Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-13
SYSTEMS VICTIM

n FFICIAL reports OF railroad dis
asters are made on the assump-
" tion someone must be blamed. It
was easy for the Southern Pacific TO
find a human being on whom to fix
responsibility for the accident resulting
from misunderstanding Of instructions,
for instance, for the system" has
found that In the case Of recent
wreck the telegraph operator was at
fault, although he was clear-headed
when he went on duty. That is to say
he was not suffering from the strain
of a 24-hour turn of duty. The official
report naively declares that the young
man, now % years old, has been at
work since he was IA years of age. He
had grown TO manhood working. He
had never known anything but work.
This man, who had known no boyhood,
who had spent the long hours Of thou
sands of long nights in lonely vigils
beside the telegraph key, who had had
the lives of thousands of people in his
hands year after year, at last made his
mistake He delivered two train orders
but failed to deliver a third, and
head on" collision followed.
He had had an incomplete education,
and no play time. Therefore it was
believed he should have fitted auto
Imaticaly into the system, and the hor-
ror and surprise Of the "magnates"
may be imagined when they found his
overwrought physical system defaulted
at a critical moment for their railroad
system. This Is what they could not
understand Here was a youth who
| had been at work all his life, and yet
his nerves vibrated when they should
have been steady, or his nerve gave out
when he should have had plenty Of it.
The system trains it's human beings to
be automatous, and when the autom-
atoms fail to work the system dis
charges thell. cast adrift, what can
Iautomatons do? Their whole life, al
most from infancy, has been part of
/ the system. Dissociate them from the
system and they are helpless. And yet,
when the nerve-break comes, they must
/ be dismissed, because they endanger
the automatic working Of the system
/ that has made them what they are,
1t is easy to blame on operators who
|use telegraphy accidents which result
from the wrong word in a message, the
wrong signal or a miss" or some other
mistake. But there is a responsibility
beyond that Of these human beings
iwho work at high tension during long,
Iarduous hours. 1t is the responsibility
Of the SYSTEM and we hope to see a
/ healthy change in public sentiment
which Will refuse to accept as an eX-
|cuse for accident from a railway COM
pany or any other employing corpora
ton the statement Jones or Smith, who
has never been known to make mis-
take before during his long years Of
service, has suddenly disappointed his
Iemployers by proving his powers Of en-
durance and alertness are not after all
Isuperhuman, and he can only do ONE
/ MANS WORK.
There may be an excuse for a teleg-
Irapher or train dispatcher who is put
on duty when his health is shaky, but
there is no excuse for an employing
company that pleads this condition Of
its employe as a palliation for accident,
Especially when its own preposterous
and exacting method and it's usurpation
OF the life of a man from the time he
should still be at school and at play
until the final breakdown are really at
fault Frequently a man, when on
duty, is what his employers make him.
If after a long term Of service he sud
denly collapses or fails to act correctly
at the right moment he cannot be
blamed for catastrophe to the interests
he is serving, for catastrophe overlook
HIM first, and disaster resulting from
his oyerused life and from his physical