Fire Protection.
The average manager to-day realizes fully the necessity for fire protection. It is not, perhaps, so fully realized that the mere knowledge that there is adequate fire protection has a considerable effect upon the mental comfort of many of the workers. Nothing is more fatiguing than worry. When each worker in the establishment knows that in case of a fire he can leave the building with speed and perfect safety, he has absolutely no worry or distraction from the fire standpoint.
Fire protection should include not only seeing that the building and all it contains are made as fire-proof as possible, and installing all possible devices for putting out a fire should one start, but also the fire drill. Here the motto of the Boy Scouts is useful, “Be prepared.” There is nothing so satisfactory as preparedness. The fire drill is not only a means of handling the organization during a fire, but it is also a splendid preparation for meeting an emergency. The great problem that arises in any unexpected situation is the problem of making a decision. If one can acquire the habit of making a decision quickly, and can also make habitual certain decisions in certain situations, the resulting speed and fatigue elimination is remarkable. Make the response to the fire situation, then, standard. You will be benefiting your workers not only by teaching them how to act in any fire anywhere, but also by teaching them how to respond to a signal in a standard way. These various sets of habits in response to various stimuli should be formed in the first years of the school life, if not before. They are being formed at this time to-day to a greater extent than ever before, but unfortunately the majority of adult workers in the industries have never had such training as children. It, therefore, becomes the duty of the management to form such habits as rapidly as possible.