The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1884-04-25
THE PERILS OF HOME.
Accident Insurance Most Required
by Those Who Never Travel
Startling Discoveries Made by Sus.
pfciOus Individual While Delv-
ing Among Statistical
Facts and Figures.
MARK Twain I

Mark Twain.
The man in the ticket Office said:
"Have an accident insurance ticket,
alsoP'
"No," 1 said, after studying the matter
over little. mo, believe not; 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, and if You
are going to travel by rail-"
'lf 1 am going to travel by rail, I sna'nt
need it. Lying at home in bed is the thing
am afraid Off
l had been looking into this matter. Last
year l Travelled 10000 miles, almost entirely
by rail- the year before, Travelled over 25,
600 miles, half by sea and half by rail; and
the year beftrs that Travelled in the neigh
borhood of 1O,020 miles, exclusively by rail-
l suppose if l put in all the little odd jour
neys here and there, l may say l have
travelled &c, 600 miles during the three years
have mentioned And never an accident.
For g9od while l said to myself every
morning: "Now 1 have escaped thus far,
and SO the chances are just that much in
creased that shall catch it this time. I will
be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket" And
to dead moral certainty drew a blank,
cSoA
started or a bone splintered. 1 got tired of
that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying
accident tickets that were good for month
l said to myself, "a man can't buy thirty
blanks in one bundle"
But was mistaken. There was never a
prize in the lot. could read of railway ac-
ciGents every day-the newspaper atmos-
| phere was foggY with them; but somehow
they never came my way. 1 found l had
spent good deal of money in the accident
business, and had nothing to show for it.
My suspicious were aroused, and | began to
hunt around for somebody that had won in
this lottery. l found plenty of people who
had invested, but not an i'll lividual that had
| ever had accident or made a cent. |
| stopped buying accident tickets ani went to
| ciphering. The result was astounding. The
| peril lay not in travelling, but in staying
! at home.
| HUNTED up statistics and was amazed to find
| that after all the glaring newspaper ,ieadings
| 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 ha 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 straightway sug-
| gested itself that the Erie immensely
long road, and did more business than any
other line in the country; SO the double num-
| ber of killed ceased to be a matter for sur
| prise.
By further figuring it appeared that be-
| tween New York and Rochester the Erie ran
eight passenger trains each way every day
sixteen altogether-and carried daily aver
age of 5000 persons. That is about ,OO0, 600
in six months, the population of New York
| oil tba ENrial Iii t,
twenty-three persons out of its 1000, 900 in
| six months; ana in the same time 13, 000 out
| of New Yorks 1000, 600 died in their bedsl
| My flesh crept; my hair stood on end. "This
is appalling, said "The danger isn't in
travelling by rail- but in trusting to those
deadly beds. 1 will never sleep in bed
again"
had figured on considerably less than one
half the length of the Erie road 1t was
plain that the entire road must transport at
least II 900 or IL, 600 people every day. There
are many short roads running out OF Boston
that do fully half as much; a great many
such roads. There are many roads scattered
about the Union that do prodigious passen-
ger business, therefore it was fair to presume
that an average of 2, 500 passengers a day for
each road in the country would be about cor
rect Th4re are S46 railway lines in our
country, and S46 times $500 are 2115,OOO
So the railways Of America move more than
1000, 900 of people every day-650, 900 900 of
people year, without counting the Sundays.
| They do that tOo-there is no question about
it-though where they get the raw material
is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arith-
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 6lO UDO,-
600 at the very least. They must some of
the same people over again, likely.
San Francisco is one-eghth populous
New York; there are sixty deaths week in
the former and 5OJ a week in tie latter-f
they have luck That is g. 100 deaths year
in San Francisco, and eight times as many in
New York-say about 5000 or $4,000 The
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 $4,000 out of every 1,0O0,
600 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 200 900 of us, 1000
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 conflagrations,
getting buried in coal mines, falling off house.
tops, breaking through church or lecture
room floors, taking patent medicines, or
railroad kills from twenty-three to forty-six;
, the other S45 railroads kill an average of one
third of man each; and the rest of that
OOO, ,OOO amounting in the aggregate to the
appalling figure of Ss7, 731 corpses. die natur-
ally in their beds.
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
Zone can see now why 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
| that 6av a M