ELECTRIC RAILWAYS 1

Abstract

WE have grown so accustomed to the regular announcement— “serious—accident on such and such a railway, several passengers injured” that we have almost come to regard railway accidents as inevitable, just as parents mistakingly think the measles and whooping cough necessary accompaniments of childhood. But speed no more means disaster than a densely crowded city means disease. The first effect of overcrowding is undoubtedly to produce fever and other complaints. If, however, the knowledge and practice of the laws of hygiene increase more rapidly than the population of a town, the death-rate, as we have seen, diminishes, instead of augmenting. And so it is with locomotion; the stage-coach journeys of our ancestors were slow enough for the most staunch conservative, and yet the percentage of the passengers injured on their journeys was far greater than even now with our harum-scarum railway travelling. The number of passengers has increased enormously, but the safety has increased in an even greater rate. If then we can devise methods introducing still greater security, a far larger number of passengers may travel at a far greater speed and with less fear of danger than at present.