Railroad workers faced battlefield rates of death from dangerous car coupling

Evidence

In his first message he said: “It is competent, I think, for Congress to require uniformity in the construction of cars used in interstate comerce, and the use of improved safety appliances upon such trains. Time will be necessary to make the needed changes, but an earnest and intelligent beginning should be made at once. It is a reproach to our civilization that any class of American workmen should, in the pursuit of a necessary and useful vocation, be subjected to a peril of life and limb as great as that of a soldier in time of war.” … And he reiterated his recommendation in succeeding messages, saying in that for 1892: “Statistics furnished by the Interstate Caimerce Commission show that during the year ending June 30, 1891, there were forty-seven different styles of car couplers reported to be in use, and that during the same period there were 2,660 employees killed and 26,140 injured. Nearly 16 per cent of the deaths occurred in the coupling and uncoupling of cars, and over 36 per cent of the injuries had the same origin.” — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1145

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Requiring universal inter-coupling between all cars would have created a coupler monopoly — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1007; The five-year phase-in shows Congress contemplated a substantial equipment change — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1038; Warehouse work injures workers at rates exceeding coal mining and logging — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 287

Broader Connections

• Warehouse work injures workers at rates exceeding coal mining and logging #corroborates (0.72) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 287