The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1886-08-15
ELEVATE THE TRACKS.
THE L0Ss OF LIFE NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
ING HIS ENTaILED.

4 Demand for Additional Precautions for
safety of Life and Limb, and Less In
terrupti0n Traffic in this City-The
Cempany's own Record of IT'S Fatalities.
The promised advent of number of new
railroads into this city, and the extent 10
which traffic over the Pennsylvania Railroad
Will be increased, bytheir coming, enforce the
public demand that additional precautions
shall be taken by that company against de-
lay and peril to life and limb. The old
New Jersey Railroad and Transportation
Company was small affair, and Jersey City
was meadow land and o farming district,
when the one first began to run into the
other. Trains shambled into the town
at long intervals, and the people were so
scattered that there was ample room for the
cars and citizens to keep out of each others
way. The aspect of affairs has been
changed beyond recognition since that time.
Then the trains came putting laboriousiy
into the town an hour or two apart, and
little knots of curious rustics gathered on
the green hill sides to greet them. as they
came, with waving hats and handker-
chiefs To-day trains dash into town and
out of town in almost unbroken process
sions, and the throngs of busy residents
all but trip over them in the energetic
TRANSACTION of their several csllings. AGthe
Newark avenue crossing alone, it is said,
trains whirl By every 20 seconds at some
hours CT the day; and over 1000 people
daily risk their lives in the local horse cars
that sceot between them on the Jour
ney to and from the hill Some say fifty
Thousand people. ON foot and in vehicles OF
ore kind or another, cross the track at that
point daily; 10000 is a low estimate.
This takes no account of the traffic at other
thoroughfares crossed by the Company's
tracks-Wa Washington, Warren, Grove, Bar
row and Coles streets and Jersey avenue.
Tenements alive with people line the track
way on both siaes, ard little children. es-
Gaping the notice of their parents, wander,
unconscious of theawful peril, to the great
steel roadways over which the commerce of
the Nation seeks its market. The most
careful and thorough of precautions taken
: by the railroad to, guard against delay and
accident. frequently fails to accomplish Its
end. and the record of accidents is large
enough, of itself, to justify the public de-
mand for safer system of transit through
the populous city Gates are provided at
) the crossings and drilled fiagmen placed IN
charge Of. them. They save many lives, no
doubt, but on the other hand they too Of
ten become traps for the nnwary. Every
body RENE mbers the appalling story of the
horse ear that was held with its multitude
of riders between the gates, thirteen years
or SO age, to be dashed into fragments by
a locomotive. Nothing bat miracle pre-
vented the sacrifice of every imperiled life;
and, as it. was.3 twenty MANNED and
crippled and bleeding citizens We're
taken from the wreck. More recently a 4
woman, shut between the gates, became
bewildered in the presence Of an approach
ing locomotive, and was ground to- death.
Within the last month another was i'm
prisoned only to be cut to pieces; and who
forpets the story Of the two little children,
on their way to school from one of the
neiebboring tenements, who were mangled
to death while their mother from her door
post waved them her loving adieu These
are but speeinens5o Of the everyday record
of that fateful crossing. The company
makes reasonably careful returns to the
State OF deaths by accidenton the road.
and these show the unnecessary loss of
fife and limb wrought in this city by the
company s juggernauts, within the last
/thirtee n wears. Here's the record: