The Great Annual Slaughter

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 15, 11 April 1907, Page 9

The Great Annual Slaughter

A Cincinnati paper once burlesqued the ' createstcountry ' " boast by clainiing that the rivers of the Uni- ' ted States are larger, muddier, wetter, deeper," faster, noisier, and more damage-producing than anybody, else's rivers ; that its rail-cars - and steamboats are bigger, longer, and broader, and burst their boilers oftener, and send their passengers higher than in any other country •; that its men can fight harder, and shoot straighter arod faster,\ and chew more bad tobacco, and gjit * vr ~

ther than the men of any cither country ;. and that its women can kick up the devil generally to a greater extent than the women of any other country. Recent news from, across the Pacific would seem to indicate that the Cincinnati journal's burlesque is not all burlesque. Take, for instance, the 1,200,000 divorces in twenty years, for which the 'cables vouch. These returns would, furnish some justification for the statement that, in one vital point of morality, numbers of married men and married women in the United States have been ' kicking up the, devil generally to a greater _extent than those of other countries \ Here are -some figures which we condense from returns for 1906 : Murders and homicides, .9350; suicides, 10,125.; legal executions', 123 ; lynchihgs,. 69 (wholesale killings by mobs ' not Included here) ; killed -by automobiles, 209 ' (in-ju-ed, 851) ; killed by hunters or while hunting, 178 (wounded, 167) ; killed on railroads (passengers and persons crossing tracks), 3,295 (injured, 9561) ; killed .on" electric lines ('including employes), -674 (injured, 2953) ; killed by fires, explosions, cyclones -.ami storms, lightning, electricity, drowinng, and in manes, 6,489. Total > violent deaths (exclusive of the red handiwork" of., mobs), 30,512. The steamboait contribution is' not stated. But even without it, the figures for 1906 represent a pretty lively dance cf death — a terrible' record of the number of souls and bodies- that were torn apart with a wrench of agony between New Year's Day and St. Sylvester's. Here is 'an item of much significance : ' The record of embezzlement, forgery, defaulting, and bank wrecking aggregated $13,734,863 ' ' (nearly £3,000,000), 'an increase of more than $5,000,000 ' (£1,000,000) ' over 1905 '.