A company of volunteer fireman pump an old-fashioned fire pump in this short actuality from the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
It's a simple and energetic exhibition of manpower on the part of the men of the Green, New York volunteer company. About ten men on each side push their bar down alternately, which should produce a flow of water to reach high into a fire.... I assume, since there was no evidence of any water in the shot.
Firemen in the United States have a long history. The first volunteer company in the colonies, the Union Fire Company, was organized by Benjamin Franklin in 1736. Four years later, he set up the first successful fire insurance company in the colonies. It was modeled on an earlier attempt in Boston. As we can see in this short, the idea was a sound one, and being a volunteer fireman was, for more than a century, a mark of civic virtue. The first professional corps was begun in Cincinnati in 1853 and has now become standard.