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10 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 4 mj\ ’Mastßf \ nrußtii \ kfM ffl n We Commenced Selling' Good Clothing Sixteen Years Ago TV e improve our Manufacturing facilities with every season’s advent. We can’t possibly see where there’s any room for improving our Clothing. We know there’s no room to improve prices. But they have always been very reasonable. New Spring Suits for Mens7.so, $lO, $12.50, sls, S2O, $25. Boys’ and Children’s Suitssl.so, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6.50. Men’s Pantssl.so, $2, $2.50, $3, $4, $5, $6.50, $7.50. Everything that’s right in Hats and Furnishings. Mail Orders:—'Samples of Suits or Pants will be sent to any address. But always give size and price goods wanted. THE GLOBE CLOTHING COMPANY 89-91 WHITEHALL ST., ATLANTA, GA. 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.) ill w