l get such service as never did and never will prevent a disaster;
or it can pay a good price for competent inspection, which will be
worth ten times the money to the State. The money which the Lake
Shore Railroad paid in damages for the Ashtabula disaster alone,
would have employed permanently six men at $5,000 a year each, and a
hundred lives would have been saved besides.

With regard to highway bridges, we are, if possible, even worse off
than in regard to railway bridges; for in the case of such
structures, neither the owners nor the State make any pretence at
inspection. It is impossible to say how many highway bridges have
broken down during the past ten years, but it is estimated by
bridge-builders that the number cannot be less than two hundred. This
is, no doubt, far within the truth; and by far the larger part of
these structures are not old wooden bridges, but are new bridges of
iron.

If we knew positively that in just six months a terrible disaster
would occur under the present system of bridge inspection, and knew
also, that, by a better system, such disaster would certainly be
prevented, it is possible that a change might be made. We know that
a proper method of building and inspecting bridges would certainly
have prevented the disasters at Ashtabula, Tariffville, and Dixon. We
know that the inspection which those bridges received, did not
prevent three of the most fearful disasters the country has ever
seen. Admitting, now, that structures so important to the public
safety as bridges, both upon roads and railroads, ought to be kept
under rigid inspection and control, and that no system at present
existing has been able to prevent the most fearful catastrophes, what
shall we do? Directly after the Ashtabula disaster, the Ohio
legislative committee, appointed to investigate that affair,
presented to the Legislature a bill, "To secure greater safety for
public travel over bridges," in which was plainly specified the loads
for which all bridges should be proportioned, the maximum strains to
which the iron should be subjected, and a method for inspecting the
plans of all bridges before building, and the bridges themselves
during and after construction. The governor, with the consent of the
Senate, was to appoint the inspector for a term of five years at a
salary not exceeding $3,000 a year, such inspector to pass a
satisfactory examination before a committee of the American Society
of Civil Engineers, the