Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/434

 "Notes on Railway Accidents," but which is the first digest of information we have regarding great railway disasters, their causes, and the progress of security in this mode of travel. The book is interesting and valuable, no less for its reflections and conclusions than for its well-collated facts.

Mr. Adams begins by calling attention to the melancholy fact that there are few things of which nature or man is more lavish and careless than human life. There is really but little care about the waste of life so long as the fatality is unobtrusive. The destruction of life by war is as nothing to that by intemperance, bad sewerage, and worse ventilation; but, as it does not come by crush and shock, it attracts small attention. Railroad "horrors" make a strong impression upon the public mind; and each fresh catastrophe, by arousing public opinion, by inciting the courts to hold the companies to a more rigorous responsibility, and, above all, by the damage and detriment they work to the corporations, leads to increasing vigilance and greater security, "until it has been said, and with no inconsiderable degree of truth, too, that the very safest place into which a man can put himself is the inside of a first-class railroad-carriage, on a train in full motion."

But, on the other hand, all these appalling disasters seem to have been necessary to secure the improvement of the railway system. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that men are guided and governed by reason. Most of them are creatures of habit, stupid, sluggish, and prejudiced, and can only learn slowly through calamitous experience. As Mr. Adams says, "To bring about any considerable reform, railroad disasters have, as it were, to be emphasized by loss of life." Indeed, the most instructive part of his volume is the profuse illustration it affords of that inveterate stolidity on the part of railroad managers and officials which nothing could overcome but slaughter, public indignation, murmurs, pecuniary losses—and all this over, and over, and over again—while it has proved impossible even yet to get rid of some of the most serious sources of danger.

The bell-cord for signaling the engineer is a simple device for an important purpose, but it has had a curious history. Nothing certainly would seem to be more essential than for a passenger in case of grave accident to be able to communicate instantaneously with the engine-driver of his train. This is perfectly accomplished by the bell-cord, which has been accordingly long in use in this country. Yet it was not used in England, and its adoption, singular to say, was actively resisted, although they had nothing else to replace it. Mr. Adams says, "An English substitute for the American bell-cord has for more than thirty years set the ingenuity of Great Britain at defiance."

In 1857 the British Board of Trade issued a circular to the railroad companies, pointing out the dangers that arise from lack of proper signal-connection. They say: "From the beginning of the year 1854 down to the present time (December, 1857) there have been twenty-six cases in which either the accidents themselves or some of the ulterior consequences of the accidents would probably have been avoided had such a means of communication existed." But there had not been funerals enough to enforce the recommendation. To get a string attacked to a bell for the safety of travelers required a succession of shocks to thrill the country; and they came, of course, in due time. Not only did accidents continue from the setting fire of carriages and throwing them from the rails, but several dreadful instances of assault by maniacs, men with delirium tremens, and criminals, and even outright murder took place, which would undoubtedly have been avoided if there had been any means of communication to stop the train.