The table following gives the proportion of passengers killed and injured to the total number carried, and the proportion of employees killed and injured to the total number employed in different countries, as given in the reports for 1902-1904:

Tasmania killed

The experience varies from year to year. For example, Denmark's railways killed no passengers in 1903-4, but did kill one for 1904-5. none in 1903, and Victoria only one to 20,000,000 journeys. With reference to the figures of railway table Prof. Parsons says: "It appears that railway travel is safest in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, and Australia, that it is more dangerous in Great Britain than any of the above-named countries, and that in the United States it is most dangerous of all-about six times as dangerous as in Germany, seventeen times as dangerous as in Belgium, three times as dangerous as in France, and from two to four times as dangerous as in Great Britain.

Naturally a great deal has been said and written in the effort to explain the cause of this exceptional carnage on our railways. Some of it can be explained in a way to fully acquit the railways. About 10 per cent of the injured and about 65 per cent of the killed, classed as "others in American reports, are trespassers on the trains or tracks, or have contributed in a measure by lax attention to dangers which brought about their own mishap. But in the table given, embracing only passengers and employees, where the ratios are so much higher in the United States than elsewhere, no defensive explanation seems to have been offered. That this carnage is not an actually essential feature of railroading seems to be admitted on all sides. The most prominent railroad company in one of its rule books declares, "If these rules are observed by our employees, a collision can not happen on our railroad," and a perusal of these rules and the cautionary signals and methods provided will convince anyone of the truth of this declaration. These rules are known as the Brown system and are in vogue on every railway, and every trainman knows them by heart. Three authors have studied the subject of our railway accidents from as many different standpoints, and their views seem worthy of consideration here.

James O. Fagan, in a series of articles now published in book form, under the title "Confessions of a Signalman," gives his experiences. According to his view, rigid respect for the rules is an element almost completely wanting, and its absence the cause of preventable railway disasters. He says:

"In one month I was a witness to eighteen breaches of the rule on a single division of a railway. Not so long ago, on a western railway, and about the same time, on a New England railway as well, passenger trains were run for miles on the wrong track, against the traffic. This was done in broad daylight, without orders of any description."

Again he says:

"The engineman encounters a single torpedo. According to his rule he should bring his train to a full stop. But as he happens to have a clear track for a mile ahead of him he keeps on. He, too, forms a habit which has to be reckoned with some day

Now, the regulations relating to the running and protecting of trains are very similar on all railroads, and therefore the following rule, taken from one of our current working time-tables, may be looked upon as thoroughly repreBentative:

"A freight train must not leave a station to follow a passenger train until five minutes after the departure of said passenger train."

To any ordinary thinker this rule will appear to be plain, positive, and for the most part necessary. Yet, as a matter of fact, no attention whatever is paid to it either by enginemen, by conductors, or for that matter by superintendents. Its violation has been the cause of collisions and loss of life, but that does not seem to bother us, for we continue to disregard it.

Unfortunately the rules I have quoted and the interpretation put upon them by railroad men can not be taken as an example, standing alone, for they are merely illustrations of a principle that covers the whole cautionary field in our railroads. In some way we have got it into our heads that these rules are permissive, not positive. This permissive principle means the exercise of our own judgment, according to circumstances, regardless of the rule. Acting under the influence of this principle, the flagman protects his train to the very letter of the rule when it is manifestly necessary, but when, in his opinion, it is not he takes chances. In this way he forms a habit of using his own judgment in regard to a positive rule. Sooner or later this means a preventable accident. But why is not this spirit checked by discipline and punishment? According to Mr. Fagan, one extreme, as usual, has begotten another. In a former day the employee had no rights. He says:

"Only too many of us can remember the time when a deserving employee could be, and frequently was, discharged on the flimsiest pretext. His breakfast disagreed with a yardmaster, or he happened to have domestic troubles on his mind; for less reason than this good men were sent packing. Not 10 years ago the service on New England railroads swarmed with favorites and brothers-in-law. Faithful old employees were sent adrift without a moment's warning or sympathy to make room for youngsters with a 'pull.' Many an honest old servitor, not so very long ago, either, with justice and reason might have flung the retort of old Adam, in As You Like It, at his superior: 'Is "old dog" my reward? Most true; I have lost my teeth in your service.'" Now, he thinks, the railway organizations have too much power, etc.

It is not enough, of course, that the offenders should be punished for the wrecks which result from their breaches of railway law; they should be disciplined for violating the rules, even when a brother employee has not been killed or injured. But in order to do this such delinquencies must be detected and reported. As to this feature, the author adds:

"This condition or situation may be briefly, yet correctly, outlined as follows: Railroad managers depend upon the reports of employees for information in regard to violation of rules. But employees do not and can not be compelled to report their associates; consequently negligence of all kinds is practically unchecked.

"There is practically no out-on-the-road supervision on American railways." It appears that it is not the special business of any employee to detect and report violations of the rules; that is, no men are employed and paid specifically for that work. The work is therefore not done, or at least very imperfectly, by the naturally few volunteers sufficiently high minded to risk the hatred of their fellows for an abstract duty and merely moral pay. Villages and rural communities are policed in this way, or, rather, are not policed at all. The disturber must have proceeded to assault and battery and the sufferer must swear out a warrant to bring the punitive powers of the State into play. But in the cities society has concluded to include preventive as well as punitive measures in its methods of self-protection, and for this purpose employs police to arrest the offender who manifests the disposition, even before violence has been committed. So violations of the rules should be treated by the city rather than the village method, as now seems to be the case on the railways.

In an experimental way only has the preventive or out-on-the-road supervisory and reportorial method been tried here, and only in a few instances. What it discloses will appear from the following news item:

[Woman's National Daily.]

"ST. LOUIS, Mo., February 12, 1907.—Aroused by the criticism heaped upon the railroads recently because of the large number of wrecks, the Lake Shore officers decided to make a test on this division of their road. That locomotive engineers pay little or no attention to danger signals was proved here last night when 24 trains of the Lake Shore Railway rushed past the signal targets, the lights of which had been turned out as a warning that the tracks were not clear. Only 1 train out of 25 which passed through here in the time the officers stood on watch obeyed the signals. Four passenger trains were included in this. It is

expected that several of the train crews will be dismissed. This was observed by four superintendents, a foreman, train master, and traveling engineer, who made the test."

A more systematic experiment appears to have been made by the justly famed Julius Kruttschnitt, director of maintenance and operation of the Union Pacific. In a frank contribution to this subject (Appleton's Magazine) he refers to the statement of the Interstate Commerce Commission that 75 per cent of the train accidents and fatalities are due to the disobedience of rules, and quoting the conclusions of Mr. Fagan, he adds:

"I do not mean to construe it as relieving officials of their fair share of ac countability for accidents. In fact, officials and employees are both involved in the regretable conditions which prevail. Mr. Fagan does, however, put his finger on the place when he says that lack of discipline is the root of the trouble."

But Mr. Kruttschnitt has gotten at the heart of the trouble, not only by criticism, but by action. He introduced on his railway a system of out-on-the-road detection and report, policing it for violations of the rules, in 1904. He claims for its introduction on the Union Pacific a substantial reduction in deaths and a reduction of more than one-third in the injuries, while the traffic actually increased; and in a "few months" he succeeded in raising the efficiency of the employees to the point of 98.9, as per the table appended:

Mr. Kruttschnitt does not state what the percentage of efficiency was when the system was first installed, but it appears that his method has raised the efficiency of the men to about 99 per cent. While he does not say that such a percentage of efficiency would probably bring our ratios of accidents to the level of other countries, he assigns the responsibility for the residual 1 per cent among other causes to a nondiscriminating condemnation by the public of the good with the bad corporations. This spirit, he says, infects the attitude of the employees, and while admitting that many minor cases of rule violations are passed over by managers, and that employees and petty officers fail to report the breaches of the rules, he quotes a railway journal as saying:

"The condition which must be remedied is that railroad managements out of deference to public sentiment do not try to exercise that rigor in disciplining railway employees which safety of the public demands. It is an anomalous but incontestable fact that the public would crucify the management that inflicts proper discipline.”

Thoughtful men will hardly share the opinion of this journal, even though supported by the justly esteemed Mr. Kruttschnitt. The public, in the absence of compulsory arbitration, has for many years looked on helplessly (without crucifying or indeed condemning very generally) at industrial lockouts, and the blacklisting that follows the ordinary strike. It may frequently sympathize with the weaker parties, but it has been powerless to interfere; and to assert

that it would "crucify" the railway manager for taking proper measures to insure inflicting the necessary discipline upon offenders against the lives of employees and the safety of travel is to say something which is very "contestable," indeed.

The railways of other countries have secured their comparative immunity from railway disaster by the employment of “out-on-the-road" aids, including inspection and reporting agencies, which, if we except the Union Pacific, Mr. Fagan says do not exist on American railways. It is through these detectives or supervisors that, in the bullish humor of Twain, "it is safe to travel on European railways. When a rule is violated, some one is decapitated. They go on the principle that it is better that 1 innocent man should be killed than 500."

The Prussian railway experts gave their attention to this subject on their tour of investigation of our railways. Without further introduction or remark, I quote their report:

"All these accidents must be attributed, for the most part, to the management of the service, for, according to our conception, the American method is bound to result in all kinds of irregularities as well as derangements of the schedules. The latter are of such frequent occurrence as to be taken by the people as a matter of course. In substantiation of this we have already mentioned the fact that, aside from the suburban traffic, we succeeded in arriving on schedule time in but one solitary instance. Even on the trip from Philadelphia to New York, on one of the best trains of the Pennsylvania line, we were five minutes behind time. * Whether the companies are making effort to have the trains conform to schedule we could not find out, principally because there were no records obtainable.

"Nor has the percentage of accidents decreased. According to the statistics issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the number of casualties on American railroads has grown considerably, both absolutely and relatively. Comparing 1902 with 1888, the increase of deaths is 86 per cent, and of injured as high as 196 per cent.

"It appears that the American people, in spite of good sense and practical ability, are not fully aware of the casual relation existing between accidents and irregularities in the traffic, viz, nonobservance of the schedule. The conviction that safety in the railroad service is based chiefly on the most scrupulous punctuality and untiring attention to minute details has taken hold on the bulk of the German people, and it is this attitude which accounts for the comparative immunity of their railroads from casualties.

"A large percentage of accidents is due, as the tables will show, to the fact that grade crossings are not properly guarded; even at much-frequented crossings few or no precautions are taken. Signs containing the inscription Railroad crossing,' or 'Look out for the locomotive,' are utterly inadequate to meet requirements, and the results are shown in numberless suits for damages.

66

Making all due allowances for this in favor of the United States, one must not forget, on the other hand, to take into account the burdens of the German roads, which are not imposed, or at least not to the same extent, on the American railroads. In the first place, we must consider the guarding of the tracks. If the American railroads were to introduce the safety precautions which have to be observed on all German lines, they would have to engage an army of about 636,000 switchmen and guards, instead of 49,961 men, as are now employed; that is, an additional force of 586,000 employees.

"It is a well-known fact that the switch-tending and track-guarding staff in America is disproportionately smaller than ours. A regular track-guarding system is unknown in America. The number of switchmen and guards would be still less if it were not for the fact that a very large staff of switch operators is employed in the railroad yards of America. The large difference influences the comparison drawn at the foot of the summary to a considerable extent, because it shows that, taking in consideration the entire personnel, the American railroads employ for every 1,000,000 train kilometers, 8,985 men, against 10,072 men for the same proportion in the Prusso-Hessian service; whereas if we eliminate the switchmen and guards the proportion is 8,659 in America to 8,331 now in Prussia-Hesse. The saving of individual expenses in the United States through less extended track guarding is quite extraordinary. American railroads would be obliged, if they were to guard their tracks and crossings in the same manner as this is prescribed by law for the sake of safety for German railroads, to employ about 636,000 men instead of the 49,961 men which at present are actually employed as switch operators and

guards; consequently they would have to increase their staff by not less than about 586,000 men. This figure alone far exceeds the entire staff of employees of 356,174 men of the Prusso-Hessian railroads."

It seems to be admitted by all parties to the discussion that the trouble lies in the combined inefficiency of management and men. Mr. Kruttschnitt gives

no assurances of a remedy. As to conditions, he concludes:

"The army of railway employees is in a demoralized condition and, as results show, is inefficient in safeguarding life and property intrusted to it. What is the remedy? Simply that if our employees once realize that the responsibility for the discredit now resting on the operations of American railroads is not one that can be placed entirely on their officers, but that they themselves must assume a large share of it, joint effort and cordial cooperation to remove the load of joint discredit must necessarily follow.

"And how is this realization of responsibility to be brought home to the employees? By the help of the public, by the force of their opinion. It must discriminate between the bad and the good in passing judgment on corporations and their officers."

That is, in effect, the public can expect nothing more from the railways themselves. Remarkable as the conclusion may seem, Mr. Fagan joins him, or rather precedes him, in its announcement. Relief from the management he declares to be out of the question.

"After a careful review and consideration of the conditions that obtain on American railroads at the present day, these significant and final questions, in the opinion of the writer, must all be answered in terms of external authority. It is really too bad to have to come to the conclusion that no reform can be expected, or, indeed, is possible from within. The men, the organizations, and the managements must now be called upon to submit to publicity and to correction, to be administered by the stern arm of the law. A proper adjustment of the interests of the men and of the management, with a view to the safety of travel, is, under present conditions, absolutely impossible."

AUTOMATIC COMPENSATION FOR ACCIDENTS.

It is, of course, obvious that if every man killed or injured necessitates the payment of a substantial sum by the railroad, with the humane purpose of succoring the victims, the prevention of each accident will substantially amount to a subsidy to the railroad company equal to the cost of making compensation if the accident were to happen. It is fair to expect under such a system that preventable accidents would largely cease, since their heavy financial cost to the company would make it seek as hard and plan as vigorously for methods of prevention as it now does to maintain its financial credit or secure traffic. It is no reflection upon the moral character or the humanity of our railway managers to make this statement. Like average human beings, a financial return for their humanitarian activities will tend to substantially increase and intensify such activities.

The CHAIRMAN. That concludes, as I understand, what you desire to say, Mr. Lewis?

Mr. LEWIS. Yes, sir; unless some one present desires to ask me any questions.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. What is the status of your bill in the House?

Mr. LEWIS. It has been referred to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. I would like to ask Mr. Thom a question at this point, if the Chair will concede me that privilege.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair will concede the privilege, if Mr. Thom has no objection.

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Thom has stated that the railways desire to cooperate in the passage of this legislation, and that naturally is a fine compliment to the magnanimity of these great properties. I would like to ask him whteher in such consideration as his committee has given this subject they have taken up the precise question. of the degree of compensation, as to whether the dependents of the