Newspaper Page Text
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Railroads Kill to Make Rig Dividends
Appalling Record Sholvs 'Bad Management and Carelessness of Human Life. Danger of Travel
tn America Ten Times as Great as in England.
The following indictment of the
management of American railroads as
exhibited by the appalling loss of life
in accidents has been prepared after
tbe most careful study of the facts,
figures and reports by Carl Snyder
and appears in Everybody’s Magazine
for April. Mr. Snyder finds that on
279 railroads, with more than half the
mileage of the country, no passengers
were killed, w’hile on all other roads,
less than half of the railroads of the
country, 182 were killed. This, he
says, proves incompetent management
on half of the country’s railroads.
Here is Mr. Snyder’s article in part:
The truth about the loss of life from
railway accidents in America is une
quivocally • unpleasant. On a close
comparison it will be found that there
are perhaps two nations in the world
that in this respect are worse than the
United States. One is Spain, deca
dent, a country on the down grade;
the other is Russia, still largely a bar
barian land.
Roughly speaking, one is in about
ten times as much danger of losing
one’s life as a passenger on an Ameri
can railway train as on an English
train.
This is the brutal reality. But there
is something about it worse than the
fact, namely, that we do not seem to
care. This is the part of the truth
that I should like to state broadly, flat
ly, for I believe that this is the first
thing, the greatest thing, that is
wrong.
But more: The trainmen them
selves, the engineers, the firemen, the
switchmen, the brakemen —they do
not seem specially to care. They
kill one another, they kill passengers
and pedestrians, they go to their own
death, all with a kind of stoic fatalism,
as if this amazing slaughter were in
evitably a part of the industrial scheme.
In the nineteen years since the in
terstate commerce commission began
the collection of facts about accidents,
nearly 6,000 passengers, over 48,000
employes and nearly 90,000 other per
sons have been killed on American
railways, and nearly one million more
have been crippled or maimed.
Growing Worse Yearly.
In 1905 it was twice as dangerous to
travel on a railway train or to work
for a railway company in the United
States as it was in 1895.
There are somewhat over one hun
dred larger railway companies in the
United States, operating about 95 per
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WATSON’S JEFFERSONIAN.
cent of the total mileage. This gives
an average of about 2,000 miles of
main track for each. The Chicago, St.
Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha road
has 1,700 miles; that is, its line would
stretch from New York, through Oma
ha, into the middle of Nebraska. Its
gross earnings last year were $7,645
per mile, a little above the average
for the country. It carried 3,000,000
passengers a total distance of 145,000,-
000 passenger miles. In ten years the
business of the company has had a
very steady, but not extraordinary,
increase.
In these ten years this road has
never killed a passenger in an acci
dent.
This record, I believe, to be due al
most entirely to Col. H. C. Hope, su
perintendent of telegraphs, and his
methods.
I have learned of at least one other
road that, up to a few months ago,
held a similar record. This is the Del
aware & Hudson. In ten years it car
ried some 60,000,000 passengers
eleven thousand million passenger
miles.
Still more remarkable is the tabula
tion sent me since the above was
penned, by Mr. Slason Thompson, of
the General (Railway) Managers’ As
sociation, of Chicago, for the fiscal
year 1906. This, translated, is what
his figures mean:
Two hundred and seventy-nine
American roads, covering more than
half the total track mileage, carrying
more than half the passenger mileage.
Number of passengers killed in train
accidents—None.
All other roads less than half the
track mileage, less than half the pas
senger mileage. Number of passen
gers killed —182.
Bad Management on Half.
These figures can have but one
meaning. This is, that in 1906 on one
half the mileage of the country there
was good management, care, respect
for human life. On the other half
there was not.
There was one year, 1901, when not
a single passenger was killed by train
accidents on all the railways in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland. This was on a total of 22,000
miles, the larger part of which was dou
ble track, and when 1,172,000,000 sin
gle ticket passengers were carried, to
say nothing of nearly two million sea
son ticket holders—probably meaning
half again as many passengers actual
ly carried. This was rather more than
double the number carried on all the
railways of America, Canada and Mex
ico included.
In the last five years, the number of
English railway employes killed in
train accidents in the United Kingdom
has averaged seven per year. In the
United States, the number in this
same period, has averaged between
seven and eight hundred. This is the
difference between English and Ameri
can practice.
In 1895 our railways killed 170 pas
sengers; 181 the year following.
In 1905 they killed 537. The number
of passengers injured rose from 2,375
to 10,457. Consider that the passen
ger mileage in these ten years increas
ed 96 per cent (though the actual num
ber of passengers increased only 46
per cent), while the number of per
sons killed rose 216 per cent, and the
total number killed and injured 332
per cent.
Ten years ago the number of killed
and wounded per million passenger
miles was .20. In 1905 it was .46.
From 1895 to 1905 the number of
railway employes has not quite dou
bled, while the number of killed and
injured has risen from 27,507 to 70,194.
That is to say, the number of em
ployes killed or injured each year rose
from thirty-five per thousand to fifty
per thousand, an increase of nearly 50
per cent.
Dividends Climbing.
While the proportion of fatalities
and injuries to the business done has
doubled, dividends have been climb
ing at a much higher rate. Taking the
whole country, including all the worth
less stocks, the average dividend in
1895 was 1.5 per cent; in 1905, three
per cent.
There are dozens of roads in the
country that are now earning fifteen
per cent or more on their stock. Some
roads, like the Lake Shore, earn near
er twenty-five per cent; the Lackawan
na, thirty or forty per cent. These
facts are stated in refutation of the
idea, too frequently advanced, that
American rates are so low that rail
ways cannot afford to introduce safety
appliances and safer methods of run
ning.
It seems to be generally agreed that
the block signal is an adequate neces
sity.
In England under the law, every
mile of passenger track on roads oper
ating more than a single engine is cov
ered with block signals. That law has
been on the statute books for seven-
teen years. In contrast with this, con
sider the fact as regards the United
States as a whole:
In this country not one-quarter of
the total mileage is covered by any
block signal system at all.
The Railway Age shows that out
of about 220,000 miles of main track,
only 53,000 miles are protected, and of
this, 41,227 miles, or nearly four-fifths,
have simply the primitive manual tele
graph block.
Os the modern automatic block, or
what is known as the controlled man
ual block, there are only about 11,000
miles.
The expense is not great. Accord
ing to the statements furnished me
by the signal companies, the average
cost of the most approved automatic
block is from S6OO to $1,500 per mile
of single track. This year the gross
income of American railways will
probably exceed two and one-half bil
lions. Three per cent of the entire
sum (or one-tenth of the net earnings
over and above operating expenses)
would foot the bill for complete block
signaling.
Probably it would be no overstate
ment to say that complete block sig
naling, such as obtains in England,
would wipe out at least three-quarters
of all collisions and fatalities result
ing thereform.
Men Overworked.
But it would be idle to suppose that
the mere presence of block apparatus
will do it all. That is clear enough
from further results obtained by the
Railway Age’s analysis. It shows that
of the 448 collisions under view, very
nearly three-quarters were due to
“negligence of trainmen and engine
men.” “Negligence of dispatchers and
signal operators” accounted for 107
more. In other words, ninety-four per
cent of all collisions was due to disre
gard of orders, rules, or signals.
The men are overworked; the hu
man machine cannot stand from four
teen to sixteen hours a day, and so
general has become the practice of
working the men beyond their capac
ity that as I write a bill is before con
gress, and has passed the senate, pro
hibiting the employment of men be
yond sixteen hours without adequate
rest.
Has mechanical Ingenuity in the
block signals and the interlocking de
vices that are now generally being in
troduced, reached its limit in the pre
vention of disaster? I believe it has
(Continued on page 14.)
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