was
more important to describe a disaster after it had occurred than to
endeavor to prevent the occurrence; but, as a business man, he knew
perfectly well that his patrons would read an account giving all of
the sickening detail of a terrible catastrophe, while few, if any,
would wade through a dry discussion of the means for protecting the
public from just such disasters. The public is always very indignant
with the effect, but does not care to trouble itself with the cause;
but the effect never will be prevented until the cause is
controlled; and the sooner the public understands that the cause is
in its own hands, to be controlled, or not, as it chooses, the sooner
we shall have a remedy for the fearful disasters which are altogether
too common in the United States.

In a country where government controls all matters on which the
public safety depends, and where no bridge over which the public is
to pass is allowed to be built except after the plans have been
approved by competent authority, where no work can be executed except
under the rigid inspection of the best experts, nor opened to the
public until it has been officially tested and accepted, it makes
little or no difference whether the public is informed, or not, upon
these matters; but in a country like the United States, where any man
may at any time open a shop for the manufacture of bridges, whether
he knows any thing about the business, or not, and is at liberty to
use cheap and insufficient material, and where public officers are
always to be found ready to buy such bridges, simply because the
first cost is low, and to place them in the public ways, it makes a
good deal of difference. There is at present in this country
absolutely no law, no control, no inspection, which can prevent the
building and the use of unsafe bridges; and there never will be until
the people who make the laws see the need of such control.

There is no one thing more important in this matter than that we
should be able to fix precisely the blame in case of disaster upon
some person to whom the proper punishment may be applied. If every
railway director, or town or county officer, knew that he was held
personally accountable for the failure of any bridge in his charge,
we should soon have a decided improvement in these structures. If we
could show that a certain bridge in a large town had been for a long
time old, rotten, worn out, and liable at any moment to tumble down,
and co