Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1916 — HAVE CUT DOWN FATALITIES [ARTICLE]

HAVE CUT DOWN FATALITIES

Good Work of Railroads Has Been Ao- ( tively Aided by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The railroads have a good record in the matter of safety, and they must divide the credit with state legislators and the interstate commission. More than a million cars were personally inspected last year. More steel cars are being used, the roadbeds are kept up better than formerly and the electric block signals are getting a wider usq. In 1915 the number of passengertf killed was reduced 16 per cent over 1914 and the number of employees killed decreased 36 per cent in the same year. Out of over a billion passengers carried only 222 were killed — less than in any year since I§9B, when only half a billion people traveled, and an average of one in every 450,000. The public health service is another branch r f the treasury department. In preventive work it is one of the biggest safety movements in the country, even though not one of the most spectacular. The quarantine stations which ring us round with a sanitary wall against infection from abroad are part of the service, and the children’s bureau is another and newer offshoot from the same stem, though it comes under the department of labor instead of the treasury. The motto of the children’s bureau might well be “Safety at the very first.” Its work in baby conservation during the last five years has appreciably cut down the infant mortality in the country. It is a sort of scientific grandmother to all American women. The American Red Cross has reduced the number of fatal accidents by preventing a number of accidents from ending fatally. In co-operation with various industrial organizations, fire and police departments, and such bodies as the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A. s, it has given a .number of courses in first aid to the injured. The latest move along this line was a course for lumbermen. The department is under the direction of the army medical corps, and its instructors are competent physicians.