Fighting Fires Privately; F.A. Harper

FIGHTING FIRES PRIVATELY tg :J.. -4. JJarper A SPECTACULAR fire hroke out in the city of New York on Valentine's Day, and six fire fighters were killed. Two were members of the City Fire Department, and the other four were members of the Fire Patrol. Who are these Fire Patrolmen? They are men privately employed to fight water damage to property while the City Firemen are fighting fire with water. A group of nearly 200 fire insurance companies hire patrolmen un der an organization called the New York Board of Fire Underwriters. Responding to fire calls from four points of departure and using their own trucks and equipment, patrolmen answer all fire alarms-which number about 20,000 yearly in New York. About $25,000,000 in water damage is said to be prevented each year by their effortsJ -about $140,000 per patrolman. Despite the hazards of such work, the Fire Patrol's honor roll shows only thirty-two dead during the last hundred years. So four deaths in this one fire is a tragedy of note in their annals.

Dr. Harper, formerly a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, continues his research and writing from Ath erton, California. This article first appeared in The American Mercury. 218 FIGHTING FIRES PRIVATELY 219 As frequently happens, the private· Fire Patrol on Val entine's Day arrived at the scene of the fire before the City Firemen did. In fact, twelve minutes after the first fire alarm sounded there was a cave-in which killed the four patrolmen. But the main point of this story has to do with the processes of self-interest, self-reliance, and private enter prise. The advocates of more and more governmental services frequently cite fire fighting as a sure-fire justifica tion for more and more governmental operations. They deny that private processes could possibly do such work. "What about fire protection?" they ask. "You wouldn't dare risk that social hazard to the whims and selfish con venience of private citizens, would you? For once a fire broke out, it would spread from house to house because private citizens would not concern themselves about it until their own house became endangered. So whenever any O'Leary cow kicked over a lantern, entire commu nities would burn."

The work of the New York Fire Patrol shows how a voluntary system of dealing with fires can operate under private endeavor. 1. Persons who want to insure against fire losses rather than to carry their own risks take out policies in insurance companies and pool their risks with others. 2. Insurance companies, banding together under a mu tual interest, hire fire patrolmen to serve them all, thereby reducing the cost of damage claims they would otherwise all have to pay. It is self-interest that motivates persons to join volun220 F. A.HARPER tarily in the mutual insurance plan. It is self-interest that induces the insurance companies to join voluntarily in a fire patrol system. No outsiders are compelled to carry any of the costs involved. In fact, as we shall see, out siders also benefit. It would be foolishly expensive for each person to maintain his own fire patrol. It would even be foolishly expensive for each insurance company to do so, having to wait at the time of each fire to see which company's policy covers the building that is burning-whose patrol shall go forth to do the job. The owner probably doesn't remember which company it is, and his insurance policy is probably at the bank or perhaps even in the burning building. The building could burn to the ground during any such delays, leaving nothing for the patrolmen to do when they get there.

So the patrolmen answer every fire alarm promptly without waiting to see which company carries the insur ance, if any. Such delay would negate their function. Un insured persons thus get protection, too, and commonly reward the servers after the service has been rendered insurance of a sort, with payment after the fact, on a basis somewhat different, to be sure, from when a person pays regular insurance premiums in advance. That is how private, voluntary enterprise takes care of part of this classic problem of fire protection service even in New York where a city fire department'is operat ing under a tax system to pay its costs. Self-interest causes private enterprise to find ways of doing things more promptly and effectively than where the force of moFIGHTING FIRES PRIVATELY 221 nopoly is used to compel participation. Why shouldn't interested persons, motivated by self-interest, be more inventive and more. sincerely devoted to the search for better ways of doing the job than are disinterested per sons whose search is motivated primarily by political interests? People left to their own devices will not allow fire damage to persist without trying their best to devise ways of preventing it.

The miracle of the voluntary way of pursuing self interest in no sense denies mutual assistance nor does it even preclude personal sacrifice. It may be argued that people are too ignorant and shortsighted to serve their own interests through voluntary mutual assistance; that this must be accomplished by the political route. Yet the same persons are presumed to have sufficient wisdom to select from among their number a ruler who will use political compulsion unselfishly and wisely. The voluntary way of doing things cannot, of course, perform the miracle of making people wiser than they are. But the alternative-the involuntary way of mo nopoly force-prohibits us from attaining the full use of the limited wisdom with which we are endowed. One thing the voluntary method accomplishes, having almost the appearance of a miracle, is to induce com petitors to cooperate in phases of their operations where it is mutually advantageous to do so. The fire patrol sys tem is an excellent example of this wholesome aspect of the voluntary way of rendering services. Competition does not blind wise competitors to the opportunity of mutual advantage in cooperation, wherever it is deemed 222 F. A. HARPER to exist. Competition means freeing competitors from the disadvantage of forced cooperation-a highly important right of escape in a progressive society of free persons.

As an expression of respect and mourning for those four patrolmen who were killed rendering fire protection in New York on Valentine's Day, let us ponder this les son which might otherwise have gone unnoticed and unlearned.