The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1873-07-01

murders rose to fifty-seven in 1871, we
had but forty-two, in 1870 and 1869 but
forty-one In each year yet, during those
years, the Ring was omnipotent, and the
moral condition of the city was the worst
II has ever known"
The Times should remember that while
'the Ring was omnipotent" the "thugs of
Tweed" were prosperous They were con-
sequently good natured, rather disposed to
be kindly than to quarrel, and were not
driven to choice between work and high
way robbery with its frequent concomitant
of murder. When their good places were
taken away and their services at elections
and their influence fell into disrepute, they
probably became cross, quarrelsome, and
infected with yearning for other peoples
money. The statistics produced by the
TINES, therefore, rather tend to prove that
social and moral conditions may bear a re-
lation to the crime Of homicide.
The theory that homicide does not bear
any defined relation to population, is better
sustained by the fact that there has been
no increase of murders year after year in
the city of New York, though the popu-
lation has increased year after year.
''During the past seventeen years, the
highest number in any one year was sixty
one in 1865, and the lowest was thirty-four
in 1867, the average during the whole time
beinp forty-seyen ppr ann,im 4"
The Times, while admitting that ntoxi-
eating drinks are of dangerous tendency,
COZ cludcs that the Maine liquor law has not
prevented murder. 1t having been assert
ed that intemperance has steadily declined
during the last twenty years in Maine, we
have Notwithstanding, in four months in
that state, ten murders, since the first of
March, which would give total of thirty
five for the year, if the slaughter should be
continued-to suppose which the Times al
lows to be absurd. OF course if the Maine
people, with their population of $50, 1000,
keep that sort of thing up, it will make a
bad showing, even as compared with New
York City, which produced last year fifty.
seven murders with population of $40, 900.
If the Maine people are through with theii
killing they have laid out for this year, one
in 90, 900, while the New Workers last yeai
slew each other at the rate of one in
about II, 000-which is rather an argument
for the country over the city.
We have in this mornings paper
an account of Vermont murder which
was evidently caused by drunkenness. Yet
too much cannot be argued from that. Yer.
mont without prohibitory liquor law, has
not been stained with five murders In ter
years. Maine, with prohibitory law, turns
out ten in four months, but may not have
another murder in three years.
Some statistician in London has been en-
abled to prophecy with an approach tc
accuracy, the number of fatalities In thai
city in any one ycar-so many killed by
being run over, so many by some othel
form of accident, so many by homicide
These remarkable statistics could not bt
gathered, perhaps, except in dense pOpula
tions. There is something like it in
New York city in relation to homicdes
During the last seventeen years they have
averaged forty-seven per annum, never
falling below thirty-four or rising above
| sixty-One.