Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-04
Is the Railway Manager Competent

Is the Railway Manager Competent
From the New York World.
The American railway manager has a
worldwide reputation for ability and eff
cheney. His genius for administration is
lauded at home and looked up to abroad
an example. He is credited with having
mastered the great problems of transporta-
ton. But is the reputation deserved? Is
the American railway executive a success,
or in the light of the facts is he a monu
mental failure?
If the testimony of the stock ticker is
taken as final his right to his laurels IS in
disputable. The railroad man of no other
nation knows well how to exploit the
financial side of railway development. His
genius in that line is unqueStiOned
In the matter of physical management of
railway properties his record is not salts
factory. 1t is not too much to say that 1t
is one of lamentable ineficiency. He does
not run his trains on time nor run them
safely. He shows himself unable to provide
cars to meet the wants of the general ship
per or to move the stapie freight which is
the basis of railroad earnings. Grain rots
because there are not enough to carry
it to market. and whole communities suffer
from cold BECAUSE the roads fail to supply
them with coal
He does not build sufficient tracks on
which to move his trains. His signal de-
vices do not work. He spends millions on
new terminals and dumps a trainload of
human lives through drawbridge rendered
unsafe by the lack of a few dollars worth
of repairs. He kills the president of his
road in a private car with as little COM
junction as the immigrant passenger and
smashes Pullman sleepers and cabooses
with equal recklessness. He has made the
chedpness of life on our railroads by
word and reproach wherever knowledge
of American affairs exists.
Tested by these results-and 1t is by them
hot oil ma hP
judged-he is culpably incompetent gro
Ger who could not deliver the goods his Gus
toners ordered and poisoned them with
goods he did deliver would never be
teemed as brilliant business success.
Occasionally, as in Cincinnati recently,
minor railroad employe, overwhelmed by
responsibility, kills himself. Evidence of a
similar sensitiveness to moral obligation In
the executive offices of a railroad has not
so far been forthcoming. Yet it is there
and not in the switch tower or the engine
cab that the vital weakness lies which
makes the past years record of railroad OPP
Grafton in the United States of
paralleled ineff1ciency.
From the Baltimore American.
Railroad disasters Of magnitude have
been sprinkled thick through the past year.
The record of the rail has continued to
vie with war pestlence and famine in the
number of it's fatalities. Thus death
ties is due to conditions brought about by
man for the furtherance of his comfort and
convenience. Such appalling catastrophies
as that which occurred on the Baltimore
and Ohio bringing death to more than forty
persons and injuring more or less seriously
many scores of others, show that the rail
roads have not yet mastered one of the
essential factors in their running-the secur
ing of the safety of passengers. The block
system when properly operated, is looked
making 1T almost mDOSSibla for
trains to telescope, yet this is one of the
common forms of railroad disaster.
There is no gain In having a system Of
signals and blocks unless the operators and
the trainmen understand and observe them.
This calls for discipline and supervision on
railroads as rigid that of the military
service. The public is less concerned as to
the individual at fault than for the fact
that somebody Numbered. and that the rail
roads are not discharging their obligations
toward the travelling public they should
unless they make 1t almost impossible for
such disasters to occur. 1t Is. unfortu-
nately, the case that often such disasters
are preventable, and this adds to the grave
responsibility of the officials.
The condition that exists on American
railroads would not be tolerated in Euro
pean countries. There man takes posi-
ton on the railroad at the risk of prosecu-
ton in case Of serious accidents, even
though he may not be found criminally
careless. The American idea does not APP
prove of Furnishing a man for misfortunes
that happen in service for which he is re-
sponsible unless he should be found to have
contributed to the disaster. But there is
tendency to easy acceptance of conditions
that might be bettered. The deplorable ia
tally of Sunday comes at the end of list
of some two score other like occurrences,
and gives a sinister aspect to modern rail-
reading.
A Question of Administration.
y,r,,,, tha Now York Times