Coroner's juries are, beyond a doubt, a very good institution, and
were established for a good purpose; they investigate sudden deaths,
while the matter is still fresh, before the cause has become hidden or
obscured by lapse of time, and in most cases they undoubtedly arrive at
a just conclusion; but in cases of railroad accidents, I never yet knew
one that was not unjust, to a greater or less degree, in its verdict
against employees of the company on the train at the immediate time of
the occurrence.
I know that in saying this I fly into the face of all the newspapers
of the land, for they have a stereotyped sneer in these words, "_Of
course_ nobody was to blame," at every coroner's jury that fails to
censure somebody, or to adjudge some one guilty of wilful murder.
Nevertheless I believe it, and unhesitatingly declare it. Most
generally it is the engineer and conductor who are censured, sometimes
the brakemen or switchmen; but rarely or never is it the right one who
is branded and placed in the newspaper pillory as unfit to occupy any
position of trust, and guilty of the death of those killed and the
wounds of those wounded. As to an accident that could not be avoided
by human forethought, that idea is scouted, and if a coroner's jury
does ever so far forget what is expected of it by these editors--who
are the self-elected bull-dogs of society, and must needs bark or lose
their dignity--why no words are sufficiently sarcastic, no sentences
sufficiently bitter, to express the contempt which they feel for that
benighted coroner's jury. To be sure they know nothing, or next to
nothing, of the circumstances, and the jury knows _all_ about them. To
be sure, iron will break and so will wood; the insidious frost will
creep in where man cannot probe, and render as brittle as glass what
should be tough as steel; watches will go wrong, and no hundred men can
be found who will on all occasions give one interpretation to the same
words. But what of that?
Why, the bare idea that any accident upon any road can happen, and
some poor devil of an engineer, conductor, brakeman or switchman not
be ready at hand, to be made into a pack-horse on whom to pile all the
accumulated bile of these men who, many of them, have some private
grudge to satisfy--the idea, I say, is preposterous to these men, and
they fulminate their thunders against railroad men, until community
gets into the belief that virtue, honesty, integrity or common dog
sense are things of which a railroad man must necessarily be entirely
destitute; and they are looked upon with distrust, they are driven
to become clannish, and frequently, I must confess, any thing but
polite to the traveling public, whose only greeting to them is gruff
fault-finding, or an incessant string of foolish questions. But are
they so much to blame for this? Would you, my reader, "cast your pearls
before swine?" and can you particularly blame men for not being over
warm to the traveling community which almost invariably treats them as
machines, destitute of feeling, for whose use it pays so much a mile?
Railroad men, though, are not impolite, nor short to everybody. Ask
a jovial, good-natured man, who has a smile and a pleasant word for
everybody, and I'll warrant he will tell you that he gets treated well
enough on railroads; that the engineer answers his questions readily;
that the brakeman sees that he has a seat; that his baggage is not
bursted open every trip he takes, and the conductor does not wake him
up out of his sleep every five minutes to ask for his ticket. But ask
a pursy, lordly individual, whose lack of brains is atoned for by the
capacity of his stomach, who never asks for any thing, always orders
it, and who always praises the last road he was on, and d----s the one
he is now on; or ask a vinegar-looking, hatchet-faced old maid, who
has eight bandboxes, a parasol, an umbrella, a loose pair of gloves, a
work-bag and a poodle dog, who always has either such a cold that she
knows she "shall die unless that window in front is put down," or else
is certain that she "shall suffocate unless more air is let into the
car," and who is continually asking whoever she sees with a badge on,
whether the "biler is going to bust," or if "that last station ain't
the one she bought her ticket for?"--ask either of these (and there are
a great many travelers who, should they see this, would declare that
I meant to be personal), and they will tell you that railroad men are
"rascals, sir! scamps, sir! every one of them, sir! Why, only the other
day I had a bran-new trunk, and I particularly cautioned the baggageman
and conductor to be careful, and would you believe it, sir? when I got
it, two--yes, sir! two--of the brass nails were jammed. Railroad men,
from the dirty engineer to the stuck-up conductor, are bent on making
the public as uncomfortable as they can, sir!" Reader, take my advice,
and when you want any thing, go to the proper person and politely ask
for it, and you will get it; but don't jump off and ask the engineer at
every station how far it is to the next station? and how fast he ever
did run? and if he ever knew John Smith of the Pontiac, and Buckwheat
of the Sangamon and Pollywog road, one or the other, but really you
forget which; but no matter, he must know him, for he looked so and
so. Take care; while you are describing the venerable John Smith, that
long oil-can may give an ugly flirt, and your wife have good cause for
grumbling at your greasy cassimere inexpressibles; or a wink from the
engineer to his funny fireman, may open that "pet cock," and your face
get washed with rather nasty feeling water, and the shock might not be
good for you. Don't bore the conductor with too many questions. If you
ask civil questions, he will civilly answer you; but if you bore him
too much by asking how fast "this ingine can run?" he may get cross, or
he may tell how astonishingly fast the celebrated and mythical Thomas
Pepper used to run the equally celebrated and mythical locomotive,
"Blowhard." I started this article to tell a story illustrating my
opinion of coroners' juries, but have turned it into a sort of homily
on the grievances of railroad men. No matter; the story will keep, and
the traveling people deserve a little talking to about the way they
treat railroad men.