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Show "TAILOR-MADE" FIRE APPARATUS. Small towns need first-class fire-fighting fire-fighting engines as much a3 do large cities. In a number of states plans have been developed by which fire departments de-partments are situated at strategic, central points and are thus able to offer of-fer protection to a number of communities com-munities roundabout. The cost is not great and the service rendered is more important than any question of money. Reliability, punch and reserve capacity ca-pacity are essentials in fire-fighting apparatus. These factors are precisely what many; pieces of apparatus lack. Too many communities have purchased purchas-ed second-hand trucks, equipped them with odds and ends of pumping machinery, ma-chinery, applied some red paint, and called the resulting unit a fire engine. And so it is until a fire demanding arduous service breaks out. Then the equipment often fails entirely, or weakens at a crucial moment. Standard, "tailor-made" apparatus i3 the result of years of study and evolution. It must pass through the most rigorous tests and meet the most difficult conditions before it is sold. The men who make it and much of the work is still done entirely by hand have given a large part of their working lives to its manufacture. When a town buys a piece of apparatus appara-tus of this kind, it knows that it will do its duty without faltering, no matter mat-ter how great the strain placed upon up-on it. Cheap fire apparatus is the most expensive thing a community can buy. We cannot count our lives in terms of cash. |