On the brewery are kept three fire-engines (a steamer and two manuals) and a well organised fire-brigade of ten men, which is ever ready to render its services at fires in the neighbourhood. A laudable feature in connection with the brewery is a Friendly Society, to which all the employés belong, and which ensures their receiving, among other benefits, a substantial allowance during sickness. At Romford the firm give employment to three hundred men and boys, exclusive of officials, collectors, &c., and are large employers of labour at their London stores (where eighty horses are in use); at their Burton brewery, and at their twenty-five country depôts. The firm is a great supporter of the Volunteer movement. For many years Mr. Coope was Major of the Essex Volunteers, and one company of the battalion to which he was attached is entirely made up of brewery employés, “doughty sons of malt and hops.” Messrs. Ind, Coope & Co. stick to the old-fashioned materials for their beer, and the large extent of what may be termed their private family trade is an indication not to be lightly disregarded that we English still adhere to our ancient friendship for Sir John Barleycorn. One other Burton Brewery yet remains to be mentioned, that of Messrs. Thomas Salt & Company, at the head of which firm is Mr. Henry Wardle, the present (1886) member for South Derbyshire, the other partners being Messrs. Edward Dawson Salt, William Cecil Salt, and Henry George Tomlinson. To trace the origin of the firm, it is necessary to go back as far as {354} the year 1774, when Messrs. Salt & Co.’s maltings were worked in conjunction with the brewery of Messrs. Clay & Sons. It was about this time that the great-grandfather of two present members of the firm added a brewery to the malting business, and thus, in the list of brewers, then few in number, given in the records of the town for 1789, we find the name of Thomas Salt. In 1822 the only Burton Brewers mentioned in Pigott’s _Commercial Directory_ were S. Allsopp & Co.; Bass and Ratcliffe; Thomas Salt & Co.; John Sherrard; and William Worthington. When in 1823 the Burton brewers determined to brew an ale which could compete with Hodgson’s then well-known India pale ale, Salt & Co. were among the first to bring the idea to a practical issue. There must indeed have been no lack of energy on the part of the firm, for in 1884 they came off with flying colours at the International Health Exhibition, gaining a gold medal for the excellence of their ale.