se they never happen to have received the load
which is at any time liable to come upon them.

A few years ago an iron highway bridge at Dixon, Ill., fell, while a
crowd was upon it, and killed sixty persons. The briefest inspection
of that bridge by any competent engineer would have been sure to
condemn it. A few years later the Ashtabula bridge upon the Lake
Shore Railroad broke down under an express train, and killed over
eighty passengers. The report of the committee of the Ohio
Legislature appointed to investigate that disaster concluded, first,
that the bridge went down under an ordinary load by reason of
defects in its original construction; and, secondly, that the defects
in the original construction of the bridge could have been discovered
at any time after its erection by careful examination. Hardly had the
public recovered from the shock of this terrible disaster when the
Tariffville calamity added its list of dead and wounded to the long
roll already charged to the ignorance and recklessness which
characterize so much of the management of the public works in this
country.

There are many bridges now in use upon our railroads in no way better
than those at Ashtabula and Tariffville, and which await only the
right combination of circumstances to tumble down. There are, by the
laws of chance, just so many persons who are going to be killed on
those bridges. There are hundreds of highway bridges now in daily
use which are in no way safer than the bridge at Dixon was, and which
would certainly be condemned by five minutes of competent and honest
inspection. More than that, many of them have already been condemned
as unfit for public use, but yet are allowed to remain, and invite
the disaster which is sure to come. Can nothing be done to prevent
this reckless and wicked waste of human life? Can we not have some
system of public control of public works which shall secure the
public safety? The answer to this question will be, Not until the
public is a good deal more enlightened upon these matters than it is
now.

It has been very correctly remarked, that, in order to bring a
disaster to the public notice, it must be emphasized by loss of
life. The Ashtabula bridge fell, and killed over eighty persons; and
a storm of indignation swept over the country, from one end to the
other. No language was severe enough to apply to the managers of the
Lake Shore Railroad; but if that very bridge had fallen under a
freight-