Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-04-19
From New York Times. I
KILLED ON NEW YoRK's STREETS.

By vehicles in 1911 423
Wagons killed 1913 and injured 308
Automobiles killed 104 and injured COZ
Trolleys killed Ia and injured PIG
1--WE lose more lives annually through
the craze for speed than through the
mania which leads to murder" Col.
Edward S. Cornell, newly elected Presi-
dent of the National Highways Protec-
tive Society, told me the other day.
Fashionable life in the New York of
to-day and that of the Pompeii of
ancient times present a curious par
allel in the fact that in Pompeii ere
Vesuvius poured out its molten flood
engulfing it, the chariots of young and
rich Pompeiians were continually run
ming over common folk and killing them,
as the motor cars of modern speed
maniacs run over and kill people in New
York in 1912. When the ruins of the
ancient city were uncovered by the
archaeologists they encountered in a
wrecked house near the Stadium Gate
legend scratched upon a wall. Deci-
phered and translated it was found to
say in substance:
"A Roman knight to-day ran over
and killed with his higa our little
Calenus, aged 6. May Pluto shortly
have his soul.'
A 'higa' is two wheeled chariot.
The craze for speed in the United
States, and more especially in the very
thickly populated section, which includes
New York, is becoming a community
brain storm, and that management
/ deterioration. The auto has no better
friends than may be found among the
members of the National Highways
Protective Society," but we abhor the
driver of the juggernaut. Like any
other excess, indulgence in high speed
becomes real intoxication, intoxica
ton makes men irresponsible. and anv
man who loses sense of his response
bility is menace to his fellow citizens.
"What we object to is putting the
motor car to base, unworthy uses. Not
long ago all men objected when it be-
came the vehicle by means of which a
band of bandits Travelled to their crime.
and afterwards escaped. Is the man
who plans and deliberately carries out a
robbery by means of taxicab much
worse than the man, who, through
sheer carelessness, converts his motor
car into an instrument of death to
others
He is of course, for the one man is.
premeditatedly a criminal, while the
other accomplishes offence through
foolish, not deliberate, selfshness; but
the scorcher's menace to the public life
and welfare is as great as any bandits,
and there are far more of the former
than there are of the latter.
THE menace which we now find on
our streets does not grow out of the
progression through them of the limou-
sine or touring car or runabout of the
respectable, calm-minded, decent bust
ness or professional man; but intrust to
the ungoverned hands of irresponsible
such potent instruments of carnage as
the modern high-powered motor car and
disaster is too likely to descend upon
some innocent head. The decent
minded citizen, who has developed the
ability to think, and acts in due accord
ance with his thinking, may enjoy, upon
occasion, rapid movement, and even
may indulge it; but he will not, by this
propensity or this indulgence, imperil
other peoples lives.
"On the other hand the auto in the
hands of one who never has had power
of any kind, who never has been trained
to exercise it, may make of him a tyrant
over night. And such things are
brutalizing US.
Just before Easter the mother of
little child | know took her daughter
shopping, riding with her on a trolley
car. Suddenly the trolley car came to
jolting stop and then jumped back.
The motorman sprang from his platform
and pulled from underneath the car
small Scotch terrier which had been
killed.
HE took the poor dead doggie to the
sidewalk. The little girl was very much
affected. AS the car moved on she
whispered to her mother:
Mother, some one will be waiting
for that little dog tonight, and they
will wait and wait, but little dog will
not go home
How many some one have been
waiting in this city in the evening after
school for little boys and girls, not little
dogs, who never came-who never came |
because some irresponsible speed maniac /
behind a steering wheel or some half |