Salt Lake Tribune | 1912-09-13 | Page 6 | The "Sane Fourth"

THE "SANE FOURTH." Tho effort toward a sane celebration of the Fourth of July has certainly borno good fruit. The killing and maiming maim-ing of men by the hundreds, and sometimes some-times by tho thousands in these Fourth of July celebrations, at last attracted the attention of publicists, who brought to bear the force of public opinion against the practice. The Chicago Tribune Trib-une gave much attention to reporting tho fatalities and injuries, and tho Journal Jour-nal of tho American Medical Association Associa-tion took up the cause, going into the roturns more thoroughly, and finally publishing year by year the great destruction de-struction wrought by tho old-fashioned, uproarious celebration of the Fourth of July. In one year under the old regime the number of deaths reported was 4CC, and injured 5623. The great gains in safety and immunity from death and accidents in the celebrations may be seen at once when Hie compilation of the Journal of the American Medical Association for tho proscnt year shows lhat only -13 'deaths and 9S8 injuries are reported. Tho total of death and injured is thns shown to be for tho Fourth of July last, J 029. This is con-trastcd con-trastcd with an average of 4012 a year for the last ten years. Tho number of tcta nua cases, which heretofore have I been by far the most numerous and mortal of all, was only 7, against 150 thrco years ago. Clearly the campaign for a safe and sano Fourth of July has won a nob'lc vii-lor. Sn ono ran sense thon fig. ore without lcn; gratified at the greatly lessened 'mortality, and the cutting cut-ting down by three-fourths of the injured in-jured whoe hurts were so severe- as to require medical attention. Tho gain is a gratifying indication of tho power pow-er of public opinion properly applied.