Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1910 — TRIBUTE IS LARGE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TRIBUTE IS LARGE

AMERICA PAYB HIGH PRICE FOR TRANSPORTATION. Flower of Its Youth and Strength Called Upon to Yield Up Life In Their Dally Round of Duties. It is the best American manhood In its youth and strength that We sacri-

flee daily kin the cause of transportation, declares a magazine writer. Of the 125 railroad men conductors, brakemen, yardmen, etc. —killed in active service in Allegheny county, Pa., during the year under consideration 77 were under thirty and only 13 over forty years old. Eightynine were Americans. Pro b a bly the

work of a yard brakeman moje continuously and Inevitably involves risk to life and limb than any other trade, unless It be that of the acrobat, in which the risk taken Is a part of the commercial end Itself. The twelvehour working day or night of a yard brakeman is an almost continuous performance of what would be “feats" of skill and daring to an,ordinary man. The attention must not flag If he is to accomplish and avoid Injury. RAILROADERS KILLED IN ONE YEAR. Conductors g Engineers " Firemen Brakemen " 4g Trackmen 15 Laborers 14 Miscellaneous 20 Unknown 2 Total Frederick Hoffman, statistical expert of a big life insurance company, tells us that among brakemen who die between the ages of fifteen and twen-ty-four from 75 peF cent, to 85 per cant, die by accident. The table given here shows that out of the 125 railroad employes who during the one year met violent death in the course of their work 38 per cent, were brakemen. Among the injured about the same proportion (42 per cent.) are brakemen. “Hump shifting” (sending cuts of cars over the rise beyond which many tracks ramify from the main “lead”) is an operation that involves special danger to the brakeman. A brakeman must ride each draft of care as It is cut off on top of the rise. The cars are going fast, sometimes 15 miles an hour. It is the brakeman’s duty to slow down the cars, leaving them enough momentum to accomplish *the coupling with other cars of the train of which they are to become a part. It takes experience and skill to ride cars over the “hump,” and it takes nerve. The men admit that they do not like it Six of the brakemen included in the table were killed In One lost hls balance while putting on brakes; one slipped and fell while riding his cut down; another was jolted off when the cars bumped at the bottom. One was killed trying to save the man riding a cut ahead of him. He put on brakes, a third draft ran Into the cut he was riding and he met the very death from which he had saved the man in front. Another man’s death was due to a defective coupling. The sixth was a boy of eighteen who spent his first night of railroading on the hump—and his last. The cut he was riding was bumped by a following cut and he was thrown to his death. A yardmaster on that same road told me that a new man ought never to he put oh the hump at night—the fact that the force was short (a* 1 in this case) was no excuse for it.