Railway Risks

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 31, Issue 44, 31 October 1907, Page 9

Railway Risks

The United States still maintains its reputation- for doing things—-even us railroad smiashes—on a prevly big scale.. A bulletin recently issued by the Inter-State Commission at Washington states .that during the quarter thait closed- on} March 31, of the present year the total number of casualties (inclucung dea^ns and injuries) was 20,563. In the previous three m'onbiis they totalled 20,944. The" "total number of deaths among passengers and employees of the railways was 4ai, and . the number of injured 4920. There were zuvd collisions, and 1913 derailments, and the damage to^ cars, engines, and roadways is estimated at 3,536,11 iT dollars (over £700,000). The record of injuries to life -and limb surpasses that of the 'biggest' biatiie of the South —mean war. r lhe figures quoted above give a point to the Cincinnati paper's burlesque of . the^ amiable weakness of the American for vaunting the supereminent excellence of his country in all tnings. 4 Our rail-cars', says the author of the buries q(ue, ' are bigger, and run faster, and pitch ofi the track oftener, and kill more people than all other railways in- tnis' and every other country. Our steamboats carry digger loads, and are longer and broader, burst their boilers oftener, and send up their passengers higher, and the captains swear harder than the steamboat captains in any other country '. And so on. Truth is sometimes told in parables. And-a burlesque is a "sort of parable - trimmed or pulled out of shape here and there—as hollies and laurustinuses are in a Dutch garden, or as an innocent hat of felt or straw is forced into contortionist poses by the fantastic art and craft of the modern mouiste. liut the plant remains a pla-nt and • the hat a hat—in a state of masiquerado or caricature.