Death in the Day Coach
A critique of railway safety inequality: why the public travels in 'flimsy' coaches while officials ride in reinforced steel.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Two disastrous railway wrecks that have recently occurred but repeat history in one respect. It was only the occupants of the common day coaches who were killed and injured. This result is not peculiar to these particular wrecks. It is ever noticeable that Pullman cars, and more especially the private cars of the railway officials, are proof against serious damage. This shows definitely that the railway companies can, if they will, furnish cars that will not 'telescope' and crush like paper boxes. Most of the wreck fatalities may be attributed to the fact that common coaches are inexcusably fragile as compared with the mechanical possibilities. Here is fatal negligence, which, if it is not criminal, ought speedily to be made so in all the states.
“The general traveling public, that cannot pay the extra charges, is given no protection whatever.”
This reflects an early 20th-century preoccupation with industrial safety and the class divide inherent in public transit infrastructure. The argument for corporate responsibility in infrastructure remains at the heart of contemporary transit and safety debates.
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