Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1873-01-06
THE CATASTROPHES OF THE
YEAR.

IaSC III DecelHUeI tndH dt any oIHei Iiue.
Never before, we think, have so many
steam ships been burned, wrecked or
sunk as during the year just closing,
and IN order to make the record COM
plete, if indeed it is now full, we have
just learned of the wreck of the Allen
steamship Germany on the coast of
France. Other shipping has suffered Sc
verely, especially in the late gale IN the
Baltic sea. If the greatest fire in the
history of cities has not marked the year
1872, we doubt if the aggregate of prop
erty destroyed in a twelvemonth was
ever much larger. Just as the old year
is expiring there is a succession of heavy
losses in New York and in Portland,
Oregon, Philadelphia, London and nu-
merous other cities. Boston the worst of
all had previously been visited. 1t does
not appear to have been a very fatal
year with the railroads of this country,
but in England accidents seem to have
been more numerous than ever before.
Notwithstanding the comparative immu-
nifty from this class of horrors, the year
does not close without becoming memoir
able for one of the most disastrous rail
road accidents that ever occurred on an
American railroad, supplemented by two
others, in both of which several persons
lost their lives. 1t is not easy to say
whether the deaths of eminent persons
have been more or less numerous, and
whether they have involved a greater or
smaller loss to the world than other
years. 1t is certain however, that not
for many years have there been so many
deaths of the chief rulers of nations
We have already mentioned King Charles
of Sweden and the presidents of Mexico
and Peru,-and now we learn of the de-
cease of King Hamehameha of the Haw-
allan Islands, involving probably rev.
olution in the government. At the same
time the serious illness of the heir to
the Russian throne is announced, and
even now he too may have been number
ed with the dead of 1872. The closing
month and the closing days of this re-
markable year signalize themselves yet
again by the extraordinary meteorologi-
cal phenomenons. The weather has
been unusually cold all over the country
in some parts of the country as cold
as was ever known since thermometers
were invented. On Christmas day all
New England was visited with biting
cold weather, the thermometer standing
as high as zero in hardly any place, and
in some places indicating the unpreced-
ented temperature of forty or fifty de-
grees below zero.
Such a review of the year may be use.
full or not, according to the spirit in
which it is made The fact that there
,rpve been unavoldaD1u u1oaovUrs as well
as those we have mentioned which were
avoidable, may have a tendency to lead
US to forget the distinction between
them, and to miss all the lessons that
might be extracted from both. We can.
not control the weather; and it would
be impossible to escape many of the
evils which come to us from that source
This fact, and the apparently inevitable
nature of some others of the catastrophe:
of the year, seems to have increased the
fatalist tendency of many, and to have
caused them to attribute the whole Sc
ries of accidents to something more thar
human carelessness and stupidity L
is this tendency that is to be guarded
against. More than one half the terribl,
steamship disasters of the year are trace
able directly to the cowardice, the reck
leckness, the brainlessness, or the stin
giness of man, The greatest of til,
great fires of the year. we can say posi-
lively, might have been prevented if thu
combination of circumstances which
made it so serious had been foreseen
and might have been stayed if the means
at our disposal had been used with tn
promptnAss, frmness and intelligenc,
we had a right to expect. The manage
ment of a railroad requires sleeples
vigilance, and that there are SO few Sc
rious catastrophes is a proof of the vas
human mind in organization and exc
cution. After all, there are some acct
dents that cannot be avoided but thi
must not blind us to the fact that tber
) are others which due vigilance can pre-
} vent. A broken wheel causes the dealt
; of forty persons. If that wheel wa
!, tested as to its soundness, as it shout,
: have been a short time before it CAV
way, the consequences of the acci
dent can be chargeable upon no one.-
| But when a passenger train is stoppe
by the snow, if there is no step taken t
bring to stand freight train know
to be following, we can see that there /
blame somewhere, and we need not see
far for the person upon whom it is to b
laid.
1t is the business of our modern civ
ilization to decrease the number of III
avoidable catastrophes Physicians stud
the art of prolonging life. We are COZ
tinually adding to our means of shield
ing ourselves against the weather an