Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 281, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1916 — Laws Needed to Put End to Needless Waste of Life on American Railroads [ARTICLE]

Laws Needed to Put End to Needless Waste of Life on American Railroads

By MARCUS A DOW

of New York’

In twenty years ended in 1912 there were 86,733 trespassers killed and 94,646 injured on the railways of the United States. Careful investigation has shown that the majority of persons thus killed and injured are citizens living in the vicinity of the accident, and that many are women and children. From 1901 to 1910 there were approximately 13,000 children under fourteen years of age killed and injured while trespassing on railroads in the United States, enough to make a milepost for every mile half way around the world. There were 20,000 between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one years killed during that same period, making 33,000 minors who were victims of this evil. During ten years ended in 1910 there were 103,452 trespassers killed and injured in the United States, while for the same period in Great Britain and Ireland there were but 5,754 trespassers killed and injured. Of course the mileage of American railroads is much greater, but it is nevertheless true that the British railways traverse a more densely populated and congested territory than most of our American railways. In European countries laws forbid trespassing cn railways. j - r * 8 To the uninformed it will probably be surprising information to know that more than half the persons killed on American railroads are trespassers and that ordinarily there are on our railroads three times as many trespassers killed each year as there are railroad employees i This annual needless killing of more than five thousand American citizens and the injuring seriously of an equal number, mostly wage earners, can only be prevented by the co-operation of the public and public officials. Laws have been made, intended to deal with almost every real or imaginary cayse of accident, and yet it has been almost impossible to get passed or enforced laws which will effectively prohibit railroad trespassing and the great economic loss the nation involved in the killing and maiming of these persons, as well as the suffering to humanity caused thereby.