The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-12-27
ITS ARMY OF VICTIMS.

Frightful Mortality Under Private Owner.
ship and Operation of Public Rail.
roads.
Before going into consideration Of
the private railroad as public thief,
let me add few remarks to mine of
last week on its mission as murderer
to make summary which the men,
| DRY can easily carry. though its weight
in the argument against private owner
, ship of Eailroads grows heavier day by
! day
Let us take, ponder and absorb just
few statistics. They are not dry"
but dripping with human blood. Tho
American railways for the year ended
June 80, 1890, killed or injured one
passenger out of every 1S1. 641 persons
carried. frightful record of corpor-
ate greed and capitalistic murder, is it
not? But there is yet an uglier side to
it. Ut their dreadfully hard-worked
employees who enjoy on an average the
magnificent wage of e1.64 a day, they
managed to kill or injure one out of
every thirty. One for every thirty
| realize the redness, the blood-redness of
that little item.
Look at it another way, so as to get
it firmly fixed in your mind and heart.
The exact number of employees slaugh-
tered in that year was 2, 451, or, to
speak roundly, one workman every six
days for 81. 81 per day gave up his life
to the great American juggernaut
Add to this 22,s96 employees injured
more or less frightfully and perma-
| nently, and do we not have a sum in
arithmetic that becomes, if we permit
such a condition to continue, a sum in
national morality?
Consider once more, in the new light,
the comparison l made last week with
the public railroad systems of Ger
many, Austro- Hungary and India
| Here is the indictment in nutshell
Our American railways, true examples
| of private enterprise, run mad with
greed for gold. kill and injure three
| and one-third times as many passengers
| and six and one-fifth times as MANY
| employees per annum as the other coun-
tries combined.
There are so many rascally ramifica-
tions to this private railroad iniquity
that it resembles the great banyan
| tree of India, beneath whose branches
ten thousand soldiers, it is said, could
encamp. Or rather, it resembles the
tabled upas tree whose leaves distill
dews of poison and to sleep bene tn
| which is certain death. To sleep be-
meath this ever-increasing public
| poison, the private railroad, is death
| for the American people. for do not
! robbing and impoverishing man kill
! him just as certainly, though little
slower and with more torture of heart,
| as to crush him beneath iron wheels or
burn him up in a railroad accident?
was interested few days ago in
looking over the patent Office reports
! to note that more patents had been
! granted on car couplers than on any
| other one article. This excited my chri-
osity little, and on investigation I
found that the railroads employed an
expert at Washington to watch for the
various patents granted and to secure
at as low price as possible the prompt
assignment of the invention to those
interested in the pool | afterwards
learned that it was a part of the sys-
TEN to quietly buy up these inventions
and then shelve them. This prevents
the parading of them in public and the
arousing of public sentiment in favor
of marked improvements simply be-
cause nobody is financially interested
to do it. Thousands of patents have
already been granted on car couplers,
and yet the old system of wholesale
life-destroyers almost universally pre-
| walls.
Brakemen are obliged to risk life and
limb in going between cars, simply be-
cause the murderous greed of railroad
officials and stockholders prevent the
adoption of improvements, and deliber-
ately withholds the means of saving
the lives of their employees, until an
outraged public sentiment compels
them to disgorge few of their stolen
dollars in the interest of common hui.
mainly.
1t is a well-known fact that a larger
army of men are employed on the rail-
roads Of the country than in any single
industry. In 1891 the number of men
employed was one to every eighty-two
| inha bitants, and when we consider the
long hours of employment, small wages
paid and the fact that no attention
whatever is given to their safety, if
this does not put our Wanted Christian
civilization to the blush and make the
petty killing of one man by another
seem like a peccadillo, it is because we
are so accustomed to the sight of in
| Justice and wholesale slaughter that
| our hearts are hardened to human
misery.
AS rule the average railroad en-
ploye is worked beyond the point of
| physical endurance, and long hours I'M
string his nerves and dull his senses
until he fails to measure up to the
standard of watchfulness An accident
occurs and this poor railroad slave is
hustled into court charged with crimi-
nal negligence, and the directors go
scot free and patient public foots the
| bills
| Next week we will consider together
"the private railroad as public thief"
| GEORGE F. WAsHBURN.
Boston, Mass.
| Query.
have no faith in the dogma that the
rich are growing richer and the Door