Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1904-01-22
The Prevention Of Railway Wrecks.

The frequency with which railroad
wrecks have occurred recently. entail.
ing great loss Of human life. has
aroused a r,.rewed demand that Amer
lean railroads be run with more regard
for the safety Of the passengers. Al
most daily the press dispatches contain
reports of one or more railroad disas-
tiers somewhere in the country and not
infrequently their victims are number
ed by the score. In the main these &C.
cidents would have been preventable
and are the result of the carelessness
or inefiiciency OF the management or its
servants or the lack /f proper and suffi-
Gent safety apDI-e1ces.
The Washington Times insists that
the recent record of railway fatalities
is an indictment OF American railroad
corporations for wholesale murder, and
accuses congress of completely through
criminal negligence. 1t says:
Railway collisions are preventable. as
every railroad manager well knows
There are no railroad collisions In Eng
land because the law compels the use Of
an efficient block system. II is as prac-
ticable to enforce such a law in the Unit
ed States as in Great Britain, but 1t is
not easy to pass such a law while the
railroad corporations are permitted by
the people TO fill the senate, the house and
the lobby at Washington with their at
torneys and agents.
The disgrace to the American people lies
in their careless liberation of the political
activity of corporations deriving the right
to exist from the public and enjoying
special privileges, presumed TO be granted
in consideration Of service rendered to the
public. II is reproach to the nation that
instead of governing its corporate crea-
lures 1t tolerates their meddling with gov
ernment in any particular.
The more conservative New York
Evening Post is no less severe. Ii
says:
The directors of the railroads in this
country are running them to make mon
ey The president of a railroad never for
one instant allows his general manager
to lose sight OF the fact that this is the
one aim and object of his superiors.
While every technical railroad man in
this country is willing to acknowledge pri-
vately that our roads are run in criminal
disregard OF the safety Of the public,
there Is not one brave enough to come
forward and put the blame for such a
condition of affairs where 1t belongs. If
he did he Aculd not be able to get work
as a cond y lor on a horse car
The interstate commerce commission
suggests as a partial remedy that con-
gress compel all railroads to use the
block system, which, the commission
seventh Of the railway mileage of the
country. The general adoption of the
block system would no doubt prevent
very many wrecks, but this is not
enough The railroads should be COM
PEELED to build more substantial pas
senger coaches. In most of the late
accidents the occupants of the strongly
| built Pullman cars almost wholly es-
capped injury, while those in the day
coaches were slaughtered. The Loco
motive Firemen's Magazine recently
published picture of the wreck at In
| dianapolis last fall in which the Purdue
students were killed, showing the pas
| senger coaches smashed to kindlings,
while steel coal car which bore the
brunt of the collision looked as good as
new Touching the matter of more sub
stantial construction, the Washington
Post says:
The railway mail clerks are asking for
| the enactment of law by congress re-
quiring railroad companies to construct
! their railway mail cars Of steel. to make
| them as strong and substantial as are the
| Pullman sleepers now used. Statistics
| cited by railway mail clerks show that
| the mail coaches-and the same is true OF
most of the day coaches-are built much
| lighter than the sleepers. The result is
| that In case of collision or wreck the
| heavy engine, with its tender at one end
Of the train and the heavy sleepers at the
other. stand the shock Of the collision
| while the mail cars and the coaches OF
| light construction are crushed ike egg
| shells between these great weights. The
| records show that passengers in sleepers
are rarely killed in railway collisions OF
ordinary wrecks. The sleepers. as a mat
| ter of fact are seldom thrown from the
tracks.
What the postal clerks demand fol-
their protection should be insisted upon
for the protection of the public. More
substantially constructed passenger
coaches would undoubtedly increase
the weight of trains and cause a read
iustment of time schedules or reduc
ton of the size of trains, but the lives
of the hundreds of people killed annual
ly are certainly worth the cost OF the
proposed change. The sleeper traffic Is
but a small per cent of the business OF
the railroads. The people who travel II
the common coaches make up the grea,
bulk of passenger traffic, and they are
entitled to every precaution for theil
safety. This is one of the problems OF
railroading into which the question oi
cost should not be allowed to enter.
The profit sharing employees OF the
Steel corporation may take some com
fort from the fact that the officers Of
the corporation have had their salarie:
cut, but there is in that but small sat
isfaction for the investors in Steel com
mon.
Anent the proposition to increase th'
salaries of congressman. it may be Cd
,1,iy IF