470 
POPULAE SCIENCE EEVIEW. 
tion natural to men who have played the 7'ole of autocrat so 
long that they can hardly reahze the fact of the public pre- 
suming to have an opinion of their own on any point of rail- 
way management, however much their own safety may be 
involved in it ; the business of the aforesaid public, in their 
eyes, being properly restricted to paying the fare, and 
bringing an action for damages in the event of bodily injury. 
AYe answer the question thus positively and unhesitatingly, 
because, in the first place, nothing can he easier than to devise 
the means of transmitting any required signal from one part of 
Oy train to another ; and, in the second place, nothing can he 
vjeaker than the arguments resorted to as an excuse for doing 
nothing. 
In the first rank of these has alwavs fio’ured the handv 
€.0 *. 
assumption that a prodigious amount of inconvenience and 
loss of time would arise from frequent stoppages of trains by 
nervous old women of both sexes resorting to the danger- 
signal without adequate cause. One conclusive reply to this 
is, that the inconvenience, granting it came into existence, 
would fall on the public, who would be the best judges on 
which side the balance of advantage lay, and the only proper 
persons to decide whether time should be sacrificed to safety 
or safety to time. A second answer is the fact that for many 
years such a danger-signal — open to employment by any pas- 
senger — has been in use on the railways in the United States 
without these anticipated, but as it appears purely imaginary, 
evil consequences resulting, and we have yet to learn that the 
English travelling pubhc are less capable of exhibiting dis- 
cretion and self-control than their transatlantic descendants. 
Thirdly, such a danger-signal has actually been in existence 
on the South-Western Eailwav for four months, easilv acces- 
sible to ail, without having once been put in action by a pas- 
senger. Briefly, then, to sum up in one word our opinion of 
the argument for doing nothing founded on a hypothetical 
picture of stoppages — say, Fudge ! 
With the electric telegraph in daily and familiar use, it is 
really difficult to comprehend how such an amount of ignorant 
credulity, or perhaps we ought rather to say incredulity, can 
coexist amongst us as is involved in the acceptance and belief 
of the silly tales of the great, if not insuperable, difficulties to 
be surmounted in arranging a simple and efficient means of 
communication from carriage to carriage of a railway-train in 
motion which have been set on foot by railway magnates as 
an excuse for not complying with the wishes of the public. In 
short, let it clearly be understood that there is neither a 
difficultv to be solved nor an invention to be awaited, but 
simply an indisposition to be conquered. As soon as the 
