The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1881-09-28
Relative Risks Of Railway Travel.

A few weeks ago, when traveller was
murdered on railway train near Lon
don and thrown out Of the car while the
train was passing through q tunnel, q
great ado was made, especially In Amer
loan papers, with regard to the insecu-
rity Of travellers in the English cars
The plan Of confning two or three or at
most half dozen travellers in q small
cab, out of reach and hearing of their
fellow-travelers on the train, and un-
protected by conductors or other train
men, was unsparingly criticised and
ridiculed- For the sake of q degree of
(undesirable) privacy any traveller, it
was said, was liable to find himself
cooped up with murderer like Muller
or LEROY; or, In case Of lady, with q
brute like Valentine Baker. The op-
portunity thus afforded for robbery,
murder, or outrage was declared to be
impossible with American csrs, and re-
marks derogatory TO the common sense
Of Englshmen were freely indulged in
because they would not give up their
system for ours.
The recent robbery of train of cars
on Missouri road by bold and we'll
organized gang of desperadoes gives the
English press an opportunity to retail
ate in kind. A prominent London paper
says:
The American cars seem specially
made to invite this kind of outrage.
With the English system such q whole
sale raid is impossible. In any case one
carriage alone could be robbed here be-
fore the passengers and oficials could
organize resistance. As there Is no ex-
ample Of such an event In our railway
history, we may assume that the diff
culties and dangers are so great as to
deter even the most daring criminals
The actual danger of murder or robbery
is far less on English lines than on Amer
ican."
In this view of the case our English
friends are as much at fault as the
American critics of the English system
were. The conditions under which the
two systems are operated makes q fair
comparison of the relative security to
life and property afforded by them quite
Impossible, while the rarity of violent
crimes under both systems shows that
the risk to the traveller in either is amaz-
ingly small. Indeed, considering the
large number of persons always in
transit by rail, both in this country and
in England, the rare occurrence of
crimes on the road must be accepted
as proof either that travelling is excep-
tionally conducive to morality or else
that, whether car compartments are
large or small, railway travel affords
fewer facilities for the commission of
crimes than the ordinary conditions of
social life. The murder of people in
church during divine service Is a more
frequent occurrence, if criminal statis-
tics are worth anything, than like crimes
lrrror kr-os s,.a. I,.N NIaN aEf
basis for a comparison of car seats and
church pews as aids to crime.
1t is pretty certain that under ordi-
nary conditions of travel no ill-disposed
person would choose public car on an
American railway for individual murder
or robbery with any reasonable hope of
escape, as LEROY and Muller did in Eng
land. 1t may be equally true that an
organized raid upon q train Of cars on an
English road would be prevented or
made unsuccessful by the plan of the
| cars and the distribution of the passen-
| gers. But such q deterrent effect would
be much less certain were the train to be
run over long and sparsely settled
| route, such as was taken advantage OF
by the Missouri train robbers. Such
| crimes are no more attempted in the
neighborhood of our larger centers of
railway communication than they are on
roads leading from London or Liver
pool, and 1t would seem that the sur
roundings Of the roads and the more
frequent stations are more influential in
preventing train robberies in the East,
as in England, than anything in the
construction of the cars or the makeup
Of the train. Given equal time for the
work, we are inclined to think that fewer
men would be required to capture aud
go through train Of English cars than
one of American cars, while the rob-
bers' chance of meeting serious resist
ance on the latter would be much the
greater. But this question of compara-
tive immunity from attack plays q very
Insignificant part in determining the
choice of large or small compartments,
compared with popular customs, popu-
lar habits of thought with respect to
| privacy or promiscuity, the varying
hazard of undesirable social contacts
while travelling, and all that sort Of
thing. The English have their preju.
dices as Americans have theirs, and
matters of this sort are more apt to be
decided by prejudice than by the calcu-
lation of infinitesimal risks to life OF
property. Scientific american.
L