The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-06-30
ruU m,Cwonr or uunny.

ting one. It begins on us as soon as we learn to walk and ciings to us till we start to the grave. It Is difficult to keep . funeral procession down to a reasonably slow pace. As The Kan sas City Journal sees it. we have boz come "a nation of neurotics. and while we have plumed ourselves upon what we are pleased to call our enterprise we have, in fact. long since passed the frontier of nationality and are whirl- ing swiftly in the maelstrom of com mercial and industrial alteration. We have gIoried in our achievements with the false pride that measures results without computing the cost. Conser- vatism no 1onesr hss place among us, and those few who still are amenable to mental tucidity and sHvecats . siacken- ing of the pace are rsfsrrsd to ss old foges and 'pulibachs.' We have been going ths national gait that Kills and our momentum has become fearful to contemplate"
 If the American people. individually and collectively. were fnaitins racs to the grave under 6 wager they could hardly show more determination to win than they do in their actual daily life. The business mans watchword is ''Bolt." He bolts to his place of business in the morning. bolts his meals. bolts through his days work and then bolts home. He is a bolting animal, and keeps up his record all the way along life's journey.
 Tn travelling we seem to have per- feet mania for hurrying. The vital point on our railroads is not safety and reliability. but the shortening of schedules. The train which can savc a few miles an hour between two sta- tions Is the train our people will patronize if possible. It matters not that increase of speed means decrease of safety. for that is just what 1t amounts to. The time may come when tracks, cars and equipments may make 1t safe to run trains continuously at or above the mile q minute speed. but that time is not the present. Disasters caused by running at exceptional speed are teo common to permit any doubt of the danger of doing so.
 Even if the tracks and all material equipments were as perfect as it is hunanly possible to make them we still have human faifings to account for and to guard against. The track may be as perfect as engineering and mechani-
 -fSsff trn fx hut fhoNa xxyill occur wash-outs and displacements which cannot be seen In time to stop a flying train. The engines and cars may be practically perfect, yet the en- gineer's attention may he diverted, or he may be overworked and worn down, or something else may cause him to neglect his duty for only . few mo- ments, but those moments may mean disaster. The schedules may be as carefully and perfectly arranged as men can make them. but 6 dispatcher may give & wrong order. or the en- gineer may misunderstood it, and two of the mile-a- minute trains come to- eether, or one may run Into an open switch. and then death reaps great harvest.
 Any of these things may occur. as all know, yet we continue to hurry. If it were announced that a certain rail- road had arranged a schedule for one hundred and fifty miles an hour the hurrying, scurrying American people would fall over each other to catch 1t. 1t is the same in everything else. To quote again from The Journal: Thou sands and thousands of lives have been sacrificed needlessly in the United States under the Jusgernaut of merci" less individual and corporate greed. Delirious in pursuit of the phantom of money, the finer amenities of eiviliza- tion have been submerged beneath the general uproar of selfish, heartless competition. Tho inferno of our grain and stock pits has drowned the expir- ing cries of tho weaker ones and the humanity of charity. justice and broth erhood has given place to the atavistic impulses of savasery."
 What is the good of 1t all? Can we not accomplish enough. can we not do
 
 reach our destined end and aim with out wearing our lives out in the en- deavor to get there before another? "I am always In haste. but never in a hurry" is a saying attributed to good old John Wesley. and it is a good one. He was in haste. and that he did not idle away the time when he had work to do, but he did not permit himself to hurry over his work and thus inJure himself and perhaps perform his tasks fin a sloveniy manner. Ills was the haste of deliberation, or the delibera- tion of haste, and by and through it he accomplished much. If some learned scientist will discover and apply a specific euro or destroyer of the microbe of hurry we will be much the better for 1t.
 It is encouraging when a city, espe- cially Pennsylvania city, has a public hA haa