Suicides by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 7, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 10.

Suicides

By Editor

According to the Key West Advertiser, 13,000 persons committed suicide in this country last year. The editorial says that these figures would "about equal the total number of deaths caused by war and revolution last year in the whole world, and this is all the more suggestive when one remembers that there were outbreaks in Portugal, Brazil, China, Mexico, and Central America, to say nothing of other places." The writer attributes the cause of half of these self-murders to fast living and despondency. He says: "Americans are supposed to be a happy, cheerful people, optimistic in the extreme. The conditions of life are probably better than in any other country, and yet the sad fact stands out that 6,673 people committed suicide last year because of despondency."

The article continues: "It is not possible, of course, to know what in all cases led to that despondency, but not unlikely it was the too rapid rate of life most people follow. It has been well said that 'it is not the miles we travel, but the pace, that kills.' In the mad rush for wealth by some people, and the equally mad rush for pleasures by others, there is that which is bound sooner or later to produce the reaction revealed by jaded life, unsatisfaction, and shattered nerves, and then, too frequently comes the pistol-shot or poison."

We believe all this is true, and that nearly all of the 13,000 unfortunates might yet have been living had their life been one of calm, simple, and implicit faith in Jesus Christ.