A comparison of the disgraceful list of disasters in the United States with the experience of England and Germany reveals a contrast amazing beyond belief. While the totals representing the loss of life and property in the United States are mounting steadily higher year by year the figures in those two nations, never large, show a decrease. In making comparisons it must be borne in mind that the returns in England and Germany are official and complete while those for this country are only such incomplete returns as could be gathered by a private corporation.

An official report of the British Board of Trade, the Marine department of which is charged with the investigation of all boiler explosions, whether in vessels or elsewhere, shows that in the twenty-five years from 1882 to 1907 there were 1,705 boiler explosions in Great Britain which killed 697 persons and injured 1,460, as compared with 7,408 explosions in the United States in

which 7,144 persons were killed and 10,874 were injured in the same period. In other words, we had four times as many explosions as Great Britain in which ten times as many persons were killed and seven times as many injured. This is an average of 68.2 explosions per year in Great Britain as compared with 180 to 550 a year in this country. The greatest number killed by boiler explosions in Great Britain in one year was 43 in 1895; the smallest number killed by boiler explosions in the United States in any year the same period was 244. The greatest number injured in any one year in Great Britain during the period was 85 in 1895; the smallest number injured in one year during the period in the United States was 220 in 1904.

The disgraceful record cannot be explained away by assuming that the number of boilers in use in this country was correspondingly larger than in Great

Britain. While statistics on this point are not available it is certain that the difference is not enough larger to account for the difference in the number of explosions.

If a comparison with Great Britain is damaging a similar comparison with Germany is damning. Police returns show that in the thirty-one years from 1877 to 1907 inclusive there were 498 boiler explosions in Germany, or an average of 16.1 per year, in which 319 persons were killed, an average of 10.3 per year, and 613 injured, or an average of 19.8 per year. During the same period in the United States there were 8,692 explosions, or seventeen times as many as there were in Germany, in which 8,768 persons were killed, or twentyseven times as many as in Germany, and 13,151 injured, or more than twenty-one times as many as in Germany.

Facts familiar to all who have any

thing to do with steam explain this contrast. It is common knowledge that no other appliance used by man suffers so much from ignorant abuse as the steam boiler. Any one is considered capable of managing a boiler. Incompetence, indifference and neglect in the handling of boilers are common. In the explosion of seven boilers at St. Louis already referred to, in which seven men were killed and property valued at $50,000 was destroyed one of the feed pipes was found completely plugged up with solid scale through which not a drop of water could be forced. The other feed pipe was filled up with the exception of an opening one-eighth of an inch in diameter. The inspectors of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company alone examined 342,136 boilers last year, of which 642 were found unfit for further use. Besides these 169,356 defects were found of which 16,385 were dangerous.

During the last session of Congress no fewer than seven bills were introduced providing of the inspection of locomotive boilers; yet in 1909 only 7.6 per cent of the total number of boiler explosions were of locomotives. It does seem as if a little inspecting might come

in handy in other quarters, and that the subject thereof should be, not the boilers, but the men who have charge of them.

A judicious application of English methods might be expected to work miracles in reducing the number of boiler explosions. In America when a boiler blows up and kills a few people not a word is said; for is it not an act of Providence that could not be foreseen nor prevented?

In England Providence is not blamed. for the incompetence of man. There a boiler explosion is always followed by an investigation by the Board of Trade. If that investigation happens to disclose the fact that the boiler had not been inspected or that the inspection was inadequate, or that the inspector made suggestions to the owner of the boiler that were not carried out, the person or company at fault is fined and the fact of his negligence is given full publicity. The investigations following the 77 explosions in England in 1907 resulted in fines in 22 cases ranging from $25 to $2,000. For American use the addition of prison sentences to fines might add ginger to the English plan and go the islanders one better.

-JOHN J. INGALLS.

GROWING appreciation of the historical value of the old Cumberland Road has induced the states through which it passes to undertake more or less extensive repairs along the ancient thoroughfare. Pennsylvania is resurfacing her part of it, and many of the counties in Ohio and Indiana are doing what they can to mend the great highway, which in its day was by far the most important in this country.

Hopes are entertained that the Federal government may be persuaded to coöperate with the states in a scheme for

the reconstruction of the famous Pike all the way from Cumberland, Maryland, to its western terminus at St. Louis. Nearly eight hundred miles in length, and following an almost perfectly straight course from Atlantic tidewater to the Mississippi River, it would furnish a magnificent pathway for automobiles.

If this shall be accomplished, with or without help from Congress, the old road will again become a busy thoroughfare. Taverns will open their hospitable doors at frequent intervals along its length, as in the ancient days, and the echoes of the hills in the passes of the

Allegheny Mountains will be awakened by the cheerful honking of motor horns-just as in former times they responded to the merry tootling of the coach guards' trumpets. It would become the fashion for automobile parties to "do the Pike," the long straightaway stretches of which would afford most attractive opportunities for speeding, while a trip over it in a gasoline car might well be deemed worth taking for the mere sake of the extraordinarily picturesque and beautiful scenery.

Of all the millions of people who visited the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, only a relative few had any notion of the fact that "The Pike," corresponding to the "Midway" at the Chicago fair, took its name from the old Cumberland Road, or Pike, as it was commonly called. In the Middle West, even at the present day, when anything novel or remarkable turns up, it is spoken of as having "come down the Pike"-this being a survival of the idea that everything odd or out of the common might be expected to arrive by way of the great national highway.

Comparatively few of the present generation realize that this was in its time

the most widely known and most heavily traveled road in the United States. It was famous for the number and excellence of its taverns. On the mountain division nearly every mile had its inn-some of these places of welcome for wayfarers being sheltered behind clumps of trees, with inviting seats for passersby. The tavern signs were usually elevated on posts, while, according to an appreciative historian of those days, "the dripping of the overflow of water from the horse-troughs on the growing mint beds below lent a charm to the scene that was well nigh enchanting."

At intervals of about twelve miles along the road were "stage houses"-inns more or less pretentious, where stage horses were put up, and travelers were entertained. But these were supplemented at every mile or two by less imposing "wagon houses," depending for their patronage mainly upon the freight traffic of the great thoroughfare. Here the teamsters, transporting food products and merchandise of various kinds in huge canvas-covered vehicles, paused for refreshment—the bill for a six-horse team, put up over night,