MURDER EVERY HOUR

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10526, 13 January 1912, Page 5

MURDER EVERY HOUR

AMERICA'S AMAZING RECORD.;

A New. york :■', paper,- : "Collier's. Weekly," declares., that- America •; • is tfce " nrogt. nluirdea , pus i nation - in" the .world;.. .Thai'..accusation is 'based > on ishowi that murder is 1 committed an .the United! States every hour of; the day and night throughout the year. The murders in 1910 totalled 8975, or 98 per miHion of the population, while the latest statistics available show that the rate in Great Britain is less than 9 per million. There were only 104 executions'folio wing on last year's American mur- j ders, and "Collier's Weekly" has •compiled a table showing that for I anyone committing murder in the' United States it is rather better than I a 3 to 1 chance that he will never be j brought to trial, and better than a : 10 to 1 chance that he will never see | the inside of a prison—that is, that the trial will result either in acquit-1 tal or in a sentence, like that of Thaw, of confinement in an asylum. ' As to execution, the chances are 80 < to 1 against. , . .. , ~, '.* <.l "Collier's Weekly" applied to \a\ newspaper cutting bureau to make ai note of all the murders' reported in i American newspapers in 24 hours. The murders reported for that period aggregated 72, being either different murders, accusations of murder, or, murder trials. It is impoE.sii'% to attribute this astonishing murder"tendency "to aliens, for foreign horn mairdereip constitute onlv 16 oer cent, of the total. "Collier's Weekly" makes no attempt to explain the reason-»of these numerous homiicides other than , to suggest that the laxity of justice-., is an important contributory clause.