Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/275

Rh One hundred persons met death by accident during the hunting-season of 1911, in the Northwestern States.

What a vigorous public opinion might do in diminishing the railway death and accident list is well shown in the remarkable figures of Fourth-of-July accidents which have recently become public. The death-roll from the celebration of this holiday was for years a matter of anxious concern to many. In nine years it meant 39,219 killed and injured. It was within recent years that the vigorous agitation for a “safe and sane Fourth” started. The figures for 1911 show but 57 killed, while in 1910 the death-list was 131 and in 1909 it was 215. Within a little more than two years’ time a vigorous public opinion intervened between the American small boy and a time-honored method of celebrating a national holiday, changed the customs of a people, and reduced the death-list from 215 to 57.

The railway-owner may make a very fine physical machine, but when it is done it must be operated with all of its complications by Rh