The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1884-01-18
THE PERILs OF HOME
Accident Insurance Most Required
by Those Who Never Travel
Startling Discoveries Made by n sus-
picious Individual While DeIv-
Ing Among Statistical
Facts and Figures.

EhNe al hIClutuL ulsuIanCe lCk6tI
alsoF'
NO." 1 said, after studying the matter
over a little. mo, l believe not; l am going
to be travelling by rail all day to-day. How
ever, tomorrow / don't travel Give me one
for tomorrow"
The man looked puzzled. He said:
"But it is for accident insurance, n II you
are going TO travel by rail-"
"h l am going to travel by rail, l shs'nt
need it Lying at home in bed is the thing
am afraid off,
/ had been looking into this matter. Last
year / Travelled o,000 miles, almost entirely
by rail the year before, / Travelled over 25,-
600 miles, half by sea and half by rail; and
the year before that 1 Travelled in the neigh
borhood of lO,02O miles, exclusively by rail.
l suppose II 1 put in all the little odd jour
neys here and there, 1 may say 1 have
Travelled 90, 900 miles during the three years /
have mentioned. And. never an accident.
For a good while l said to myself every
morning.: "Now 1 have escaped thus far,
and so the chances are Just that muchIin-
creased that l shall catch it this time. 1 will
be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket" And
70 q dead moral certainty 1 drew a blank,
and went to bed that night without a joint
started or a bone splintered. 1 got tired Of
that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying
accident tickets that were good for a month.
u RoAL w AAJbSA N LLAh NAn buJ I'LL
blanks In one bundle"
But l was mistaken. There was never a
prize In the lot. l could read of railway ac-
cidents every day-the newspaper atmos-
phere was foggY with them; but somehow
they never came my way. 1 found 1 had
spent a good deal of money in the accident
business, and had nothing to show for it
My suspicious were aroused, and I began to
hunt around for somebody that had won In
| tbfa 1offaru I fnttnA r1antu - naorIo ,-ko
had invested, but not an individual that had
ever had an accident or made a cent. 1
stopped buying accident tickets and went to
ciphering. The result was astounding. The
peril lay not in travelling, but in stay ing
at home.
HUNTED up statistics and was amazed to find
that after all the glaring newspaper headings
concerning railroad disasters, less than 800
people had really lost their lives by those dis
asters in the preceding twelve months. The
Erie road wasset down as the most murderous
in the list. 1t had killed forty-six or twenty
six, / do not exactly remember which, but
l know the number was double that OF any
other road. But the fact s~traightway sug-
gested itself that the Erie was an immensely
long road, and did more business than any
other line in the country; so the double num-
Der Of killed ceased to be a matter for sur
price.
DJ hBuIluB ~ dppehTeu LuuL De-
tween New York and Rochester the Erie ran
eight passenger trains each way every day
sixteen altogether-and carried a daily aver
age OF 5000 persons. That is about 1, 0OO, 900
in six months, the population of New York
city. Well, the Erie kills from thirteen to
~twenty-three persons out of its 100000 In
six months; and In the same time Is, 900 out
Of New York's 1,00O.O 600 died in their bedsl
My flesh crept; my hair stood on end. @This
1 d. AnaIltn4 ~ Il aafA A1ha I---. -. l.
travelling by rail, but in trusting to those
deadly beds. 1 will never sleep in a bed
again"
had figured on considerably less than ono
half the length of the Erie road It was
plain that the entire road must transport at
least 1000 or 1900 people every day. There
are many short roads running out of Boston
that do fully half as much; a great many
such roads. Thore are many roads scattered
about the Union that do a prodigious passen-
ger business, therefore 1t was fair to presume
that an average of $500 passengers a day for
each road in the country would be about cor
rect. There are $40 railway lines In our
country, and $40 times $500 are Ills, 600.
So the railways of America move more than
100000 OF people every day-650, 900, 900 of
people a year, without counting the Sundays.
They do that, too-there is no question about
it-though where they get the raw material
SSJNA S"S "a VI ~ All
metic; for l have hunted the census through
and / find that there are not that many people
in the United States by a matter of 6l0, O0O,-
900 at the very least. They must use some of
the game people over again, likely.
San Francisco is one-eighth as populous az
New York; there are sixty deaths u week in
the former and 500 u week In the latter-if
they have luck. That is $3.50 deaths a year
In San Francisco, and eight times as many in
| Nav Vork-Qav ahnut pS OND ~ 90 nm M
health of the two places is the same. So we
will let it stand as a fair presumption that
this will hold good all over the country, and
that consequently 1000 out Of every 1,0OO,-
900 people we have must die every year.
That amounts to one-fortieth of our total
population. One million OF us, then, die an
annually. Out of this ! 900, 900 of US, 10, 900
or 1000 are stabbed, shot. drowned, hanged,
poisoned, or meet a similar violent death In
some other popular way. such as perishing by
kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt confagrations,
getting buried in coal mines, falling off house.
tops, breaking through church or lecture
room floors, taking patent medicines, or
committing suicide in other forms. The Erie
railroad kills from twenty three to forty-six:
the other S45 railroads kill an average of one
third Of a man each; and the rest of that
l 100000, amounting in the aggregate to the
appalling figure of SS7 13l corpses, die natur-
I nay "a NANAA S@N1~
You will excuse me from taking any more
chances in those beds. The railroads are good
enough for me.
And my advice to all people is; Don't stay
at home any more than you can help; but
when you have got to stay at home a while.
buy a package of those insurance tickets
and sit up nights, You cannot be too eau
tious.
lone can see now why l answered that
ticket agent in the manner recorded at the
top Of this sketch.
The moral of this composition is, that
thoughtless people grumble more than is fair
about railroad management in the United
States. When we consider that every day and
night Of the year full IA, 200 railway trains of
various kinds, freighted with life and armed
with death, go laundering over the land, tho
marvel is, not that they kill 800 human beings
in a twelvemonth but that they do not kin
800 times 800.
vennor's Weather Prophecy.
[Exchange.l
Veunor reads the ruddy skies To mean I'M