Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/778

758 rest here. Prior to its advent, wise men were predicting the disappearance of the waterways, since, however economical, they might not be made economical of that costliest of all commodities—of "time"! Just as the inland canal was about to die of superannuation, the trolley has come to its relief. To apply to the canal a circuited instead of a simple overhead wire is a trifling matter, and along it the canal-boat pole ends will yet trundle, until the lazy barges will perhaps rival in bustle the trolley car on land. It may, I think, be confidently expected that, as one resultant of the supersedure of the invisible agency of electricity applied to transportation, considerable and important changes in the law of employed and employer and of negligence will almost immediately become necessary and will attract the attention of the higher courts. Just as the introduction of steam caused important modifications of the rigid and often cruel rules that the employee accepted the risk of his employment, while the employer was quit of responsibility for the negligence (as to each other) of employees; by the corollary that employers must act in touch with scientific improvement, and provide the best and safest implement of service to date: so the utilization of electricity will doubtless add the further qualification that employers must exercise due care in the selection of employees, familiar as nearly as possible with the laws of this new, constant, and invisible force. And it is equally probable that there will be considerable modulation in the assessment of what is or what is not contributory negligence, inasmuch as the peril of casualty by electric operation is and must be for a long time to come peril from an unseen source. Perhaps we shall see a revival of the old legal doctrine of overruling necessity or unavoidable accident ("act of God," as the old lawyers called it), the benefit of which of late years has been refused absolutely to the railway companies. In actions against railway companies for the last quarter of a century it has been permitted to the immediate beneficiaries of an enterprise of a quasi public nature to amerce a corporation merely because, through an inevitable accident, a few persons were killed, when many millions were carried with safety, speed, and comfort, thus imposing upon innocent corporations burdensome restrictions and conditions which hamper the exercise of their independent judgment and sound discretion in matters which virtually affect the public welfare as well as industrial and commercial progress. And it certainly is to the credit of these corporations that such procedure has not induced them to lower rather than to advance either their charges or their efforts in behalf of absolute safety. Whether casual operation of some electric principle or corollary as yet undiscovered—the change in charging power of a plant by reason of some atmospheric condition, some rise or fall of the barometer or of the thermometer—