INVENTIONS AND NEW PERILS TO LIFE.
By New York World
INVENTION is the promoter of progress. It is also the general agent for new forms of death and fire. With the railroad came fresh prosperity and the opening of a frightful record of killing and maiming. With trolley cars came the wholesome expansion of dwelling areas and the beginning of a long series of street-crossing fatalities. The automobile, a creation of large promise for purposes both of business and recreation, is already a daily instrument of destruction to human victims. Even the refrigerating plant designed for apartment-house health and comfort revealed menacing possibilities through a night explosion that made a sensational news item of the week just passed in New York. Modern life is lived literally "In the midst of alarms." If we escape peril ourselves our neighbor is fatally caught. Almost we come to envy the man of the old forest life, that security to life and limb which was broken chiefly by the few accidents of nature. A tree might fall upon him, fire or flood overtake him, a hungry beast make an unexpected spring. To us has come the artificial multiplication of profitable dangers.