The Twin Falls times. [volume] (Twin Falls, Idaho) 1905-1916, 1913-12-26
RAIL-W RECKS AND LABOR
IINR EST

|
UNREST.
| Not the United States alone has had
to deplore the occurrence of serious
railway accidents of late, and to spe-
culate on their causes. In October
and November of this year Europe was
shocked by what The Lancet calls an
appalling series of railway disast-
ers," in Great Britain, France, and
elsewhere. In leading editorial The
Lancet London, November 15) sug-
gest that the cause may be general
and not local, and ascribes the acct.
dents indirectly to the same spirit of
unrest in the industrial world that has
produced syndicalism, with it's accom-
| paniments of sabotage and the gem
eral strike. This spirit in turn has it's
deeper cause, perhaps too-rapidly
changing environment, to which our
nervous systems fail to adapt them
selves. Says the writer:
1T would, of course, be absurd to
found on even larger number of
such instances a general charge of
inefficiency and recklessness; and
charge of this sort would be doubly
unjust when. as in the present case,
it would be urged against a body of
public servants whose past record has
been so admirable. But without MAX
ing any such sweeping accusation, it
is quite legitimate to inquire whether
these instances of negligence may not
be related to that ominous change in
the mental outlook of the industrial
classes of which there have been so
many and such grave manifestations
in the last few years.
THE temper of syndicalism repre-
sents in the group something akin to
the temper of paranoia in the insane
personality; and just as the self-cen-
tered tendency Of the persecutory lun-
attic wraps his sense of proportion,
makes him too keenly sensitive of his
own rights and callous as to the
rights of others and the duties which
he owes to others, SO does the collec-
similar loss of moral balance in the
attitude of the given Industrial group
toward the community of which it
should form part. And this col
lective spirit naturally influences for
evil the individuals who constitute
that group; it fosters state of emo
tional irritability, of impulsiveness,
which is unfavorable to clearness of
Judgment and accuracy of perception,
and which, therefore, might we'll con-
tribute to such careful attention, and
the attention should not be focused
upon the details of this or that catas-
trophe.
IF industrial discomfort and unrest
are contributory causes of inefficiency
and recklessness in individual work
ers, these causes are in their turn the
effects of other causes, and it is to the
removal of these deeper sources of
evil that the efforts of social reform
should be directed And in this task a |
due consideration of the psychological
factors of the problem will be an aid
of no small value. Lying beneath
most of the varied manifestations of
disorder and eccentricity in modern
life may be detected as a potent influ-
ence the difficulty of nervous adapta-
ton to too-rapidly changing environ
ment. Even the firmest believer in
the essential capacity of the race
would hardly maintain that human
intelligence has progressed in a de- |
gree at all commensurate with the
development and multiplication of the
numerous instruments devised and
fashioned by those gifted and subtle |
intellects whose discoveries have re-
volutionized science since the middle
of the last century. "-Literary Digest.