Disasters, Fatalities, of 1907.
THE following items gleaned from the Chicago Tribune, of January 1, brought down as late as Dec. 28, 1907, are worthy of note. In the automobile fatalities of 1907, 324 were killed and 1,244 injured, as compared with 200 killed and 851 injured last year. In the hunting field 191 were killed and 155 wounded, 13 more killed than last year, but 12 less wounded. Railroad fatalities were great. 2,989 were killed and 3,997 injured on steam roads, while 717 were killed and 3,950 injured on the electric roads. And the Tribune adds that were the number of trainmen and others employed by the roads added, the total would be largely increased, as may be inferred from the reports made by the Interstate Commerce Committee in 1906, which gave the total of 3,817 employees killed and 55,524 injured. 1907 was considered a year of peace so far as regular war is concerned, and yet the loss of life was about 25,000, occurring in Morocco, Arabia, Roumania, Formosa, Russia, Honduras, Algeria, and thirteen other countries. The lynchings of 1907 were the smallest for twenty years, amounting to 63, six less than last year, three less than the year previous. While there were no great fire losses in 1907, yet the aggregate is immense. The total loss from fire in 1906 was $159,000,000. This does not include the San Francisco fire of $352,000,000. Apart from the San Francisco fire the loss of 1907 was $190,000,000. Marine disasters upon the ocean in 1907 were 1,785, on inland waters, 344. Twenty-two vessels were lost upon the Great Lakes, the means of the destruction of 135 lives. The executions in 1907 were 104, 43 of these in the North, and 61 in the South. The principal mining disasters give a total of 1,210 killed in this country and 1,235 in foreign countries. The total fatalities of great and small number in this country 1,984. But the Tribune reminds us that many individual cases are never reported. The number of homicides or violent deaths of all sorts, excepting suicides and lynchings, reported in the newspapers was 8,712, 638 less than the number reported in the last year. The most fruitful cause, outnumbering all others, is that of quarrels; more than one-half of the deaths are ascribed to this one cause. How much of whisky there is behind that is a question. It was not all fun in the great sporting world; 242 persons were killed and 4,258 injured while engaged in sports and celebrations last year. Seventy-seven persons were killed and 4,033 injured by fireworks, toy pistols and giant-crackers. The Tribune remarks that "the criminally negligent who did not know the pistol was loaded have killed 43 and wounded 15; and the idiots who rocked the boat have drowned 18." Suicides have continued to increase and are in excess of every other form of violent death. For 1907 they aggregated the large total of 10,782. There has been a constant increase from 1899, in which year they numbered 5,340, to the present. Until 1906 about twice as many men as women committed suicide; that year there were nearly three times as many men; this year there were more than three times as many, 8,188 men and 2,594 women. As usual, among professional men, physicians head the list. The same journal tells us that Chicago's death-rate was unusually high last year, reaching 32,150, more than 3,100 in excess of the year past; 5,000 of these deaths were due to pneumonia; all forms of tuberculosis claimed 4,100, while diarrheal diseases, largely among the children, numbered 2,800 victims. It was a banner year in gifts and bequests, making a bright spot in the awful record of the year. The Tribune gives the donations for the year at $149,902,130. Mr. Rockefeller takes the lead, Mrs. Russell Sage is second, and Mr. Carnegie, third. And yet when one considers the immense wealth of the large number of professed Christians, it is not such a wonderfully beneficent gift after all.