Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Фёдор (Ѳёдор) Достоевский (1821-1881), who has in these pages come in for comment in relation to Existentialism and atheism, imagines a classic right vs. good dilemma:

This could stand as a reductio ad absurdum of Utilitarianism; but Dostoyevsky himself cites one innocent person who is indeed sacrificed to build an "edifice" of "peace and tranquility," namely Jesus Christ. Jesus went to his fate willingly, unlike the little girl of the example here; but those who sent him there had something else in mind. Dostoyevsky's thought experiment was developed into a science fiction short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" [1973], by Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin, however, originally credited the device to William James, having read it in James and forgotten that it was in Dostoyevsky.

Compare: 112 men were killed during the construction of Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border (the "official" number was 98, but others had died from causes more difficult to identify -- or easier to ignore -- like by carbon monoxide poisoning): The first to die was a surveyor, J.G. Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, and the last was his son, Patrick Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1935 -- 13 years to the day after his father. The working conditions in the summer down in the canyon involved temperatures hitting highs of 119o, with lows of no less than 95o (familiar numbers to those who have visited the cities of Needles, Blythe, or Yuma in the summer).

In 1931, about the time that Hoover Dam, a federal project (with private contractors -- the whole project was "stimulus" spending conceived by Hoover to alleviate the Depression), was begun, the Empire State Building, a private project, was completed. Although the rule of thumb had been that one man would die for every story built in a skyscraper above fifteen, which would have meant 105 dead for the Empire State Building, in fact only 5 men died in the whole project. By comparison, in the earlier (1908-1913) building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by William Mulholland (d.1935), it was also the case that only 5 men died (though when Mulholland's St. Francis Dam, in Francisquito Canyon, collapsed in 1928, it killed over 500 people). The Golden Gate Bridge cost 14 lives (or 11 -- the rule of thumb there was one life for each $1,000,000 of the project, with the bridge costing $35,000.000 -- workers who fell and were caught by nets joined the "Half-Way to Hell Club" -- but one day the nets failed). The Alaska oil pipeline, built in the 1970's, cost 31 lives. The Tunnel under the English Channel, built in the early 1990's, cost 11 lives. When the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was being planned, the prediction was that 15 workers would die, but none did. Similarly, though much earlier (1927-1941), no one died during the carving of Mt. Rushmore (though workers may have died later from the effects of breathing dust from the carved rock -- this used to be a serious problem for miners, before they began flushing drill points with water, and in fact Gutzon Borglum provided breathing masks for the Mt. Rushmore workers, some of whom didn't like wearing them). Even earlier, the Chrysler Building, finished in 1930 at 77 stories, and briefly the tallest building in the world (before the Empire State Building topped out), was completed without any loss of life.

Even with such progress over time, the John Hancock Building in Chicago (1970) cost 109 lives, or, indeed, about one per floor, as predicted for the Empire State Building -- perhaps the infamous wind of Chicago made for more hazardous conditions. While it is usually ordinary workers who suffer in construction accidents, it isn't always, as was the case with the Brooklyn Bridge, whose designer, John Augustus Roebling, died from the effects of a ferry accident in 1869 while surveying the site. His son, Washington Roebling, suffered such a severe case of the bends, working in a pressurized caisson in 1872, that he supervised the rest of the construction crippled in bed, first from Trenton and then from Brooklyn, sending instructions through his wife, until the bridge was completed in 1883. Overall, 27 died on the Brooklyn Bridge, 3 from the bends (though, as with Hoover Dam, this may not count them all). Workers on the caissons were paid wages of $2 a day, a lot of money in the 1870's, but there was a turnover of 100 workers a week, out of work gangs that were less than 300 men to start with. There was also the problem that the caissons were dark, wet, claustrophobic, and nasty. It was many years before it was known what to do about the bends. Workers were still suffering from the bends when the Holland Tunnel was built in the 1920's. The chief engineer of the tunnel, Clifford Milburn Holland, died suddenly in 1924, aged 41, suspiciously of "exhaustion." The tunnel, opened in 1927, was then named after him.

The first tunnel under the Hudson was begun in 1874. Construction was abandoned in 1891 because of deaths (one blowout alone in 1880 killed 20 workers), restarted in 1903 by Alexander J. Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and not completed until 1908. All such bridges and tunnels eliminate the need for ferry boats. Even in recent years, ferry sinkings and accidents are common,

On the Staten Island Ferry, June 2003

In 1954 a typhoon sank 5 ferries in the Tsugaru Strait between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, killing 1430 people. A tunnel was begun in 1964 to eliminate the ferries, although it took 25 years to complete. The idea for the tunnel under the Hudson may have been inspired by the St. Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland, which was begun in 1872. It was only a mile under the Hudson, while the St. Gotthard would be 9.25 miles long. Nevertheless, the St. Gotthard tunnel was finished in ten years, though at a cost of 310 lives. In 2001, a truck collision resulted in a fire in the tunnel, which cost 11 lives. It turned out that the safe rooms provided by the side of the tunnel for refuge in just such cases were simply turned into ovens, killing the occupants. Because of that, the rooms have been given back doors, leading to a newly cut escape tunnel.

In New York, subsequent to the first railroad tunnel were the tunnels to bring water into the City. From the Hillview Reservoir, just outside the Bronx, the New York City Water Tunnel No.1 was completed in 1917 and the New York City Water Tunnel No.2 in 1935. The rule that developed for these projects was a dead man for every mile. Water Tunnel No.3, begun in 1970, has not involved anything like this kind of mortality, and none since 1997. Nevertheless, as of 2018, 23 workers, and one 12-year-old boy (who wandered into one of the sites), have lost their lives in the project, which is not due to be completed until 2020. Although by then 50 years will have passed, there was some urgency to Tunnel No.3, because the older tunnels have never been closed, inspected, or serviced. After some time had passed, the authorities began to fear that the aging and rusted valves, if closed, could not be easily reopened, costing the City half its water supply. This will finally be done when Tunnel No.3 is completed. Similar urgently needed public works projects around New York, like new railroad tunnels under the Hudson (Cassatt's Tunnels, as well as being a century old, were damaged by seawater from Hurricane Sandy), seem to suffer from similarly casual pacing, part of which is due to political squabbles over financing. Alexander Cassatt and the Pennsylvania Railroad didn't have such problems. Quite the opposite. The Railroad bought land for Pennsylvania Station in secret, without the use of eminent domain, not only because public knowledge would have driven up the prices, but because the infamously corrupt local politics of New York City would have required payoffs and deals. It is not clear that things have really changed all that much in the meantime -- yet New Yorkers reelect politicians that they know are corrupt [note].

Railroad Safety year billions of

passenger

miles fatalities

per billion

passenger

miles 1890 11.8 24.2 1900 16.0 15.5 1910 32.3 10.0 total deaths,

1890-1917: 230,000; during World War I, the railroads were run by the Federal Government 1920 47.4 4.8 1930 26.9 2.3 1939 22.7 1.8 1943 87.9 3.2 deaths increase during World War II with the temporary return of obsolete equipment 1950 31.8 0.6 1970 10.8 0.07

In the table we see the rate of fatalities on American railroads over time. The 230,000 deaths between 1890 and 1917 averages out to about 8500 per year -- for instance in 1897 there were 6500 deaths, 1700 of them railroad workers, but most of the rest from people being hit on the tracks (something that still happens, with four killed when a train it hit a truck, for some reason delayed at a railroad crossing, carrying wounded veterans in a Veterans Day Parade in Midland, Texas, on 15 November 2012). This toll seems excessive and appalling, and obviously much of it a function of the railroad tracks not being separated from other traffic and public access, but we might compare it with recent traffic fatalities for automobiles, which have been above 40,000 per year for every year since since 1962, except for 1992. Between 1966 and 1974, deaths were actually above 50,000 a year. This constant absolute rate of fatalities nevertheless reflects improvement, since the population of the country has grown greatly during the period, and the vehicle miles travelled have increased from 805,000 in 1963 to 2,880,000 in 2003. So the rate of fatalities has fallen significantly.

The industry of mining anthracite coal in Pennsylvania cost 30,000 lives between 1869 and 1950. This averages out to about 370 deaths a year or more than one death a day. Such a rate actually seems low compared to railroad deaths or modern highway deaths; and although today there are still deaths from mining, even in Pennsylvania, most modern coal mining, which used to employ thousands of men underground, now is handled by a couple dozen men working open pit mines in the air-conditioned cabs of giant trucks and shovels. Fatalities are rare under those circumstances.

The worst loss of life in an American railroad accident was 101 killed on 9 July 1918, at a place called "Dutchman's Curve" in Nashville, Tennessee. Lest we chalk this up this horror to the corporate indifference and greed of the railroads, the accident took place during World War I, when the Federal Government had taken over the railroads and was running them. The Fed did not do a good job of it -- Dutchman's Curve may be an example of that -- which is one reason why no such takeover occurred during World War II, despite the record of hostility for business of the Roosevelt Administration (the President may himself have begun losing patience with the ideologues around him, including Eleanor). Nevertheless, the rate of fatalities did increase during World War II, when the level of traffic required that obsolete equipment be returned to service.

Meanwhile, railroad fatalities have become rare -- although the occasional wreck can be spectacular -- I was visiting Boulder, Colorado, in 1985 when two Burlington Northern trains collided head-on under a freeway overpass, which was destroyed, just outside of town. The engine crews were killed, although I don't think this amounted to more than four persons. Part of the reduction in fatalities is the circumstance that the number of railroad employees has fallen from some 2 million in 1920 to only 177,000 in 2004. A train that used to require a large crew (including multiple brakemen) now may only be driven by two (with one recent fatal wreck, in the San Fernando Valley, caused by the lonely engineer ignoring red lights because he was texting -- although in that case the loss of life of passengers was significant).

Lest we think that in its time the railroads were unusually dangerous, of linemen working on the new electrical systems in the 1890's, no less than half of them were killed on the job, generally from electrical shock. This is still a very dangerous business, although fatalities now do not seem to be common.



An underwater tunnel is being constructed despite an almost certain loss of several lives [actually, all but certain]. Presumably the expected loss is a calculated cost that society is prepared to pay for having the tunnel ["society" doesn't make any such calculation]. At a critical moment when a fitting must be lowered into place, a workman is trapped in a section of the partly laid tunnel. If it is lowered, it will surely crush the trapped workman to death. Yet, if it is not and a time consuming rescue of the workman is attempted, the tunnel will have to be abandoned and the whole project begun anew. Two workmen have already died in the project as a result of anticipated and unavoidable conditions in the building of the tunnel. What should be done? Was it a mistake to begin the tunnel in the first place? But don't we take such risks all the time?

We can get some clarity about this example by asking what the police would do if they are informed that the work foreman has authorized the deliberate crushing of a worker. I suspect that he would immediately be arrested for murder.

With these tunnels and bridges, the moral principle involved with the deaths is a simple one: because of the projects, fewer people die later. Thus, while workers know that the projects are dangerous, and they are willing to take the risk for better wages or pride in the projects, there is an absolute calculus of saved lives once the tunnels or the bridges replace the ferries, or when a fresh water supply prevents diseases like cholera and typhoid fever, which claimed many lives in the 19th century, including Prince Albert of England. Contrariwise, deaths on something like a movie set do not seem balanced by any saved lives, which means that any deaths, such as those of Vic Morrow and others on the set of Twilight Zone, the Movie in 1982, seem intolerable and wrongful. Thus, when Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee, was killed in a freak accident filming The Crow in 1993, permanent changes were made in the filming of action movies. Lee was killed by a metal fragment of a shattered bullet casing, which proved deadly even though the bullet was a blank. Now, it is prohibited for guns to be fired, even with blanks, in the direction of actors. The camera angle, of course, can make it look like the gun is directed at its target. Or, as is becoming more common, the firing of the gun can be inserted digitally.

Other professions pose more of a moral challenge. One of the deadliest professions of all is simply commercial fishing. Dealing with heavy equipment, including chains, ropes, hooks, nets, booms, etc., on a wet heaving deck, in the dark, cold, ice, etc., is an obvious formula for injury, maiming, or death. Is this worth it just so people can eat fish? Well, the provison of food obviously saves lives by sustaining life in the first place, and many people think that fish is a healthier source of protein than something like red meat. The calculus in those terms is not obvious, since fishing is much, much more dangerous than raising cows. In those terms, whether it is worth it may need to be left to the fishermen themselves. As it happens, small fishermen, who run the most risk, now tend to be replaced with factory ships, which are safer for the crews. But the small fishermen don't like being put out of business, since they prefer their traditional way of life for personal and aesthetic reasons -- and they would probably need to leave their local towns to find work elsewhere. They may not appreciate the argument that the danger of their way of life discounts their enjoyment of its beauty, dignity, and challenge and makes the factory ships preferable.

A similar problem occurs with logging. Lumberjacks also take pride in the beauty, majesty, and danger of their profession. But the on-the-job death rate is over 110 per 100,000 loggers per year -- thirty times the national average. If the wood is used for housing, and housing saves lives by sustaining health from the elements, then we can calculate that the cost is worth it. But other materials are available for housing, and not all the wood from logging is used for that purpose. So if logging is very dangerous, which it is, this makes the proposition even more dubious than with fishing. It may come down to the other uses of wood, which are many, and which may be more essential to modern life, which as such preserve and extend lives beyond what was the case when wood was more essential for housing and energy than it is now. The need, as with fishing, should be reflected in prices, and so also in the wages for the skilled labor involved -- with the complication that the use, misuse, overuse, or underuse of National Forests becomes a political issue, and a football for rent seekers and ideological Environmentalists, that obscures what the real costs of the resource are. The loggers, like the fishermen, may need to make their own call about the value of what they do -- and they also may make (glamorized) money off the "reality" shows about their work.

Part of traditional logging was floating the cut logs down rivers to sawmills. There might be so many logs in a river that they could jam, creating a log dam and the potential for all kinds of trouble and damage. To keep the logs from jamming, or to break up jams, was the job of the log rollers. It is said that for every lumberjack who died in the forest, ten log rollers died on the rivers. It is not hard to imagine the peril of their jobs, walking around on logs that roll under their feet, where falling between the logs could quickly mean being crushed by them. Fortunately, most logs are now trucked out of forests rather than floated down rivers. Log rolling is reduced to a fun and humorous event at fairs or woodcraft competitions. This is progress. Of course, now the Federal Government wants every logging road treated with all the same permit requirements and regulations as Interstate highways. The rivers may come back into use.

There seems to be one other profession that, like fishing and logging, is more dangerous than being a policeman. That is roofing. Roofers fall off of roofs. It is not hard to imagine the danger of this. It is also not hard to see the benefit in social welfare from roofs. Even if fishing was stopped, and homes and furniture were no longer made of wood, houses would still need roofs. A "roof over your head" is pretty essential to human well being. Safety harnesses exist for roofing, as for work in high-rise construction; but, since roofers are often independent contractors, the only people at some pains to see that harnesses get used would be their insurance companies, who will not always be on site. Otherwise, roofers might not want to bother and may indeed exult, like fishermen and loggers, in the danger of their job.