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.