These questions, however, are for railroad engineers to settle. The responsibility of the railroad companies to the American public is a point more important. The “Iron Age,” speaking of this disaster says, “it is a disquieting accident.” It says also that: “We know there are plenty of cheap, badly built bridges, which the engineers are watching with anxious fears, and which, to all appearance, only stand by the grace of God.”
The “Nation” of Feb. 15th says: “By such disasters and by shipwreck are lives in these days sacrificed by the score, and yet except through the clumsy machinery of a coroner’s jury, hardly any where in America is there the slightest provision made for inquiry into them.
“Here are wholesale killings. In four cases out of five some one is responsible for them; there was a carelessness somewhere, or a false economy has been practised, or a defective discipline maintained, or some appliances of safety dispensed with, or some one has run for luck and taken his chances.”
It may be said of this case that the coroner’s jury were as thorough and faithful in their investigation as the American public could ask; and yet from the class of reporters who conveyed so inadequately the results of that investigation from day to day no one was any wiser. The conclusion, however, has been reached, and the verdict corresponds with the evidence given in this book.
We have no space to give to the harsh words that have been spoken. These have come not only from the bereaved friends, but from papers of high standing, among manufacturers and others.
The accident has been bad enough, and the decision of the coroner’s jury sufficiently condemning. The action of the State Legislature has also made it a matter of investigation.
The letter of Charles Francis Adams also called attention to a demand for a Railroad commission, and the subject has not been left, as the “Nation” intimates that it might, to a coroner’s jury, nor even to a legislative committee, but an enactment of Congress has already passed to bring the subject before the Committee on Railroads.
Doubtless the results will be, increased safety of travel, and the holding of railroad corporations to a strict account by the authority of law, for all accidents which may be caused by the want of skillful engineering or proper management. The Westenhouse brake may have caused the projectile force of the whole train to have fallen upon the centre of the defective bridge, but is there not some way of stopping trains from plunging entirely down into these fearful chasms?
Increased appliances for stopping trains, proper precautions in putting out fires, the frequent inspection of bridges, some method of keeping a strict account of the numbers on the train will be required.
The object of this book, however, has not been to discuss these points. As will be seen by the narrative, the religious lessons of the occasion are made most prominent.