THE AMERICAN JUGGERNAUT.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12405, 29 December 1909, Page 2

THE AMERICAN JUGGERNAUT.

The idea has been encouraged by the painful frequency of railroad accidents in the United States, that there is no occupation quite so dangerous as travelling in American trains. This time-honoured illusion is effectually dispelled by the recent statement of a Chicago railway president, to the effect that for every person killed while riding on American railroads, ten are killed while trespassing on railway property. For a period of five years ending on June 30th, 19079, .2,3092 passengers were killed, as against 25,963 trespassers who met with violent.deaths. Fourteen people are killed each day while trespassing' on r9ailway property in the United States, which means that, with merciless precision and consistency the roads grind to death iust about 5,000 trespassers every year. Analysis of the grim statistics shows that in 1907 1,398 persons met (their deaths by\ being struck by trains, locomotives, or cars, while standing or walking on railwa ytracks. Practically all of the rest were killed while jumping or falling from trains on which they had been

stealing rides. In many rural localities ot America the railway tracks are used as public roads, and this fact accounts for a large proportion of the fatalities. A novel and dangerous form of trespassing has developed quite recently. A Chicago firm is turning out in hundreds a device consisting of a small flanged wheel and threw rods, weighing about 81b., by means of which a bicycle may be fastened to a railway track and propelled at great speed. It. is tho impossibility of maintaining effective supervision over the prodigious American railway mileage that makes such an appalling death-roll possible. The worst, and most numerous trespassers, of course, are tramps, their penchant for free railway travel being an exclusively American institution. Trainmen from end to enu of the country are engaged in a constant but usually futile struggle to keep tramps off their trains. Not only do these undesirables steal rides, but they rob cars of many hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of goods annually as well. The Pennsylvania railroad alone, in 19079, paid j out 436,000 dollars on claims presented by shippers whose property had been I stolen from cars.