The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-10-15

A coroner's jury is investigating the
cause of the Fall River disaster. 1t is
safe to predict the result. The jury will
mildly blame the proprietors of the mill
for not providing sufficient stairways for
the escape of the inmates. Possibly the
Massachusetts, Labor Board will take
sufficient interest in the affair to address
circular to mill-owners generally, urg-
ing them to take measures to prevent the
possibility of disaster like that of Sat
urday last. And this will be all. Public
Indignation will gradually cool, and the
Fall River massacre will be forgotten
until another great calamity recalls it to
mind.
The real blame for the recklessness
which leads to such frequent and terrible
accidents in this country rests with the
public which permits them quite as much
as with the men by whose actual negli-
gcnce or ignorance they are brought
about After the Fall River mill is
burned we find that its insufficient means
of exit had long been familiar to the peO-
pie of that village. After the Mill River
dam burst it was discovered that for
years past the unsafe condition of the
dam was notorious. In neither case, how
ever, was there the slightest effort made
to prevent the calamity which was
dreaded Had the condition of the Mill
River dam been thoroughly exposed to
the press; had certain of the leading
men whose property was afterwards swept
away by the flood kept up persistent
agitation on the subject, the owners ofthe
dam would have been compelled to re-
build it or to draw off the water which it
was too weak to permanently retain. But
no effort was made to compel the dam
owners to do their manifest duty precisely
as no determined attempt to force the
owners of the Granite Mill to provide
suitable stairways was even thought OF.
In both cases the miserable timidity
which shrank from offending wealthy
manufacturers, and which hesitated to
incur the jeers of men who fancy that it
is brave act to risk the lives of factory
girls and peaceful cottagers, was sufficient
to prevent all action in the matter. 1t
is true that the responsibility for the
hundreds slain in Mill River and the
scores burned to death in the Granite
Mill rests primarily upon greedy and
ignorant capitalists. The public, how
ever, which never strOve to remove the
dangers which were obvious to all, can
hardly be held to be less guilty. The
average American has morbid dread of
being thought timid and an equal dread
of incurring the ill-will of his neighbors
by protesting against public abuse, other
than political, in which they are con-
cerned. 1t is this that prevents any one
of the hundreds of passengers whose lives
are daily risked by the racing of the
Harlem steamboats, from making for
NAL complaint against the pilots. 1t is
this that prevents travellers from max
ing an effective protest against the abuses
of railway travel-the kerosene lamp, the
dangerous car-stove, the lack of proper
couplings and brakes, which are the rule
rather than the exception on most of our
railroads. We prefer to risk the dangers
to which reckless corporations subject
us, rather than to incur the terrible con-
sequences of being thought timid and
nervous by some clerk in railway or
steamboat office. We are full of indigna-
iton against the company when racing
steamboat bursts her boiler or railway
train is telescoped and set on fire. Such
tragedies are brought about through our
own cowardly supineness, and we cannot
free ourselves from the responsibility
which they entail.
A national characteristic is not changed
in day. 1t will probably be years be-
fore the American people rid themselves
of this timid acquiescence in the crimes
of corporations and parsimonious en-
ployers. But the time must come when
there will be public sentiment on this
subject that will be too strong to be
defied. And that time will be hastened il
it is kept steadily before the people that
they, as well as mill-owners, the dam
builders, the steamboat and the railway
companies, are responsible for crimes
which the latter have been tacitly per-
mitted to commit.-Daiy Graphic.