Witness this ARA Safety Section Committee on Education poster. Perhaps a bar graph featuring maimed children might have been mainstream stuff in the Middle Ages, but by the time of its publication in 1934... well, we doubt that it would score many points at a PTA meeting. On the other hand, this would be nothing compared to the ensuing riot of PTA mothers following their discovery of on image, featuring Smokey's last moments, juxtapositioned on a third grade classroom wall between finger paintings of kitties.

Aside from all of that, and correct us if we are getting this wrong, doesn't it appear that little Billy has just tossed a ball for Smokey to fetch smack in the face of a speeding locomotive - this following his loss of a leg during a prior playdate-gone-grisly down in the yards? How could the committee's collaborative efforts be so clueless that they would arrive at such a patently stupid role model? Wx4 can only give its stock answer to one of railroading's imponderables:

By and large, railroaders are intelligent people, who all too frequently come together to do stupid things.

And what about poor Smokey? If Samuel Clemens had lived long enough to encounter this, he likely would have remarked that Smokey was a cat formed by a committee. We would opine that being a railroad industry committee creation can be a humiliating thing, even for a fictional character, especially when the quality of work evidently is the railroad equivalent to an automotive industry "Friday car".

Finally, you may have noticed that this poster is actually a 1992 reproduction done by Norfolk Southern. This leaves us sorta non-plussed regarding their thinking (or lack thereof), but it does confirm our premise that railroaders don't get out much.