Book Review

The urban volunteer fire company in the antebellum period was a recognized American institution, often described and commented upon by foreign visitors, and this short study interestingly recounts and analyzes its history. Cause for Alarm is considerably narrower than the subtitle suggests. The book focuses mostly on the volunteer fire departments of San Francisco, Baltimore, and St. Louis from the 1840s through their replacement with full-time professional fire fighters in the 1860s. Amy S. Greenberg's main interest is in the social and cultural significance of the volunteers rather than organization, routines, or fire-fighting procedures.

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In the 1840s, Greenberg argues, firemen were popular heroes—the republican ideal of citizenship, who, without compensation, protected city residents from the ever present menace of fire. In San Francisco, Baltimore, and St. Louis, the companies were not, as the author's examination of membership lists reveals, the ethnic or working-class clubs that earlier historians had assumed; most had a substantial white-collar membership. Nor can they really be considered middle class—they were firemen, an identification that transcended class and ethnicity in a shared masculine identity. The volunteer companies offered a brotherhood that served as a community for the large number of single young men in nineteenth-century cities.

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