Chapter XXVIII: Lessons of the Event

The narrative of this great disaster is finished; space does not admit of the addition of further material.

All that remains to be said is of a religious nature. Mr. Devereaux, as representative of the friends of the Road, beautifully alluded to Moses as a Civil Engineer. So we, in conclusion, go to the word of God for the lesson of the hour.

Moses went up the mountain and received the patterns of all things which were to be made; but the Israelites were not permitted to transgress the bounds set at the base, “lest they die.” Skill in art and architecture was in those days regarded as an inspiration from God, as was proved in the case of Bezaleel, who had knowledge of all inventions.

In our day we have invaded the region of storms, and have thought to seize the forces which belong to the Almighty; but the result has been death--death unforseen, unexpected, appalling, heartrending. Men have found by hard experience that it is dangerous to lay hold of these grand elements of nature. Until they have become more reverent, conscientious, God-fearing and unselfish, they are not fit to enter the dangerous precincts where the Almighty dwells. In some way, even if knowledge is attained, the sin and selfishness of men will bring the lightnings and the fire out of the mountain, and men shall surely die.

The great forces of nature have a sacredness about them, and the laws of the universe an inviolability, which will admit of no wantonness or careless handling for selfish ends. But until a sense of accountability to God prevails, the safety of property and of human life cannot be secured. No coroner’s jury, no legislative committee, no congressional enactment, will make men realize how sacred are many of these responsibilities of life. The haste to get rich and the desire to make men serve the purpose of money-getting, and the control over many to the enrichment of the few, will destroy the sense of accountability and blind men, so that they run profanely into the very place where God has the hidings of his power, but the result is that they do not know how to handle the lightnings and to control the storms, and they are appalled at the calamities which their own temerity has brought down.

The people must understand that with all this control over the elements, the increase of knowledge and power, there is no safety anywhere except in God. It is sad that this lesson has to be impressed by many deaths when it is taught by every one. The terrible experiences of many, concentrate because we will not listen to the hints given gently to each of us. The storms and hurricanes and great shocks and calamities and horrid deaths, come because we will not listen to wisdom; and yet God is not in the storm or in the earthquake, but is in the still small voice.

It is indeed well to say that safety must be secured, selfishness shall be rebuked, laws should be studied, skill employed, this blundering, heedless, reckless mode of life must be stopped; but where in all the advance of art and education, has there appeared immunity from accidents or safety from death. No, with all the conservatism which may be advocated, with all the plans for skilled labor and with all the attainment of knowledge, is there not need of that which God alone can give, even the bringing in of a better hope.

If there were no vanities, errors, or perversities to bring destruction from out the elements which men have not learned to control, even then death would come. There must be a higher life which is not subject to the destructive forces. The mercy of God and the deliverance wrought out for us by His Son has respect as much to the material creation as to the moral state. In some way we shall attain to a further control of the unseen forces and shall know more of the great laws of God. But happy are we if the death which must come, shall be like that of Moses, who, after his long wanderings and faithful discharge of duty, went up Mount Pisgah and looked over the promised inheritance to which the people should enter, but he himself took up his dwelling place with God.

THE CORONER’S VERDICT.

“It is from a careful consideration of the evidence elicited from
professionals and experts that our verdict is made up in the matter
of the bridge, and should it seem severe upon the railway company,
or upon any of its past or present officials, it is because the
truth, as shown by the evidence, demands it at our hands. We
cannot do less and feel that we have discharged our duty. Mr.
Amasa Stone, President of the company at the time of the erection
of this structure, had been for years a prominent and successful
railroad contractor and builder of wooden Howe truss bridges. With
the undoubted intention of building a strong, safe, and durable
wrought-iron bridge, upon the Howe truss plan, he designed the
structure, dictated the drawing of the plans and the erection of
the bridge, without the approval of any competent engineer, and
against the protest of the man who made the drawings under Mr.
Stone’s direction, assuming the sole and entire responsibility
himself. Iron bridges were then in their infancy, and this one was
an experiment which ought never to have been tried or trusted to
span so broad and so deep a chasm. This experiment has been at a
fearful cost of human life and human suffering. Unquestionably,
Mr. Stone had great confidence in his own abilities, and believed
he could build and had built a structure which would prove the
crowning glory of an active life and an enduring monument to his
name. That the officials of the railroad regarded the bridge as
safe we have no doubt, as two of them were on the train that
went down, and all were more or less frequently passing over it.
That the fall of the bridge was the result of defects and errors
made in designing, constructing, and erecting it. That a great
defect, and one which appears in many parts of the structure, was
the dependence of every member for its efficient action upon
the probability that all or nearly all the others would retain
their position and do the duty for which they were designed,
instead of giving each member a positive connection with the rest,
which nothing but a direct rupture could sever. That the railway
company used and continued to use this bridge about eleven years,
during all which time a careful inspection by a competent bridge
engineer could not have failed to discover the defects. For the
neglect of such careful inspection, the railway company alone is
responsible. That the responsibility of this fearful disaster and
its consequent loss of life rests upon the railway company, which,
by its chief executive officer, planned and erected this bridge;
that the cars in which the deceased passengers were carried into
the chasm, were not heated by heating apparatus so constructed
that the fire in them would be immediately extinguished whenever
the cars were thrown from the track and overturned; that their
failure to comply with the plain requirements of the law places
the responsibility of the origin of the fire upon the railway
company; that the responsibility for not putting out the fire at
the time it first made its appearance in the wreck, rests upon
those who were the first to arrive at the scene of the disaster,
and who seemed to have been so overwhelmed by the fearful calamity
that they lost all presence of mind, and failed to use the means
at hand, consisting of the steam pump in the pumping-house and the
fire engine Lake Erie and its hose, which might have been attached
to the steam pump in time to save life. The steamer belonging to
the Fire Department, and also the Protection fire engine, were
hauled more than a mile through a blinding snow-storm, and over
roads rendered almost impassable by the drifted snow, and arrived
on the ground too late to save human life; but nothing should have
prevented the Chief Engineer from making all possible efforts to
extinguish what fire there remained. For his failure to do this he
is responsible. The persons deceased, whose bodies were identified
and those whose bodies and parts of bodies were unidentified came
to their death by the precipitation of the aforesaid cars, in which
they were riding, into the chasm in the valley of Ashtabula creek,
left by the falling of the bridge, as aforesaid; the crushing and
burning of cars aforesaid, for all of which the railway company is
responsible.”

Transcribers’ Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; heavy use of commas has been retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

With the exception of the Frontispiece, all uncaptioned illustrations are decorative tailpieces.

Page vi: “Westenhouse was printed that way.”

Page 134: Quotation marks added to surround the paragraph beginning “In the coming down”.

Page 143: Closing quotation mark added to the paragraph ending “upon the suffering.”

Page 151: The closing quotation mark in paragraph ending “the Lord knoweth them that are his.” appears to represent the close of a quotation within a quotation.

Page 170: Extraneous closing quotation mark deleted following “she wore a heavy, plain, gold ring.”

End of Project Gutenberg's The Ashtabula Disaster, by Stephen D. Peet