About a month ago, the rumor spread that the firemen in Chicago were planning to organize a union. This organization was to have the same objective as that of other labor unions--the improvement of the working conditions of its members. The method of achieving this [objective] would be the same as that used in private industry: that is, a strike.

The daily press, which is always represented at meetings or banquets arranged by some office seeker or other, did not consider it worth its while to send a reporter to any of the members of the Chicago fire-fighting force to get information as to how matters were standing. Instead, they rushed forward with upraised hands to crush the unborn baby. The papers pointed out--and rightly so--the sinister possibilities in the existence of such an organization, and the mayor, seeing the same specter as the daily press, ordered the cessation of every attempt at starting such an organization.

Svenska Nyheter did not take any more stock in this rumor than in numerous other rumors which a sensation-hungry press is spreading. We had full faith in the ability of our splendid corps of firemen to realize the difference between the city as employer and a private individual or a corporation as employer. And our faith in the firemen was justified. The Methodist minister, Rev. W. H. Carwardine, has furnished the information which the reporters of the daily press failed to discover. Reverend Carwardine interviewed the members of the fire department and found that there was never any thought of organizing in order to force improvements in the conditions of the firemen; the intention was merely to interest the members of the board of aldermen in the question of a shorter working day for the men.

The Reverend Carwardine says: "No class of workers in the service of the city has duties as heavy as those of the firemen, and no class deserves the sympathy of the public more than this group of men."

The fire fighters in Chicago are practically a group of hermits. Ninety 3per cent of them are married and have families. During a service period of forty-eight hours, they have five hours off; two of these hours come at mealtime: they are the breakfast, lunch, or dinner hours. If an alarm is sounded during these off-hours, before the fireman has left the station, then his off-hours are cancelled. Consequently under favorable circumstances, a fireman may be able to visit his family three hours in every forty-eight-hour period--never longer than this. Some of the fire fighters have every tenth night off and may then go home; others are free only every twelfth night. But if an alarm is sounded on his night off, then the fireman is kept on his job, and his wife and children wait in vain for his homecoming. There is, for example, the case of one fireman who has been without his night off for more than a month and a half.

The fireman is in service nineteen and a half hours out of every twenty-four, and the possibilities are excellent that he will have to serve twenty-four hours in twenty-four, except during his annual ten-day vacation. He is literally 4a prisoner, a slave.

Alderman Scully has submitted a proposal to the board of aldermen calling for the rearrangement of working hours within the fire corps, and it is to be hoped that the board will take steps about the matter, even though it may not be possible, on such short notice, to grant the fire force the requested twelve-hour day while retaining the same moderate wages as are now paid for the twenty-four hour day.

The wages of the average fireman are figured on the basis of thirteen cents per hour, or 3.12 per day. They are now applying for a twelve-hour working day without any out in pay. If this request is to be granted, it will of course be necessary to hire four hundred additional firemen at a cost to the city of $320,000 per year.