The Dakota chief. (Gann Valley, Buffalo County, S.D.) 18??-1913, 1907-06-13
RAILWAYSLAUGHTER
TERRIBLE INDICTMENT AGAINST
AMERICAN MANAGERS.
More Attention Paid to Increasing
Dividends than to the Practical
Methods of Trnnsportntion-Ac
dents Likely to Increase.

A list of the wrecks in the last twelve
months constitutes an awful Indictment
against the American railway mana
ger. In no part Of the civilized world
Is transportation attended by so many
perils as in the United States, and of
late the danger seems to be increasing
instead of decreasing.
Scarcely day passes that the news
papers do not have to report some new
disaster. In many instances the TRACE
dies are the result Of gross careless
ness on the part of the railroad people.
Spreading rails, open switches, dis
regard Of orders, carelessness of en-
gineers, conductors and train dispatch
ers explain some Of the other disasters.
In few cases washouts, snowstorms
and fogs caused wrecks. These are the
only instances in which the railroad
people can be held blameless.
Something Radically Wrong.
No part of the country seems to have
escaped, and, if anything, conditions
appear to be worse on big railroad
systems, where passenger traffic is sup
posed to be attended by every safeguard
that experience can suggest, than it is
Oh smaller lines, where roadbeds are
weak and the equipment is not up to
the times.
That there is something radically
wrong with the railroads Is certain
James ]. Hill, president Of the Great
Northern, acknowledged this when he
said that he never took a railroad trip
nowadays that he did not fear disaster
Transportation men say the railroads
are not to blame and that railroad
managers are struggling against condi-
tions such as they never confronted
before and which they could not guard
against. They say the public has no
conception Of the strain to which the
railroads have been subjected in the
last year or two. There has been a
tremendous increase in traffic. The in
crease came suddenly. The railroads
have done their best to handle 1t, but
they have been unable to get cars or
the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
the Gulf to the Great Lakes nearly
every road Is glutted with freight If
this excess Of business could be handled
promptly the railroads would make
immense profits. The railroads did
profit largely in the early days of the
rise in the tide Of traffic, but there
was no end to the volume of freight,
and soon men and machinery began to
suffer from the strain. Cars and loco
motives need rest and repairs Just as
human beings do. When they do not
receive it they are liable to break down
Men cannot be pressed to the limit of
endurance week in and week out, month
after month, without giving way.
Railroads to Blame.
But this explanation does not fully
explain. Men who go to the root of
the trouble lay the responsibility for
present conditions upon the shoulders
Of half dozen big men, who know
more about finance than they do about
practical railroading.
There has been an evolution in the
railroad business in the United States
In the last eight or ten years. It has
been a period of reorganization and
consolidation. Masters of finance rather
than masters Of transportation affairs
have ruled in the councils Of old and