Personal Injury Litigation

As the thoughtful person reeds the daily papers he cannot help but be impressed with the great and constantly Increasing amount of personal injury litigation. Our people are wont at times to charge this up to certain lawyers who watch the reports of injuries and advise persons so injured to begin suit, for the profit of the lawyers. But the number who win their cases furnish evidence that the extraordinary increase in this kind of litigation cannot be accounted for entirely or largely on this hypothesis. The fact is that we as a people, in the pursuit of commercial gain and even pleasure are extraordinarily careless of human life.

This is not only true of private corporations fired with the greed for riches which leads to a disregard of the proper safeguards of life and limb, but of public corporations and rich people on pleasure bent with their automobiles. We as a people are reckless of chances so long as by taking every conceivable chance and risk we can make another dollar, or make a little higher record for speed. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who represent the injured, the maimed or the killed, seek reparation in the courts. Statistics are constantly being published showing the appalling number of injuries and deaths from our careless ways of handling dangerous machinery, agents, etc.  Some recent statistics brought out before the Illinois Bar association, in an address by Mr. Charles H. Hamill and quoted in the Chicago Evening Post are to the point. He shows "that in the State of Illinois for the year ending June 30, 1901, by the steam railroads alone there were injured 2,694 persons and killed 739. During the year 1900 there were killed in Chicago alone, by railroads 330 persons, by machinery 20, by falling bodies 14, by explosions 10, by unclassified accidents 109. According to the twelfth census, 1900, the deaths by accident in Chicago were 506, or 2.97 per 10,000 of the population."

With such Information at hand, who can wonder at the great and growing amount of personal injury litigation constantly finding its way into the courts? Who can doubt the criminal carelessness of our people in such matters? It would probably be much cheaper for railway corporations, manufacturing plants and cities to use every known device to secure the highest degree of safety than to pay the damages they are forced to from time to time for killing and maiming human beings. They conduct business in these lines better in England and on the continent than we do. They spend more to protect people from injury and as a consequence they have fewer maiinings and deaths from such causes. It is time public sentiment was aroused on this subject and crystalized into legislation that will throw more protection around human life. Grade separation in Ann Arbor is a move in this direction.

It is said that the Indiana board of pardons has decided not hereafter to make public the pardons and paroles of prisoners. What a fine thing this would be for Michigan. What a cinch that would be for Governor Bliss in getting some "gentlemen" out of Jackson in whom he is supposed to be deeply interested. Of course the public is not interested in these paroles and pardons to the extent that state officers are. These officials want to be reelected and if a prisoner has influencial friends on the outside, who can deliver a good lot of votes, why should they not be rewarded in having their convict friends set at liberty? And this could be done without unpleasant comment so long as the pardons and paroles do not reach the newspapers. Let the Michigan board of pardons and Gov. Bliss get onto the Indiana idea at once.

No such thing as"summer complaint" where Dr. Fowler's Extract of Wild Strawberry is kept handy. Nature's remedy for every looseness of the bowels.