CASUALTIES OF WAR AND RAILWAY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 2

CASUALTIES OF WAR AND RAILWAY

A COMPARISON

Shocked and not a little sobered by the Parliamentary Return issued thus month, giving 44,771 men killed or died of wounds and disease or wounded in South Africa, this nation in its natural desire to bury and forget this sad and awful lesson is like to overlook a comparison which “gives fiercely to think.”

War is a trade in winch the aim ih to kill ycur opponent lest he kill you, and the killed are sadly numerous, hut it is startling, to find that peaceful employment on railways in some branches is a far worse trade than war. True, wo do not know, and never shall know', liow many wounded railway workers find their places on the operating tables of cur hospitals with crushed Innos or internal strains only at last to die of wounds, such as a. soldier does whose .death is recorded, but there is suiiicn-.i'-data to arrive at a very grim result as we investigate the subject. The Railway Accidents’ Commissioners of 1900 included railway directors, railway shareholders, and others unlikely to take a severe or stern view of matters; nevertheless, the Commission found itself obliged to report that, accepting the railway companies’ own annual returns as true, 78 per 1,000 shunters'employed are killed or injured every year, and what a very mild interpretation of the situation before them tins was is very plainly shown in the reluctant evidence of the railway witness that 1 in 7 of 48,000 men emploj’cd on his railway was killed or injured in 1896, and that only three out of five known accidents were returned to the Hoard of Trade from his railway. Taking, however, this very partial IS per 1,000 as our standard, we discover that had the 448,435 soldiers engaged in the South African \var only been shunters on Rnghsh railways their total record in killed and wounded alone, excluding those who died of disease, would have reached no. less than 69,888, or mor© than 50 per cent, in excess of the whole Army Return which includes the deaths by disease, whilst liad the ratio been that given by the railway witness referred to, it would have totalled 128,124, or nearly three jtimes over the ghastly war record of 4, (( 1. Ret us look a little further. How many people are aware that during the period covered by this South African War 350,000 of our own home workers —men, women and children —peacefully engaged in industrial occupations have been killed or wounded, or have died of wounds or disease caused by the conditions of their work, entailiug dangers to life and limb and health which in the majority of instances are preventable. The most glaring instances cr neglect and of absolutely certain remedy that can bo cited to-day is that of automatic railway couplings. In 1889 Mr Ritchie’s Bill to enforce the adoption of automatic couplings in this country was hustled out of Parliament amid great rejoicing by the railways and their friends. Yet railways are to-ciay face to face with two indisputable facts: that since 1893 when the United States Congress made the adoption of automatic couplings compulsory on the United States railroads, the number of saunters saved dip to July 31, 1902) reached over 51,000 men, who must have suffered m the very act of coupling ami uncoupling waggons under the old conditions prevailing in 1893; and that for every £50,0U0 spent on automatic couplings in tins country railways would realise from £IO,OOO to £20,000 a year, as United States railroads are doing. Well may the Prince of Wales and the President of the British Association cry aloud “Wake up” to this nation, which is thus recklessly squandering its human capital and opportunities. Invention.”