Page:Fagan (1908) Confessions of a railroad signalman.djvu/32

18 This is but an incident in the history of taking chances. Concealed in it, however, is a personal lesson that vitally concerns every man in the service. Do we actually insist upon disaster such as threatened this passenger train before we can be persuaded to come to our senses? In this business of taking chances, which covers every branch of railroad service, both the traveling public and the railroad corporations are at our mercy. Through a long course of years, influence and discipline of all kinds have utterly failed to check it. It is useless to talk about “spots,” for most of us take chances systematically. In fact I don’t think the managements have any idea of the nature and extent of this evil, for the reason perhaps that they have made no special study of the subject nor watched for and made note of illustrations, as I have. One would think it would have occurred to some railroad manager to issue a general order, with a caption somewhat as follows: “Here is a list of twenty dangerous chances which some of you are in the habit of taking. For goodness’ sake, have a care!”

Here, and elsewhere in this volume, it seems to me that it is demonstrated, beyond possibility of question, that thousands of lives have been sacrificed by reason of the palpable neglect and inefficiency of certain railroad employees. It makes not a particle of difference whether we conclude to