REPORT OF MR. ROBERT B. LINES.
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matter of necessity to the public, whose safety is at stake. As very few accidents are due to natural or inevitable causes, it follows that there must be somewhere responsibility for them, and it may be said that the surest method of preventing them would be to concentrate this responsibility upon some one person against whom penalties may be directed. To a limited extent this theory may be correct. Were the remedies of the law always obtainable, however, and always rigidly enforced, they could afford no adequate compensation for the terrible consequences 'of railway accidents. The policy of prevention must, therefore, be almost entirely dissociated from any idea of remedy.
In some European railways there are employed immense numbers of flagmen, at short distances, to protect the trains. Even if this were the best system, it would be obviously impossible to guard every step of a railway in America by human agency. Machinery of some sort must, therefore, be trusted to; and thus far electricity seems to offer almost the only practicable solution of the question.
The "special” telegraphic service, or railway signal system, as it exists in Europe (or rather on the continent), is very fully represented at the Vienna Exhibition, but the apparatus exhibited by the different countries is variously classified. In some cases it is placed in Group XIII., with " Machinery and Means of Transport,” in others, in Group XIV., with "Philosophical Instruments,” or Group XVIII., "Civil Engineering and Architecture,” and still again in "Additional Exhibitions,” such as those of the Austrian railways. Aside from this, the exhibits of different countries in the same group are so far apart that it has been exceedingly difficult to make a comparative examination. In many cases, also, there are no pamphlets or explanations accompanying the apparatus, and no one in charge to work or give information in regard to it. I have endeavored, however, to investigate as thoroughly as possible not only the systems represented here, but others which are not exhibited, and trust the result may not be without value.
In a recent French report upon this subject (Resume des conferences sur la telegraphic electrique , jpar M. Amiot,