The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-27

They are rules whose effect is to place
 the guilt upon the engineer, or other l inferior servant.
 And now we reach the point of spe- cial value in the finding of Coroner
 Wilson, that it marks the end of paper railroading and of vindication Of rail- road officers by mere words, where wrecks occur in which lives are lost.
 It will fix the attention of railroad officers upon their duty to scrutinize the facts of practical railroading, and to make the weak places strong. since these officers will be in personal jeopardy whenever the question that confronts them is "how do you run your railroad" instead of ''how do you say you run your railroad"
 In order to drive the lesson home the public prosecutor should do his duty We have no doubt that he will. He will see that his personal judg- ment as to the criminal negligence in this case cannot be superior to that of the coroner. He will see that the question of criminal negligence is one to be determined by a jury.
 Too much is involved for any weak ness now. The arrest of the directors of the road. if they are the corpora tion, as lawyers seem to believe, and if they are those embraced in the finding, should be accomplished, and they should be tried at the earliest possible date.
 | The results from such procedure will be in the highest degree beneficial There may be tender, and uniformed or thoughtless souls. who regard it as harsh that respectable gentlemen, who are not consciously guilty of any crime. should be brought in peril of 1 the criminal tribunals for a mere omission to provide a safe crossing and a long switch. But the tender ness of such persons is misplaced. Railroads are run to secure a profit Directors of railroads exist to enable their companies to get a profit It is upon the taking of profits that their minds are centered. There is an entirely natural and human ten- dency to regard profits more than safety. The faster trains go, and the fewer men it takes to run them, the more profits will be made The cheaper the equipment, the less the investment. These facts unite to make dividends the superior consider l ation. But to the public, human life is the superior consideration. The public. obeying the natural instincts of self preservation. requires that directors of railroads shall leave no reasonable thing undone, when the do- ing will make travel safer.
 It is socially important that men charged with the duties of managing railroads should be from time to time reminded that safe travel must stand above the profits from travel.
 The conditions under which crim- l inal justice are administered do not permit the scrutiny of the entire man. agement of a railroad system, follow | ing an accident. Scrutiny is confined to the particular negligence which occasioned the deaths.
 This makes it the more important l that the law should be relentlessly enforced with respect to the particu- | lar negligence. If the law is so en- forced railroad managers will be com pelled by the feeling of personal peril to look carefully into the practical operation of their railroads. They will cease to rely for their exculpation on rules not intended to be obeyed and will seek protection in the install lation of safe equipment, in the em- ployment of a sufficient number of | men a safe number of hours, and will abandon rules under which employees must make time, or be reduced in rank, or worse.
 In the present matter, see what things combined to cause the slaugh- ter. Here was a crossover at a dan gerous point and it was not of a mod ern type, nor adapted to the passage of fast trains at speed. The unlucky | train was more than an hour behind time. It waA in charge of an engineer | who had already done a days work l within A hours, at a time when an exhausting heat sapped the vitality of | the strongest. He was not the reg ular engineer. but had been taken | from switcher to run over a route under conditions with which he was | little familiar. He had not been ap- prised of the point at which he was to pass from the freight track to the