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 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 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 lay 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 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 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 by-ways 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. 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.
CHAPTER XXIII.
AMERICAN AS COMPARED WITH FOREIGN RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.
Up to this point, the statistics and experience of Massachusetts only have been referred to. This is owing to the fact that the railroad returns of that state are more carefully prepared and tabulated than are those of any other state, and afford, therefore, more satisfactory data from which to draw conclusions. The territorial area from which the statistics are in this case derived is very limited, and it yet remains to compare the results deduced from them with those derived from the similar experience of other communities. This, however, is not an easy thing to do; and, while it is difficult enough as respects Europe, it is even more difficult as respects America taken as a whole. This last fact is especially unfortunate in view of the circumstance that, in regard to railway accidents, the United States, whether deservedly or not, enjoy a most undesirable reputation. Foreign authorities have a way of referring to our "well-known national disregard of human life," with a sort of complacency, at once patronizing and contemptuous, which is the reverse of pleasing. Judging by the tone of their comments, the natural inference would be that railroad disasters of the worst description were in America matters of such frequent occurrence as to excite scarcely any remark. As will presently be made very apparent, this impression, for it is only an impression, can, so far as the country as a whole is concerned, neither be proved nor disproved, from the absence of sufficient data from which to argue. As respects Massachusetts, however, and the same statement may perhaps be made of the whole belt of states north of the Potomac and the Ohio, there is no basis for it. There is no reason to suppose that railroad traveling is throughout that region accompanied by any peculiar or unusual degree of danger.
The great difficulty, just referred to, in comparing the results deduced from equally complete statistics of different countries, lies in the variety of the arbitrary rules under which the computations in making them up are effected. As an example in point, take the railroad returns of Great Britain and those of Massachusetts. They are in each case prepared with a great deal of care, and the results deduced from them may fairly be accepted as approximately correct. As respects accidents, the number of cases of death and of personal injury are annually reported, and with tolerable completeness, though in the latter respect there is probably in both cases room for improvement. The whole comparison turns, however, on the way in which the entire number of passengers annually carried is computed. In Great Britain, for instance, in 1878, these were returned, using round numbers only, at 565,000,000, and in Massachusetts at 34,000,000. By dividing these totals by the number of cases of death and injury reported as occurring to passengers from causes beyond their control, we shall arrive apparently at a fair comparative showing as to the relative safety of railroad traveling in the two communities. The result for that particular year would have been that while in Great Britain one passenger in each 23,500,000 was killed, and one in each 481,600 injured from causes beyond their control, in Massachusetts none were killed and only one in each 14,000,000 was in any way injured. Unfortunately, however, a closer examination reveals a very great error in the computation, affecting every comparative result drawn from it. In the English returns no allowance whatever is made for the very large number of journeys made by season-ticket or commutation passengers, while in Massachusetts, on the contrary, each person of this class enters into the grand total as making two trips each day, 156 trips on each quarterly ticket, and 626 trips on each annual. Now in 1878 more than 418,000 holders of season tickets were returned by the railway companies of Great Britain. How many of these were quarterly and how many were annual travelers, does not appear. If they were all annual travelers, no less than 261,000,000 journeys should be added to the 565,000,000 in the returns, in order to arrive at an equal basis for a comparison between the foreign and the American roads: this method, however, would be manifestly inaccurate, so it only remains, in the absence of all reliable data, and for the purpose of comparison solely, to strike out from the Massachusetts returns the 8,320,727 season-ticket passages, which at once reduces by over 3,000,000 the number of journeys to each case of injury. As season-ticket passengers do travel and are exposed to danger in the same degree as trip-ticket passengers, no result is approximately accurate which leaves them out of the computation. At present, however, the question relates not to the positive danger or safety of traveling by rail, but to its relative danger in different communities.