"is because people do not carry firearms as in former days...."

 

GETTING TOO COMMON.

 

   These train robberies on the Southern Pacific and other western railroads are getting too common. The facts in every case are nearly the same two or three men mopping a passenger train, running at full speed, and compelling the engineer, fireman and conductor to do their bidding. One of them entered the car and made the engineer, fireman and a tramp assist him in robbing the passengers. The occupants gladly complied with the request to disgorge their valuables, and felt happy to have gotten off so luckily. Some, in truth, were brave enough to hide their money under the berths and in hatracks and boldly to tell the robber that they were poor.

 

   There is something mysterious how one man, and even two or three, can corral a train load of passengers and have everyone quietly submit. Twenty years ago had this thing happened there would have been some shooting, not by one man alone, as in the case of the brave California sheriff a few months ago, but many would have taken part in protecting their property and lives. One reason that an occurrence such as this can and does actually take place, is because people do not carry firearms, as in former days; but the question may be seriously asked whether or net individual bravery is as great now as then it does seem incredible that no resistance was in any way shown the robbers, or that there was no one brave enough to refuse the brigands demand.

 

   A wholesale killing of train-robbers would have a most salutary effect in stopping an inconvenient and disagreeable episode, all too common, in the life of the traveling public.



[The Dalles Daily Chronicle, The Dalles, Oregon, Wednesday, July 03, 1895. Vol. VIII No. 156 Pg. 2]