During an absence from home of several weeks, in the past summer, I
traveled in safety, upwards of three thousand miles, but it was not
because the danger was not there, not because the liabilities for
accidents were not as great as ever; it was because human foresight did
not happen to err, and nature happened to be propitious. The strength
of her materials was as much tried as ever, but they were in condition
to resist the strain; so I and my fellow passengers passed safely over
many a place which awoke in me thrilling memories; for in one place,
the gates of death had been in former time apparently swung wide to
ingulf me, but I escaped; at another, I remember to have shut my eyes
and held my breath, while my heart beat short and heavily, as the
ponderous engine, of which I had the control, crushed the bones and
mangled the flesh of some poor wight caught upon the track, to save
whom I had exercised every faculty I possessed, but all in vain; he
was too near, and my train too heavy for me to stop in time to spare
him. I met many of my old cronies during my absence, and, inquiring for
others, heard the long-expected but saddening news, that they had gone;
their running was over, the dangers they had so often faced overcame
them at last, and now they sleep where "signal lights" and the shrill
whistle denoting danger, which have so often called all their faculties
into play to prevent destruction and save life, are no longer heard.
Others I met, who, in some trying time, had been caught and crushed
by the very engines they had so often held submissive to their will,
and now, maimed and crippled, they must hobble along till the almost
welcome voice of death bids them come and lay their bones beside their
comrades in danger, who have gone before.
A little paragraph in the papers last winter, announced that a gravel
train, of which Hartwell Stark was engineer, and James Burnham
conductor, had collided with a freight train, on the N. Y. C. R. R.;
that the fireman was killed, and the engineer so badly hurt that he was
not expected to live. Perhaps a fuller account of this catastrophe
may be instructive in order to show the risks run by railroad men, the
responsibility resting upon the most humble of them, and the enormous
amount of suffering a man is capable of enduring and yet live. This
gravel train "laid up" for the night at Clyde, and in the morning
early, as soon as the freight trains bound west had passed, proceeded
out upon the road to its work. It was the duty of the switchman to
see that the trains had all passed, and report the same to the men in
charge of the gravel train. This morning it was snowing very hard,
the wind blew strong from the east, and take it altogether, it was a
most unpleasant time, and one very likely to put all trains behind.
Knowing this, the conductor and engineer both asked the switchman if
the freights had all passed. He replied positively that they had.
So, without hesitation, they proceeded to their work. They had left
their train of gravel cars at a "gravel pit," some sixteen miles
distant; so with the engine backing up and dragging the "caboose,"
in which were about thirty men, they started. They had got about ten
miles on their way, the wind and snow still blowing in their faces,
rendering it almost impossible for them to see any thing ahead,
even in daylight--utterly so in the darkness of that morning, just
before day--when, out of the driving storm, looking a very demon of
destruction, came thundering on at highest speed, the freight train,
which the switchman had so confidently reported as having passed an
hour before they left Clyde. The engineer of the freight train jumped,
and said that before he struck the ground he heard the collision. Hart
tried to reverse his engine, but had not time to do it; so he could
not jump, but was caught in the close embrace of those huge monsters.
The freight engine pushed the "tender" of his engine up on to the
"foot-board." It divided; one part crushed the fireman up against the
dome and broke in the "fire-door;" the wood piled over on top of him,
and the flames rushing out of the broken door soon set it on fire,
and there he lay till he was taken out, eighteen hours afterward,
a shapeless cinder of humanity. The other part caught Hart's hips
between it and the "run-board," and rolled him around for about six
feet, breaking both thigh-bones; and to add to his sufferings a piece
of the "hand-rail" was thrust clear through the flesh of both legs,
and twisted about there till it made gashes six inches long. The steam
pipe being broken off, the hissing steam prevented his feeble cries
from being heard, and as every man in the "caboose" was hurt, Hart
began to think that iron rack of misery must surely be his death-bed.
At last, however, some men saw him, but at first they were afraid
to come near, being fearful of an explosion of the boiler. Soon,
however, some more bold than the rest went to work, and procuring a T
rail, they proceeded to pry the wreck apart, and release him from his
horrible position. And so, after being thus suspended and crushed for
over half an hour, he was taken down, put upon a hand-car, and taken
to his home at Clyde, which place he reached in five hours after the
accident. No one expected him to live. The physicians were for an
immediate amputation of both limbs, but to this Hart stoutly objected.
So they finally agreed to wait forty-eight hours and see. At the end
of that time--owing to his strong constitution and temperate habits
of life--the inflammation was so light they concluded to leave poor
Hart with both his legs, and there he has lain ever since. For twelve
weeks he was never moved from his position in the bed, his clothes were
never changed, and he never stirred so much as an inch; and even to
this day--May 20th--he is unable to turn in the bed, though he can sit
up, and when I saw him, was sitting in the stoop cutting potatoes for
planting, and apparently as happy as a child, to think he could once
more snuff fresh air.
I should think that such accidents (and they are of frequent
occurrence) would teach the managers of railroads that the policy of
hiring men who can be hired for twenty-five dollars a month, and who
have so little judgment as to sleep on their posts, and then make such
reports as this switchman did, endangering not only the property of
the company, but also jeopardizing the lives of brave and true men
like Hart Stark, and subjecting them to these lingering tortures, is
suicidal to their best interests. Would not an extra ten dollars a
month to all switchmen be a good investment, if in the course of a
year it saved the life of one poor fireman, who otherwise would die as
this poor fellow did; or if it saved one cool and true man from the
sufferings Hart Stark has for the past five months endured?