1875.| Railway Accidents. 21 
observed that the negligence of servants, their payment, and 
their hours of working, were matters of the greatest impor- 
tance, and he remarked that most of the accidents caused 
by negligence might be traced to ignorance or to inefficiency. 
The wages usually given by railway companies were too 
low to command the services of men of intelligence, steadi- 
ness, and self-reliance, and, in consequence, inferior men 
were employed, who were incapable of appreciating the 
importance and necessity of executing their duties with 
promptness and exactitude. In the official report to the 
Board of Trade on railway accidents for the year 1870, 
Captain Tyler remarked, after enumerating the accidents 
of the year under their respective headings: ‘‘ Accidents 
from all the above causes are more or less preventible, | 
except in so far as it will never be possible, under the best 
arrangements, altogether to avoid accidents from negli- 
gence or mistakes on the part of employés, although it is 
practicable, under good arrangements and systems, and 
with good discipline, very much to reduce their number.” 
In the year 1871, out of 171 investigated accidents, there 
had been in 121 cases of negligence, want of care, or neglect 
of servants; in 1872, out of 238 cases, 180 were due to 
negligence or mistakes of officers or servants, and in 1873, 
out of 241 accidents, a similar negligence was apparent in 
182 cases. 
Whatever be the means and appliances provided, or the 
amount of care taken, the item of human fallibility will 
always be the cause of a certain number of accidents. But 
the number of accidents from this cause, as was remarked 
by Captain Tyler in his report for 1873, may be very much 
reduced by “improvements in regulations and discipline, 
by greater care in the selection, training, payment, and 
employment of competent men in sufficient numbers and 
for reasonable hours, and by providing them with the 
requisite siding and other accommodation, with proper 
signal and point apparatus, with the best means of securing 
intervals between trains, with sufficient break-power, and 
with other necessary appliances.” It has been argued that 
railway servants are apt to become more careless in the use 
of these improvements, in consequence of the extra security 
which they are believed to afford; but, whilst Captain Tyler 
remarks that by the results of more extended experience 
this argument has received further confutation, Mr. Har- 
rison, the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 
and no mean authority on railway matters, stated, in his 
inaugural address, that there was an undoubted tendency 
