THE HUMAN LIMIT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 155, 29 December 1910, Page 6

THE HUMAN LIMIT.

- "Owing lo the number of tragedies during the week, 1910 has been named the year of tho 'Black Christmas. 1 "— Cable message. We wonder if our readers have noticed not only the number of tragedies during the past week, but also particularly the number of railway accidents, say, iv the past year. Hardly a -week has passed without message of some dire disaster on the railways in some part or other of the world. No country where an express service with frequent trains is ran has been exempt. The <oss of life has beeii dreadful. The ominous factor is not the extrat of the calamity, however, but the cause. In nearly every case it is the human liuk in the machine that has failed. A signalman with tho responsibility of hundreds of lives — nay, thousands— a day lying heavy upon him makes one single mistake, forgets' one little thing, and a cargo of human freight is hurled to destruction. Anen-gine-drivei collapses under the severe nervous strain of long hou>-s of driving at mile-a-minute speed, and the tram runs amok. The machinery may be perfect, but man is never, and, if man the master errs, the machine goes to rack and ruin, it is a question of the limit of human endurance. How long is it before the overstretched oerves snap and leave the machine as irresponsible as a tidal-wave, a cyclone, or an earthquake. That is the question, and it is the question of the hour. It has been discussed in influential magazines in different countries of tho world. It applies not only to the driving of trains, but to the driving of steamers, automobiles, flying machines, everything that moves swiftly under the impulsion of enormous man-guided powers. It applies to nearly all our modern industries, where high speed of manufacture is an essential of these competitive days. Can the human machine stand it, and, if so, for how long? The answei* to these questions is not yet forthcoming. But it is clear that signalmen, enginedrivers, sea captains, engineers, all who have control of high speed machinery of any kind, should not be compelled to work beyond a certain limit of hours A day. They must d© picked men to start with, sound in heart and brain, and it also seems clear that they should abstain from alcoholic liquor. This is almost a sine qua non on American railroads, the most dangerous in the world. What it may come to in time is this : All such persons as we speak of will have to be trained and disciplined, as a soldier is trained and disciplined and drilled. Just as we now have our territorial armies of picked men, so shall we have our industrial armies. All our railways and other public services will be administered on this strict basis of training and discipline. No man will be asked to work in such, service with thousands of his fellow-men and women under his charge more than a limited number of hours, to be fixed by medical and other expert regulation. In. this way it will be possible to secure far greater safety for the public than it now can claim. There must be no working outside the limits of strict efficiency. At present the conditions are not so severe in New Zealand, though there are instances on record of a tablet-porter on the Main Trunk line being found asleep at his post, and of a man in charge of a passenger train being under the influence of liquor. All this will have to go by tho board as being incompatible with the circumstances of modern civilisation.