In many ways humanity is indebted to the railroad man to as great a degree as to the sailor. The latter, indeed, has greater hardships to endure; he is not nearly so well paid, and he has to submit to a much stricter code of discipline. But for some reason the railroad man has the more dangerous occupation, if one may judge from a comparison of the fatalities that occur at sea and on the rail. In a storm at sea, when battened down under closed hatches, with nothing to think about but the fury of the gale and our own helpless situation, we appreciate to the full our dependence upon the courage and watchfulness of the sailor. But the public does not consider a railroad man from quite the same viewpoint, for the reason, perhaps, that the unavoidable dangers on the rail are not to be compared with the ever-present peril that surrounds a ship in its battle with the elements. And yet when we come to compare actual results, that is, the statistics in regard to ship travel and train travel, one is quickly confronted with the conclusion that the public is fully as dependent for its safety upon the human elements of vigilance and consecration to duty in the one case as in the other. Looking at our subject from the widest standpoint, however, it is evident that the dangers that threaten a passenger on the steam-cars are more numerous than the passenger himself has any idea of, and these dangers are very uncertain in their nature and difficult to guard against. Constant attention and supervision is being universally exercised by the railroad officials, for the purpose of reducing to a minimum the number of accidents that occur from defective equipment and the like; but the accidents caused by the personal neglect or carelessness of the individual employee is a branch of the subject that calls for a very different kind of investigation and treatment. In order to get an intelligent and comprehensive idea of these railroad accidents, both avoidable and unavoidable, the National Government has directed and empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission to secure and to publish statistics on the subject. In this way, for a number of years, the public has been kept informed in regard to all casualties of whatever nature that take place on our railroads. But right here the work and influence of the National and State Commissions, as well as of all railroad managers and individual investigators into the personal side of the problem, come to an end. Being in full possession and understanding of the actual results of our system of operating the railroad, the authorities seem disinclined to adopt any radical measures for the improvement of the service. In a report prepared for Congress some time ago, by the Interstate Commerce Commission, it was distinctly affirmed that these avoidable accidents are mostly due to the failure in duty of signalmen and enginemen.