train, and no one had been injured, the occurrence would have
been dismissed with a paragraph, if, indeed, it had received even
that recognition. In February, 1879, a span one hundred and ten feet
long of an iron bridge on the Chicago and Alton Railroad at
Wilmington fell as a train of empty coal-cars was passing over it,
and three cars were precipitated into the river, a distance of over
thirty feet. No one was injured. Not a word of comment was ever made
in regard to this occurrence. Suppose, that, in place of empty
coal-cars, the train had consisted of loaded passenger-cars, and
that one hundred persons had been killed. We know very well what the
result would have been. Is not the company just as much to blame in
one case as the other? On the night of the 8th of November, 1879, one
span of the large bridge over the Missouri at St. Charles gave way as
a freight-train was crossing it, and seventeen loaded stock-cars fell
a distance of eighty feet into the river. Two brakemen and two
drovers were killed. This bridge, says the only account that appeared
in the papers, did not break apparently, for the whole span "went
down" with the cars upon it. It could hardly make much difference to
the four men who were killed, whether the bridge broke down, or
"went" down. Not a word of comment was ever made in the papers
outside of Missouri in regard to this disaster. Suppose, that, in
place of seventeen stock-cars, half a dozen passenger-cars had fallen
from a height of eighty feet into the river, and that, in place of
killing two brakemen and two drovers, two or three hundred passengers
had been killed. Is not the public just as much concerned in one case
as in the other?

Suppose that a bridge now standing is exactly as unsafe as the
Ashtabula bridge was the day before it fell, would it be possible to
awaken public attention enough to have it examined? Probably not.
About two years ago an attempt was made to induce one of the leading
dailies in this country to expose a wretchedly unsafe bridge in New
England. The editor declined, on the ground that the matter was not
of sufficient interest for his readers; but less than a month
afterwards he devoted three columns of his paper to a detailed
account of a bridge disaster in Scotland, and asked why it was that
such things must happen, and if there was no way of determining in
advance whether a bridge was safe, or not?

This editor certainly would not maintain, that, in itself, it