216 



CONGRESS. (SAFETY OF LIFE ON RAILROADS.) 



it shall be composed, and even the color which 

 it shall be painted. If this legislation is constitu- 

 tional and right, then the door is open wide for 

 absolute control of all private enterprise by Con- 

 gress, and it is but a short step to Government 

 ownership of all the instruments of interstate 

 commerce and travel. Then centralization and 

 imperialism will be at hand. 



" This bill, sir, proceeds on the theory that if 

 the couplers and brakes now in use on freight 

 trains are substituted by those described in this 

 bill, that all killing and maiming of trainmen 

 would cease. That conclusion is erroneous and is 

 based purely on assumption. Indeed, the very 

 contrary has been asserted by many of the wit- 

 nesses who testified before the committee. Prac- 

 tical trainmen of long experience stated that 

 the automatic impact couplers now in use were 

 more dangerous, more disastrous to life and limb 

 than the old link-and-pin coupler. 



" How many gentlemen on this floor know 

 what shape or type of coupler this bill proposes 

 to force the railroads to adopt f I hold in my 

 hand a model of what is known as ' an impact 

 automatic coupler.' This is the ' Buckeye coup- 

 ler,' many of which are in use by the Baltimore 

 and Ohio Railroad. Here is another model, ' the 

 Janney,' which is being tried by the Pennsylva- 

 nia Railroad. 



" Sir, neither of these couplers is perfect ; both 

 have their good points and their weak or bad 

 points, and so with every automatic coupler 

 thus far invented. If by law you compel the 

 railroads to adopt one or the other of these as 

 they now are, and to expend $80,000,000 or 

 $10"0,000,000 in applying them to their freight 

 cars, you at once petrify, as it were, this im- 

 provement. You paralyze invention and stop 

 experiment. As it is to-day, in the absence of 

 legislation the railroads are spending vast sums 

 of money every year experimenting with these 

 devices searching for a perfect practical coup- 

 ler and air brake ; and as soon as it has been 

 found and the fact established by use, every 

 railroad will adopt it, without any law. Did it 

 require congressional enactment to compel the 

 equipment of passenger cars with patent auto- 

 matic couplers and buffers, with air brakes, and 

 vestibule arrangements, by which the whole train, 

 for all practical purposes, is one car ? 



" Sir, this bill requires of the roads a physical 

 impossibility. It compels them to adopt and 

 conform the drawbars on all their cars to a uni- 

 form height by January, 1895, and allows until 

 January, 1898, to change the couplers. 



" The drawbar and the coupler are one and 

 the same thing. They are interchangeable terms 

 for that appliance by which one car is attached 

 to another and the train is drawn. To raise or 

 lower the drawbar you must raise or lower the 

 entire coupler. To do this requires a great 

 change in the rods and beams under every car. 

 In many cases it would compel such consider- 

 able alterations in the trucks as to require that 

 they should be made over. In many cars of a 

 capacity to carry a load of 20,000 to 40.000 

 pounds the trucks are so low and the structure 

 of the car is such that the drawbar or coupler 

 could not be raised to conform to the standard 

 of a car having a capacity to carry a load of 100,- 

 0110 pounds. 



" There are many coal and ore cars, such as the 

 hopper cars used by the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Railroad, where the construction is such that 

 the coupler, which is higher than the present 

 standard of 33 inches, can not be lowered. For 

 this reason much of the freight equipment of 

 the country would have to be abandoned, would 

 be worthless, because under the bill, unless they 

 conformed to the standard of height prescribed 

 for drawbars, these cars could not be used in in- 

 terstate commerce. 



" The estimate, therefore, of $100 each on 1 .000,- 

 000 freight cars, amounting to $100,000,000. 

 does not begin to fully measure the financial cost 

 of this piece of experimental legislation to the 

 railroads of the country. 



" I said this bill would require the roads to 

 perform an impossible task. I have been posi- 

 tively informed by reliable authority that in the 

 eighteen months within which this bill requires 

 all drawbars to be changed to a standard height 

 that it would be absolutely beyond the power of 

 the Baltimore and Ohio Company to so modify 

 its 29,000 freight cars if it stopped all its traffic-, 

 ceased all other kinds of repairs, and devoted all 

 the men and machinery in its vast shops simply 

 to changing the height of the drawbars. If 

 such would be the case on one of the great trunk 

 lines, what would be the condition of the smaller 

 and weaker roads in the South and West ? 



" Sir, I am further informed that it would be 

 impossible for the railroad companies to change 

 their equipment by Jan. 1, 1898, and adopt the 

 appliances required by this act within the five 

 years allowed. To illustrate again: Twenty- 

 nine thousand freight cars are owned by the 

 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company ; 3,000 

 are equipped with automatic couplers ; to equip 

 the remainder, as provided by this act, with 

 automatic couplers and brakes, will require an 

 expenditure of over $4,000,000. On the Balti- 

 more and Ohio the number of cars per year to be 

 thus equipped would be practically 6,000 over 

 and above the new cars to be supplied each year. 

 It is not possible to take 6,000 cars each year 

 out of the service of that road for the purpose 

 of having them equipped with automatic coup- 

 lers and automatic brakes, and at the same time 

 transact its business ; this is simply a physical 

 impossibility. 



" What is true of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 

 road Company is true of every railroad in the 

 United States, unless possibly the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad, which has a larger proportion of its 

 equipment already adjusted to automatic coup- 

 lers and brakes." 



The final vote in the House to suspend the 

 rules and concur in the Senate amendments was 

 taken Feb. 27, and was as follows : 



YEAS Abbott, Ainerman, Arnold, Babbitt, Baker, 

 Earwig, Belden, Belknap, Beltzhoovcr, Bland, Bou- 

 telle, Bowers, Bretz, Broderick, Brookshire, Brosius, 

 Brown of Indiana, Brunner, Bryan, Burrows, Busey, 

 Bushnell, Butler, Bynum, Cable, Cadmus, Caldwell, 

 Carninetti, Campbell, Capehart, Castle, Gate, Chip- 

 man, Clancy, Clark of Wyoming, Clover, Cobuni, 

 Cogswell, Coolidge, Coombs, Cooper, Covert, Grain, 

 Crosby, Cummings, Curtis, Dalzell, Daniell, Davis, 

 De Armond, De Forest, Dinglcy, Doan, Dockery, Dol- 

 liver, Donovan, Durborow, Enochs, Fithian, Flick, 

 Forman, Funston, Fyan, Gantz, Geissenhainer, Gor- 

 man, Griswold, Grout, Halvorson. Hare, Harmer, Har- 



