But it may fairly be asked,—What, after all, do these figures mean?—They are, indeed, so large as to exceed comprehension; for, after certain comparatively narrow limits are passed the practical infinite is approached, and the mere adding of a few more ciphers after a numeral conveys no new idea. On the contrary, the piling up of figures rather tends to weaken than to strengthen a statement, for to many it suggests an idea of ridiculous exaggeration. Indeed, when a few years ago a somewhat similar statement to that just made was advanced in an official report, a critic undertook to expose the fallacy of it in the columns of a daily paper by referring to a case within the writer's own observation in which a family of three persons had been killed on their very first journey in a railroad car. It is not, of course, necessary to waste time over such a criticism as this. Railroad accidents continually take place, and in consequence of them people are killed and injured, and of these there may well be some who are then making their first journey by rail; but in estimating the dangers of railroad traveling the much larger number who are not killed or injured at all must likewise be taken into consideration. Any person as he may be reading this page in a railroad car may be killed or injured through some accident, even while his eye is glancing over the figures which show how infinitesimal his danger is; but the chances are none the less as a million to one that any particular reader will go down to his grave uninjured by any accident on the rail, unless it be occasioned by his or her own carelessness.
Admitting, therefore, that ill luck or hard fortune must fall to the lot of certain unascertainable persons, yet the chances of incurring that ill fortune are so small that they are not materially increased by any amount of traveling which can be accomplished within the limits of a human life. So far from exhausting a fair average immunity from accident by constant traveling, the statistics of Massachusetts during the last eight years would seem to indicate that if any given person were born upon a railroad car, and remained upon it traveling 500 miles a day all his life, he would, with average good fortune, be somewhat over 80 years of age before he would be involved in any accident resulting in his death or personal injury, while he would attain the highly respectable age of 930 years before being killed. Even supposing that the most exceptional average of the Revere year became usual, a man who was killed by an accident at 70 years of age should, unless he were fairly to be accounted unlucky, have accomplished a journey of some 440 miles every day of his life, Sundays included, from the time of his birth to that of his death; while even to have brought him within the fair liability of any injury at all, his daily journey should have been some 120 miles. Under the conditions of the last eight years his average daily journey through the three score years and ten to entitle him to be killed in an accident at the end of them would be about 600 miles.
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.[27] The average number of persons annually injured, not fatally, during those years was about five.
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 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 employés, 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 employés 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 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.