Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-10-06
A Word to the Wise.

In head-on collision between troll
ley trains near Staunton. ILL.,, late
Tuesday, thirty seven, passengers were
killed and many injured
1t was a most deplorable example of
one of those things which the public
is more and more coming to believe
as needless. To be sure, the train
crews declared that they were able to
do nothing except to set the break and
jump. The helpless passengers, boxed
up within, even were they aware of
impending disaster, could not jump.
They must simply await the appalling
end and realize that in few awful sec
onds they were to become a part of
the heap of debris; of the demolished
cars and mutilated bodies. 1t is to be
hoped, of course, that this collision
will be thoroughly investigated, and
if any member of the crews was neg
ligent Of his duty or heedlessly or
criminally careless that he shall be SO
severely punished as to stand as a
warning for other carmen
We call to mind a very fortunate
accident" of recent occurrence, (some
less than a thousand miles away) in
which no one was seriously injured,
but crowded carload of people were
badly scared and shaken up Two
cars were in collision on a main
line, a straight away course, in a
street as light as day Why two mo-
tormen should have been attempting
to pass on the same track was not
explained, but the evidence that they
did try to do so is with a half a hun
dred people. The passengers of one
car aver that it was travelling at a
very moderate speed. The other car
was loaded only with it's crew. Why
one of these men should have been SO
persistently going northward and the
ed to the south that they could not
have stopped their cars before the col
lision is past finding out.
This accident, resulting, as we have
said, without casualty, it is more be-
coming to the looker-on, perhaps, to
point moral, than it would have
been had half a dozen people lost their
lives. 1t may be sufficient to give a
word to the wise. One thing which
has been called to our attention has
been the recklessness of some mo-
tormen, who are willing to gamble not
only upon their own lives but upon
the lives of those who are entrusted
to their care. If it were reported OF
to his car, that he had been seen to
sit calmly at the controller and read
a newspaper while his car was going
over the ground at thirty miles an
hour, such evidence would go hard
with him in any investigation. If it
can be shown at the Staunton, Ill, in
vestigation. that one or both of the
men at the controllers had been seen
at any time to be so neglectful of their
duty as to give attention to any other
subject while in service, there is no
doubt that the responsibility of this
terrible happening would be brought
home to them.
1t is timely, perhaps. to suggest to
the crews of electric cars in our vi
canity that when they are on duty and
have the lives of scores of people in
their charge, they should have every
faculty awake and devoted to the
work in hand; that they should be
neither looking about or i'm CONVEX
sation with other members of the
crew or passengers, and that they
should allow, not even for a moment,
the attractive headlines of a newspa-
per to take their attention from the
track ahead of them
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