The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-21
THE COST OF KILLING.
America Sacrifices Fifty Million Dollars
 Year in This Way.

Year in This Way.
 What is the value of human life? What, in dollars and cents. may be roughly figured as a mans worth to the community from which he derives support?
 The eastern world, the overcrowded world of the older peoples, will shrug its shoulders, and look askance through slanted, inscrutable eyes, and answer: Life is cheap in these lands. There are many million lives; and it has al- ways been 50. Why should one carer" But how many of us know that in this western world of ours, human life, un- der certain conditions, is held as cheap I ly as in India or China? How many of us realize that out of the 29,0OOO0o workers in these United States one is killed or injured every minute of the day-in other words, that every year more than 50000O men, women and chil- dren are killed or crippled as direct result of the occupation in which they are engaged?
 Every year we draw on Europe for one million immigrants to work in our mines, to build our houses, to dig our | tunnels, to keep the. wheels of the jug gernaut car of industry grinding at the speed that we insist must be maintain ed every year, as against this million of workers, we kilfi or injure half a million.
 In the six big tunnel construction jobs in and about New York on an av- craze man day is killed. A cave in of rock or mud or sand engulfs the gang, or blast of dynamite blows them to pieces, or they are overcome by the bends, the terrible disease due to compressed aif Toiling feverish- ly in three hour shifts under tre- mendous air pressure of three at mospheres, the sand hogs" deep down under the river faces a thousand dan- gers In order that the pressing prob lems of transportation may be solved for the great metropolis. The bends" Is not always fatal, but it catches a large number of the men and doubles them up like jackknives. In the worst cases it kills with a horrible death.
 There are over thirteen hundred thousand railroad men on the trains and in the yards of the United States. Of these, according to the Interstate Commerce Commissions report for the last complete year on record, 69,191 were killed and injured in one years time-more than one man in every twenty.
 In eighteen months fire damp alone was responsible for 415 deaths and many times that number of injuries. Last year in Pennsylvania it was l. 12S killed and 2,865 injured, total of l 34SS. In the same year, in the fif- teen States alone that report mine &C., ! cidents 5,9S6 miners of all classes were killed and injured. If the Pennsylvania record is any index, one may infer that reporting of accidents in other States was probably lax, since more than half the number occurred in this one State. In the fifteen remaining States In which mining is an important industry, but which do not keep records at all, | the loss through death has been estl- mated at about two thousand and through accident, if the proportion holds good in recording and non-re- cording States, four thousand at the very least.
 In the last year Chicago skyscrapers exacted the heaviest toll of human life recorded in the history of building op- erations in the city. Figures compiled in the annual death roll of the Bridge and Structural Ironworkers' union i show the increase in fatilities among the men to be enormous Of total membership of 1858 men in the union last year 156 either lost their lives or were totally or partially disabled. Dur ing the year before twenty-six were killed, an equal number was so injured that they could not resume their trade, while the number of minor injuries to- tailed about eighty.
 The most common type of factory ac- cident is what the newspapers call be- ing caught in the machinery" Judged by newspaper clipping record of SIP accidents, 30 per cent, of factory ac- cidents are of this nature. Next most dreaded by men in factories Is being caught in the leather belting or being
 
 off the shaft. In other cases high speed revolving wheels burst, showering the men with as deadly fire as if shell from hidden enemy exploded among them.
 In New York city occur ten violent deaths day as a direct result of daily activities In Chicago the number falls to six a day. But the storm cen ter of the country is Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, in which the city of Pittsburg is situated. Combining steel, iron and coal industries, mills, mines, railroads and building operations, over seventeen thousand deaths and injuries a year in all industries is the record for this single county.
 What of the money value of these lost lives? Many writers have essayed