Year: 1878

The Tarifville Inquest. report of eight of the jury of inquest on the Tariff vile disaster, will be found in another col umn, the remaining four being unable to agree with the eight. they entertaining diff ferent opinions as to the cause of the acci- dent. Not only is this jury unable to come to unanimous conclusion, but the larger jury, the people, who have read the con- fcting testimony of the many witnesses are at all agreed as to the cause, almost ev- cry person having theory of his own, and which is unlike that of others. But one thing IS certain about the matter, and that is, the bridge went down and terrible dis aster was the result. and such disaster as it is certainly to be hoped will never occur again. But who is to be blamed is what everybody would be glad to know. Ac- cording to the weight of testimony given at the inquest, the bridge had every ap- pearance of being perfectly safe for not only train such as was on it when it went down, but for much heavier train, and the inference Is that no human foresight could have prevented such 8 disaster by discerning fatal weakness in it. If this be true. who then is to be censured for recklessness in taking what would be re- garded as risk? Certain it was that the highest officials of the road entertained no doubt whatever as to it's safety, for the president, superintendent. and one director of the road were on the train at the time of the accident, and their lives were jeop- ardized in common with others. If the bridge was not properly constructed, then the blame should be placed away back to the beginning of things. Ii the bridge had become weakened by exposure to the ele ments, then the censure should begin with | it's original construction, and follow throue b all the years to the time of its fall, and in this hypothesis. the blame for not properly covering it for its protection, should be placed upon those who had the responsi- bility of it's preservation during the first years following its completion, for had it been however well covered with paint, or any other effort made to preserve the sound ness of the timbers, and the work done not earlier than year since, the mischief would have been wrought by the elements to such an extent that it unquestionably would have broken all the same, for coat os paint over rotten timber certainly does not strengthen it. But we do not believe the fault was in the timbers, made weak by decay, for the country is full of bridges which have been standing many years long CT than this, and not at all protected from the elements. The theory of the derail ment of the second locomotive has some evidence to strengthen it, the strongest point being the fact that the lever, revers ing that engine was found to be thrown back, and the theory is that if the engineer of that locomotive felt first the bridge sink ing under hlm his first impulse would be, not to throw that lever back to reverse the engine, but instead, would leave it in ifs position forward and pull wide open the throttle valve to throw himself ahead and off the bridge as quickly as possible; but this long lever was thrown back to reverse and stop the locomotive, as would be done were the engineer first made conscious ot the fact that he was off the track, in which case he would want to stop the train al once. Thus it is there are various theo ries and opinions, and nobody knows-al- ways excepting the New York Tribune what was the actual cause of the bridge breaking; and Tn this undecided, undeter mined state of affairs, perhaps our own un professional, unsklled and altogether rude opinion of the cause may be as valuable tC us as that of anybody else. At any rate we will net insist upon anybody paying us for It more than they think it is worth. Il is this: If the bridge was not tempered with, there was fault in it's original con struction. the weight not being evenly dls- tributed on all parts of the span; for in. stance, the nuts on some one or more of the upright iron belts being so frightened as to throw upon them much greater strain than upon the others and this strain upon them year after year, gradually weakened them so that although they withstood it for SO long time, there was point in their ten sile endurance beyond which they could not go, and when the last train went upon the bridge their time had come to break and they gave way and the bridge fell. There is one other feature in connection with this accident of which we also have an opinion. With the accuracy of detail and perfection of work required to build bridge of this class, and make it safe, it is assuming too great risk to build them of span so long as that at Tariffville, viz, one hundred and sixty feet. Mans work is far from beng perfect, and only 8 slight error in the ad justment of all the various parts is required to plunge train down to it's destruction, as went that upon the night of January l5. To be sure there are number of bridges of as long, or longer spans in various parts of the country, ,but that does not make them safe. Unless they are built on a differ ent plan than that at Tariffville, the risk is too great.

 It was Q novel idea of the publishers of "Golden Hours" to so design cover fol the months of 1878 that every number brings the old familiar look, and yet gives new picture to it's readers. Thus far we have had representations from the animal kingdom. What is to follow we are not told. We would rather not know. We love pictures, and we like the pleasant sur prise.

 It is comfort to know that whatever is of