Show THE BATTLE OF THE FOURTH Returns are not all In yet of the killed and wounded In tho battle of Independence In-dependence Day fought throughout the country a week imo last Saturday But from the partial record made up by the Chicago Tribune from accounts of the casualties in two hundred cities ho Tribune arranges them olphabtically from Allegnn Michigan to ZanesYlHe Ohio its summary shpws that fiftytwo I persons wore killed and 3GG5 injured in the alleged celebrations of that day But it Is safe to gny that the casualties throughout the country were at lest double that for the two hundred cities reported from contain but a fraction of the population of the whole country and tho celebrations In them were a much smaller fraction of the total celebrations cel-ebrations held It is therefore well within the mark to compute that more than a hundred people Were killed In the celebration of July 4th last and nearly ten thousand hurt badly enough to be worth mention men-tion some of them fatally hurt and others made cripples for life Besldos the loss of life the losses of pioperty by fire as reported by tho Tribune amounted to 400625 Here again It is safe to more than double and call the Joss a round l million of dgl lars from fires directly the result of firecrackers bombs and firovorks The analysis of the accidents fato1 l and serious enoqgh to report shows that the toy pistol caused G69 of them homemade bombs and flrew9rks had 7C5 victims firearnis garelcssly handled 5C2 skyrockets 206 cannon 310 runaways run-aways SI fireworks 1170 The record this yeqr Is by no ineans singular It Is the same thing year after year And though after every battle of the Fourth there Is a sobpr second thought and a demand that this noisy reckless destructive and fatal method of celebrating the day be done away with the lesson Is all forgotten by the next year and the whole dismal story reonacted Possibly some day there may be a change but so far there is no sign of It The slaylngg malmlngs woundlngs and burnings go right on year by year and no one appears to think otherwise than that it Is quite the natural and rightful thing |