Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1917 — Rats and Fires. [ARTICLE]

Rats and Fires.

At a time when everyone Is complaining of the high cost of living it might be well to see cannot eliminate two great sources of waste —fires and rats. Most fires are needless. All rats are so. Some years ago a study of the .rat prohlemln Philadelphia arrived -at the conclusion that the rodents of that city ate more than a million dollars’ worth of food each year. At that rate, the disgusting creatures can hardly cost less than $100,000,000 per year to the whole country. This is a pretty high price to pay for the companionship of impish pests which, besides their other bad habits, undermine floors and carry the most dreaded of all diseases, bubonic plague. Yet fires are more expensive than rats. In 1915—the last year for which figures # are at hand —the American people paid out in premiums for fire insurance $419,361,346. Of this vast sum at least three-fourths could be saved by reducing our fire record to the rate prevailing in England, France or Germany; and even in our time and nation $300,000,000 per year is a saving worth noting, and one which would have a perceptible effect on the cost of Hytug.