Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1912 — MEN’S BRAINS ARE AT FAULT [ARTICLE]

MEN’S BRAINS ARE AT FAULT

Railroad Official Declares Human Feature Enters Into All Modern Train Wrecks. “No matter how perfect the mechanical department of a railroad and how strict the rules and regulations given the men, it is impossible to get away from the fact that we have always to depend on the brain of one man. It is the engineer in the cab." This was the statement of George A. Cullen, general traffic manager of the Lackawanna, after hours of effort in trying, to place the blame for the disaster near Corning, in which forty-two persons were killed. “Railroad men have studied this problem for years,” he went on, “and always we coThe to the same means than human agency that will protect perfectly the lives of those intrusted to our care? No, there must be the human mind —the man. In every accident it is some human mechanism that is at fault, some brain forgot or neglected to work at the proper time. The steel and wire mechanism is never at fault That wqs the case in this terrible catastrdphe. Our signals worked perfectly; all the men on the road performed their prescribed duty except one, and he says, in explanation, that he did not see the signals. He blamed the fog. He was the engineer of the express which telescoped the Buffalo limited.”