RIG IX AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENGINEERING. 43 



and miglit be reduced by slackening that speed. It increases with 

 the extent and variety of the traffic on the same line. The public, I 

 fear, will rather run the risk than consent to be carried at a slower 

 rate. The increase in extent and variety of traffic is not likely to re- 

 ceive any diminution ; on the contrary, it is certain to augment. I 

 s])Ould be sorry to say that human care may not do something, and I 

 am not among those who object to appeals through the press and 

 otherwise to railway companies, though sometimes perhaps they may 

 appear in an unreasonable form. I see no harm in men being urged 

 in every way to do their utmost in a matter so vital to many. It is 

 practicable, by certain corrections of the official returns, to make some 

 sort of comparison between the accidents in the earlier days of our 

 own railways and. the accidents occurring at a later date. I have 

 endeavored to make these corrections, and I believe the results arrived 

 at may be taken as fairly accurate. From the figures it appears that 

 the passenger mileage has doubled between 1861 and 1873 ; and at 

 the rate of increase between 1870 and 1873 it would become double 

 what it was in 1873 in twelve years from that time namely, in 1885. 

 The number of passengers has doubled between 1864 and 1873, and at 

 the rate of increase between 1870 and 1873 it would become double 

 what it was in 1873 in eleven and a half years, or in 1 885. Supposing 

 no improvement had been effected in the working of railway-traffic, 

 the increase of accidents shauld have borne some proportion to the 

 passenger mileage, multiplied by the proportion between the train 

 mileage and the length of line open, as the number of trains passing 

 over the same line of rails would tend to multiply accidents in an in- 

 creasing proportion, especially where the trains run at different speeds. 

 The number of accidents varies considerably from year to year, but, 

 taking two averages of ten years each, it appears that the proportion 

 of deaths of passengers from causes beyond their control to passenger 

 miles traveled in the ten years ending December 31, 1873, was only 

 two-thirds of the same proportion in the ten years ending December 

 31, 1861. The limit of improvements will probably be reached before 

 long, and the increase of accidents will depend on the increase of 

 traffic, together with the increased frequency of trains. Up to the 

 present time the improvements appear to have kept pace with the in- 

 crease of traffic and of speed, as the slight increase in the proportion 

 of railway accidents to passenger miles is probably chiefly due to a 

 larger number of trifling bruises being reported now than formerly. 

 I believe it was a former president of the Board of Trade Avho said to 

 an alarmed deputation, who waited upon him on the subject of railway 

 traveling, that he thought he was safer in a railway-carriage than 

 anywhere else. If he gave any such opinion, he was not far wrong, as 

 is sufficiently evident when it can be said that there is only one pas- 

 senger injured in every four million miles traveled, or that, on an 

 average, a person may travel 100,000 miles each year for forty years, 



