Part 33 (1/2)

FIRE PROTECTION IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Where people live widely separated from one another, as in rural communities, such regulations are less necessary and organized fire protection is less easy to afford. A farmer's property may be destroyed by fire from a spark from a pa.s.sing locomotive, or from the camp of a careless hunter in the adjoining woods. There may be state laws to control such cases. But in the main, if his property burns it is due to the carelessness of some one who lives on the premises, and he is dependent upon his own efforts to control the fire. Improved farm water supply with adequate pumping facilities, the telephone by which neighbors may be summoned, and the automobile by which help may quickly be brought, have increased the farmer's safety; but his chief safeguard is the exercise of care by all who live on the farm at every point where a fire might possibly be started.

FIRE INSURANCE

Fire insurance is a means of reducing the fire loss of individual property owners by a form of cooperation. Insurance companies, operating under state laws, sell insurance to property owners. The latter pay a small premium for the protection afforded. From the funds produced by the premiums and the interest on their investment, the occasional losses of individuals are paid. This does not prevent the destruction of the property, but it distributes the loss among thousands of people, perhaps in all parts of the country.

FARMERS' COOPERATIVE INSURANCE

There are in the United States about 2000 FARMERS' COOPERATIVE FIRE INSURANCE COMPANIES, carrying insurance amounting to more than 5 billion dollars. These companies are a.s.sociations of farmers who elect their own directors and manage their own insurance business. They provide insurance at a much lower rate than the ordinary commercial insurance companies. A usual provision of the laws under which these cooperative companies operate is that no member may insure his property for its full value. His neighbors will help him bear his loss, but will not bear it all. This has the effect of causing him to exercise greater care to prevent fire on his premises. For this reason insurance does reduce the actual fire loss to some extent.

Property may also be insured against loss from storm and flood.

Investigate and report on:

Fire losses in your community in a year.

Causes of fires in your community last year. Number that were preventable.

Precautions against fire in your home and school.

Fire preventive regulations in your community.

Cost of fire prevention in your community.

Improved means of fire prevention in country districts.

How fire insurance works.

Cooperative fire insurance companies in your state.

Storm insurance in your locality.

POLICE PROTECTION

All states have laws to protect their citizens against the ”ill- mannered” who do not respect property rights--thieves, burglars, highwaymen, vandals, sharpers, and others. The enforcement of these laws is left largely in the hands of local community officers. Cities have police departments, with large numbers of patrolmen and detectives whose business it is not only to arrest violators of the law after the violation has taken place, but also by their vigilance to prevent the violation from occurring.

RURAL POLICE PROTECTION

The state laws against the violation of property rights apply to rural communities as well as to cities, and rural communities have officers for their enforcement--the constable in towns.h.i.+ps, the sheriff and his deputies in counties. Where the population is small and widely scattered, as in a rural towns.h.i.+p or county, about all the officers can do is to arrest law violators after the commission of the unlawful act, if they can be found. The officers are too few to watch isolated and remote property, and in case of serious disturbance, such as a riot, they are too few to handle the situation effectively. Rural communities and many small industrial or mining communities do not always have the protection they need against lawlessness. In such cases the tendency is sometimes for the people to ”take the law in their own hands.” In times of labor trouble mining companies and other industrial corporations have sometimes organized their own police. Such practice is dangerous, for the enforcement of law should be in the hands of the state, and not in the hands of an interested party.

In early days on the frontier, in mining and lumber camps, ”vigilance committees” were common; and even now, in various localities, we hear too frequently of ”lynching parties,” which are as lawless as the original offenders against the law, and tend to create a disrespect for law.

And yet disrespect for law may also result from failure on the part of the community to enforce the law through regular agencies, from failure of officers to apprehend offenders promptly, or of courts to mete out justice promptly and impartially.

STATE POLICE Canada has been more efficient than the United States in affording protection to remote and rural communities, by means of her national mounted police. ”The isolated farmer and his wife slept securely in their sod hovel beyond the frontier, because they knew that a brave and swift corps of vigilant young athletes ...

kept sleepless vigil. Life and property were secure ... .”

[Footnote: C.R. Henderson, ”Rural Police,” ANNALS American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1912, p. 228.] In our own country Texas has her ”rangers” who protect her borders against raids; but the best example of rural policing in the United States is in Pennsylvania, where there is a well-organized state police, or ”constabulary,” which has many times proved its efficiency in protecting remote rural communities and homes, in bringing criminals to justice, and in quelling riots in mining centers.

VANDALISM

A great deal of property is destroyed or injured by VANDALS. The original Vandals were a tribe of Germanic peoples who invaded southern and western Europe in the Middle Ages, and who were noted for their destructiveness of the beautiful buildings and other evidences of Roman civilization. There seem to be vandals in almost every community, and sometimes they seem to be especially numerous in small communities, perhaps because of the lack of police protection. Sometimes vandalism is wanton,--that is, it results from an apparent love of being destructive. Most often it is purely thoughtless. Few people would knowingly injure the property of another if they would stop to think of their feelings if another should injure THEIR property. It is a case of ”bad manners.” Moreover, it is not a ”square deal” to injure another's property while expecting one's own property to be secure. When vandalism occurs in a community it creates a general feeling of insecurity and destroys the sense of freedom.