STATISTICS OF VITALITY. 241
CHAPTER XXII.
THE RAILROAD DEATH RATE.
IN connection with the statistics of railroad casualties it
is not without interest to examine the general vital statistics
of some considerable city, for they show clearly enough what a
large degree of literal truth there was in the half jocose proposition
attributed to John Bright, that the safest place in which a man
could put himself was inside a first-class railroad carriage of
a train in full motion. Take the statistics of Boston, for instance,
for the year 1878. During the four years 1875-8, it will be remembered,
a single passenger only was killed on the railroads of Massachusetts
in consequence of an accident to which he by his own carelessness
in no way contributed.* The average number of persons annually
injured, not fatally, during those years was about five.
* This period did not include the Wollaston
disaster, as the Massachusetts railroad year closes on the last
day of September. The Wollaston disaster occurred on the 8th of
October, 1878, and was accordingly included in the next railroad
year.
242 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
Yet during the year 1878, excluding all cases of mere injury
of which no account was made, no less than 53 persons came to
their deaths in Boston from falling down stairs, and 37 more from
falling out of windows; seven were scalded to death in 1878 alone.
In the year 1874 seventeen were killed by being run over by teams
in the streets, while the pastime of coasting was carried on at
a cost of ten lives more. During the five years 1874-8 there were
more persons murdered in the city of Boston alone than lost their
lives as passengers through the negligence of all the railroad
corporations in the whole state of Massachusetts during the nine
years 1871-8; though in those nine years were included both the
Revere and the Wollaston disasters, the former of which resulted
in the death of 29, and the latter of 21 persons. Neither are
the comparative results here stated in any respect novel or peculiar
to Massachusetts. Years ago it was officially announced in France
that people were less safe in their own houses than while traveling
on the railroads; and, in support of this somewhat startling proposition,
statistics were produced showing fourteen cases of death of persons
remaining at home and there falling over carpets, or, in the case
of females, having their garments catch fire, to ten deaths on
the rail. Even the game of cricket counted eight victims to the
railroad's ten.
It will not, of course, be inferred that the cases of death
or injury to passengers from causes beyond
CASUALTIES TO EMPLOYEES. 243
their control include by any means all the casualties involved
in the operation of the railroad system. On the contrary, they
include but a very small portion of them. The experience of the
Massachusetts roads during the seven years between September 30,
1871, and September 30, 1878, may again be cited in reference
to this point. During that time there were but 52 cases of injury
to passengers from causes over which they had no control, but
in connection with the entire working of the railroad system no
less than 1,900 cases of injury were reported, of which 1,008
were fatal; an average of 144 deaths a year. Of these cases, naturally,
a large proportion were employees, whose occupation not only involves
much necessary risk, but whose familiarity with risk causes them
always to incur it even in the most unnecessary and foolhardy
manner. During the seven years 293 of them were killed and 375
were reported as injured. Nor is it supposed that the list included
by any means all the cases of injury which occurred. About one
half of the accidents to employees are occasioned by their falling
from the trains when in motion, usually from freight trains and
in cold weather, and from being crushed between cars while engaged
in coupling them together. From this last cause alone an average
of 27 casualties are annually reported. One fact, however, will
sufficiently illustrate how very difficult it is to protect this
class of men from danger, or rather from themselves. As is well
known, on
244 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
freight trains they are obliged to ride on the tops of the
cars; but these are built so high that their roofs come dangerously
near the bottoms of the highway bridges, which cross the track
sometimes in close proximity to each other. Accordingly many unfortunate
brakemen were killed by being knocked off the trains as they passed
under these bridges. With a view to affording the utmost possible
protection against this form of accident, a statute was passed
by the Massachusetts legislature compelling the corporations to
erect guards at a suitable distance from every overhead bridge
which was less than eighteen feet in the clear above the track.
These guards were so arranged as to swing lightly across the tops
of the cars, giving any one standing upon them a sharp rap, warning
him of the danger he was in. This warning rap, however, so annoyed
the brakemen that the guards were on a number of the roads systematically
destroyed as often as they were put up; so that at last another
law had to be passed, making their destruction a criminal offense.
The brakemen themselves resisted the attempt to divest their perilous
occupation of one of its most insidious dangers.
In this respect, however, brakemen differ in no degree from
the rest of the community. On all hands railroad accidents seem
to be systematically encouraged, and the wonder is that the list
of casualties is not larger. In Massachusetts, for instance, even
in the most crowded portions of the largest
CHALLENGING DANGER. 245
cities and towns, not only do the railroads cross the highways
at grade, but whenever new thoroughfares are laid out the people
of the neighborhood almost invariably insist upon their crossing
the railroads at a grade and not otherwise. Not but that, upon
theory and in the abstract, every one is opposed to grade-crossings;
but those most directly concerned always claim that their particular
crossing is exceptional in character. In vain do corporations
protest and public officials argue; when the concrete case arises
all neighborhoods become alike and strenuously insist on their
right to incur everlasting danger rather than to have the level
of their street broken. During the last seven years to September
30, 1878; 191 persons have been injured, and 98 of them fatally
injured, at these crossings in Massachusetts, and it is certain
as fate that the number is destined to annually increase. What
the result in a remote future will be, it is not now easy to forecast.
One thing only would seem certain: the time will come when the
two classes of traffic thus recklessly made to cross each other
will at many points have to be separated, no matter at what cost
to the community which now challenges the danger it will then
find itself compelled to avoid.
The heaviest and most regular cause of death and injury involved
in the operation of the railroad system yet remains to be referred
to; and again it is recklessness which is at the root of it, and
this time recklessness in direct violation of law. The railroad
246 RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
tracks are everywhere favorite promenades, and apparently even
resting-places, especially for those who are more or less drunk.
In Great Britain physical demolition by a railroad train is also
a somewhat favorite method of committing suicide, and that, too,
in the most deliberate and cool-blooded manner. Cases have not
been uncommon in which persons have been seen to coolly Jay themselves
down in front of an advancing train, and very neatly effect their
own decapitation by placing their necks across the rail. In England
alone, during the last seven years, there have been no less than
280 cases of death reported under the head of suicides, or an
average of 40 each year, the number in 1878 rising to 60. In America
these cases are not returned in a class by themselves. Under the
general head of accidents to trespassers, however, that is, accidents
to men, women and children, especially the latter, illegally lying,
walking, or playing on the tracks or riding upon the cars,under
this head are regularly classified more than one third of all
the casualties incident to working the Massachusetts railroads.
During the last seven years these have amounted to an aggregate
of 724 cases of injury, no less than 494 of which were fatal.
Of course, very many other cases of this description, which were
not fatal, were never reported. And here again the recklessness
of the public has received further illustration, and this time
in a very unpleasant way. Certain corporations operating roads
terminating in
TRESPASSERS 247
Boston endeavored at one time to diminish this slaughter by
enforcing the laws against walking on railroad tracks. A few trespassers
were arrested and fined, and then the resentment of those whose
wonted privileges were thus interfered with began to make itself
felt. Obstructions were found placed in the way of night trains.
The mere attempt to keep people from risking their lives by getting
in the way of locomotives placed whole trains full of passengers
in imminent jeopardy.
Undoubtedly, however, by far the most effective means of keeping
railroad tracks from becoming foot-paths, and thus at once putting
an end to the largest item in the grand total of the expenditure
of life incident to the operation of railroads, is that secured
by the Pennsylvania railroad as an unintentional corollary to
its method of ballasting That superb organization, every detail
of whose wonderful system is a fit subject for study to all interested
in the operation of railroads, has a roadway peculiar to itself.
A principal feature in this is a surface of broken stone ballast,
covering not only the space between the rails, but also the interval
between the tracks as well as the road-bed on the outside of each
track for a distance of some three feet. It resembles nothing
so much as a newly macadamized highway. That, too, is its permanent
condition. To walk on the sharp and uneven edges of this broken
stone is possible, with a sufficient expenditure of patience and
shoe-leather; but certainly
248 RA1LROAD ACCIDENTS.
no human being would ever walk there from preference, or if
any other path could be found. Not only is it in itself, as a
system of ballasting, looked upon as better than any other, but
it confounds the tramp. Its systematic adoption in crowded, suburban
neighborhoods would, therefore, answer a double purpose. It would
secure to the corporations permanent road-beds exclusively for
their own use, and obviate the necessity of arrests or futile
threats to enforce the penalties of the law against trespassers.
It seems singular that this most obvious and effective way of
putting a stop to what is both a nuisance and a danger has not
yet been resorted to by men familiar with the use of spikes and
broken glass on the tops of fences and walls.
Meanwhile, taken even in its largest aggregate, the loss of
life incident to the working of the railroad system is not excessive,
nor is it out of proportion to what might reasonably be expected.
It is to be constantly borne in mind, not only that the railroad
performs a great function in modern life, but that it also and
of necessity performs it in a very dangerous way. A practically
irresistible force crashing through the busy hive of modern civilization
at a wild rate of speed, going hither and thither, across highways
and byways and along a path which is in itself a thoroughfare,such
an agency cannot be expected to work incessantly and yet never
to come in contact with the human frame. Naturally, however, it
might be a very car of Juggernaut.
ARE THE CASUALTIES EXCESSIVE? 249
Is it so in fact?To demonstrate that it is not, it is
but necessary again to recur to the comparison between the statistics
of railroad accidents and those which necessarily occur in the
experience of all considerable cities. Take again those of Boston
and of the railroad system of Massachusetts. These for the purpose
of illustration are as good as any, and in their results would
only be confirmed in the experience of Paris as compared with
the railroad system of France, or in that of London as compared
with the railroad system of Great Britain. During the eight years
between September 30, 1870, and September 30, 1878, the entire
railroad system of Massachusetts was operated at a cost of 1,165
lives, apart from all cases of injury which did not prove fatal.
The returns in this respect also may be accepted as reasonably
accurate, as the deaths were all returned, though the cases of
merely personal injury probably were not. The annual average was
146 lives. During the ten years, 1868-78, 2,587 cases of death
from accidental causes, or 259 a year, were recorded as having
taken place in the city of Boston. In other words, the annual
average of deaths by accident in the city of Boston alone exceeds
that consequent on running all the railroads of the state by eighty
per cent. Unless, therefore, the railroad system is to be considered
as an exception to all other functions of modern life, and as
such is to be expected to do its work without injury to life or
limb, this showing does not constitute a very heavy indictment
against it.
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