d
company, which recklessly allows its trains to pass over it. In yet
another State, the commissioners in 1874 reported that a certain
bridge should be removed; and this was quite correct, as it was an
eminently unsafe bridge. In 1875 they suggested the same thing again.
In 1876 they say, "This bridge must be rebuilt the coming spring." In
1877 they again reported, "This bridge must be rebuilt before the
spring opens. It is old, and will not be safe for the passage of
trains over it, if the ice or freshet should take away the temporary
trestles, which now in a great measure support the truss."

A year later than that, in 1878, a public protest was made against
the further use of that bridge, as the lower chords were rotten,
broken, pulled apart, and the only thing that held it up was a
trestle, liable at any time to be knocked out by the ice; and yet,
after all this, in reply to the protest, the commissioners replied
that they had just "tested" the bridge by running an engine over it,
and pronounced it "safe for the present," whatever that may mean.
Now, just how it was that this bridge, which was old, rotten, and
worn out, which the commissioners themselves had condemned for four
successive years, which they had said two years before must be
rebuilt the coming spring, and which relied entirely upon a trestle
liable at any time to be carried away, had suddenly become "safe for
the present," is not plain to see.

Evidently such inspection as this is of no value. It is exactly this
utterly incompetent and dishonest inspection, this guessing that a
bridge will stand until it falls, that lies at the bottom of half the
disasters in the country. It is under exactly such inspection that
those wretched traps, the Ashtabula and Tariffville bridges, fell,
and killed over one hundred people. No wonder that railroad officials
have an undisguised contempt for State inspection. While in a few
States the inspection is not quite so bad as that referred to, as a
general thing it is no better; and we have no right to expect any
thing better under the present system. The State inspection which we
have had throughout this country has not prevented the breaking down
of one hundred bridges in the past ten years. Twenty-five States have
railroad commissions; but in nine of them the commission consists of
only a single man, who, in some cases, is paid only $500 a year. A
State can pay $500 a year for having its bridges inspected, and it
wil