Year: 1871

There is dreadful load of guilt upon some
mems shoulders for the railroad catastrOphes on
Saturday night near Boston. So long as no
formal investigation has been held, and no
ones defense has been heard, common charity
bids us forbear to single out the culprit but
that the full responsibility must be fixed upon
somebody hardly admits of question. This
was no accident; it was slaughter Men
who pass their lives in tho study of sta
tistics and judge everything by the null
tiplication table, will tell us that year
by year tho ratio of deaths on the
rail, deaths by exploding boilers, deaths by
shipwreck and fire, remains constant to the
total number of travellers. 1t sis possible to
predict at the beginning of January how many
railroad murders will be recorded on our
books by the end of December Given hun
dred thousand men going from New-Iork to
Portland in the course of year, and so many
of them will be killed on the way. Science
has given us 10 security. Yet science all the
while is deyising safeguards for travellers.
Steel rails, improved ballasting, better bridges,
patent brakes, electric warnings, elabo-
ate signal systems, and increased strength of
cars ought surely to do something for us,
unless men have grown more reckless in pro-
portion as the dangers have been lessened,-
unless IN teaching the machine to be careful
we have insensibly encouraged careessness in
those who tend it. There will always be class
of accidents practically unavoidable. There
will be flaws in iron which the eye cannot
detect. Rails will snap in frosty weather.
Storms will destroy the track, and bridges
will break. But with the progress OF railway
science these ought to be constantly less and
less and if We find that still the annual sac
rifce of life is undiminished, we may conclude
that the great railway problem of the present day
is not one of mechanical Improvement. Sup
pose besides perfecting our rules and rolling
stock we now do something to our conductors,
swtchmen, and engineers.


The case on the Eastern Railway is appa-
rently simple one. A belated accOmmoda-
ton train was "telescOped" by an express
rushing into it's rear. The accommodation
train knew that the express was due; the ex-
press had been warned by telegraph that the
other was in the way. 1t is almost impossi-
bic to imagine a collision occurring under
these circumstances without the most shock
ing and wicked careessness and there ought
to be ne difficulty in fixing the response
bilty Just where it belongs. The disaster
at WestpOrt in Pennsylvania seems to have
been somewhat similar in its character, though
happily less horrible in its results; but of this
we are as yet imperfectly informed. So far
as we can judge from first reports, at
least about the collision at Revere, the
duty of the COrOner's jury, the District
Attorney, and the courts, is very plain one,
and their task will be easy. There must be
no faint hearted trihing with such accidents"
hereafter. The reckessness which causes them
is brutal crime, and must be dealt with like
murder, and burglary, and arson. Till we
learn to call things by their right names the
awful catalogue of wholesale slaughter will
never diminish Week after week we shall
have to tell the story of crashing cars torn
and bleeding bodies, men and women writhing
in unimaginable agony, or saved from tor
lures only by merciful death; of hundred
persons blown into the air by the bursting of
a rotten boiler; of steamships wrecked by
drunken captains But the spectacle of few
railroad or steamboat men sentenced to long
terms in the State Prison for manslaughter
would do more for the preservation OF human
life than all the safety inventions which have
been patented in the last dozen years.