At the same time a paid fire department was established in Dayton, the Council summarily disbanded all the volunteer organizations as of March 1, 1864. The reputation of the volunteers at the time of disbandment must have been at an all-time low. Nowhere in its various resolutions did the Council extend a single word of thanks for the colorful vamps’ (volunteers’) four decades of service without pay. The rowdy behavior of the old-time volunteers is in sharp contrast to the efficient community service performed by today’s volunteer firemen. [Illustration: Fire marks, which were usually metal plaques, first appeared in the 17th Century. They were issued by insurance companies which maintained their own fire brigades. If a burning house bore the fire mark of a company, that company’s fire-fighters would lend assistance. If not, they customarily refused to help. After fire-fighting became a community effort, however, fire marks were simply a form of advertising. Shown above are the fire marks of three Dayton insurance companies. The Cooper mark was issued in 1867.] [Illustration: The Columbia mark’s issuance date is unknown.] [Illustration: The Dayton Insurance Company mark was issued in 1851.] By now, conversion to steam was taking place throughout the United States. The steam fire engine, often called a “bulljine,” could run for hours without tiring. It made its debut in cities large and small, and firehouses began to assume some of the aspects of livery barns, since the steamers were usually too heavy to be pulled by men. Hay and oats soon came to be as much a part of fire department supplies as hose and axes, although just as firemen had opposed steamers as an insult to their strength, so they opposed at first the use of horses to pull equipment to the fires. In some cases horses were obtained, after an alarm was sounded, at nearby livery barns, but the delay inherent in this procedure proved prohibitive. As the trend to steam fire engines grew to landslide proportions, manufacturers of the new machines mushroomed all over the eastern United States. Almost every heavy machine shop which had had any experience with steam brought out an engine. Some erstwhile manufacturers never built more than one machine; others produced hundreds. Moses Latta, the pioneer in the field, enjoyed only a few brief years with minor competition, eventually selling his business. The city or town which wanted to replace its old hand-pump engines and modernize its fire-fighting facilities had a wide choice in steam fire engines. If funds were low and the needs modest, an engine could be purchased for as little as $800. One such economy engine, built by the Knowles Steam Pump Works at Warren, Massachusetts, was as plain and homely as it could be; it offered no shiny plating or fancy striping, but it put out fires just the same.