The figures which indicate the price that we pay for each of our yearly celebrations are so appalling that one would suppose a knowledge of them would be the most powerful deterrent to our annual massacre. This, unfortunately, is not the case. For the past five years, the Journal of the American Medical Association has endeavored to collect statistics setting forth what the celebration of the Fourth costs in life and human usefulness; and although these are admittedly incomplete,—compiled, as they are, almost entirely from newspaper reports instead of from records of hospitals, dispensaries, and physicians,—they form the gravest possible arraignment of the recklessness which is willing to pay such a price for a “jolly day.” They show that during the celebration of five national birthdays, from 1903 to 1907 inclusive, eleven hundred and fifty-three persons were killed, and twenty-one thousand five hundred and twenty were injured! Of the injured, eighty-eight suffered total, and three hundred and eighty-nine partial, blindness; three hundred and eight persons lost arms, legs, or hands, and one thousand and sixty-seven lost one or more fingers. But these figures, startling as they are, convey only a faint idea of the suffering, both physical and mental, which went to swell the total cost of these five holidays; in this we must also include the weeks and often months of anguish of the injured, the suspense of entire families while the fate of some loved one hung in the balance, the horror of a future of sightless years, the pinching poverty now the lot of many because of the death or maiming of the breadwinner.
But putting aside the question of fatalities, of invalidism, of blindness, of penury, the effect on the sick of a long continuance of explosive noises, varying in intensity for days, or even weeks, and deafening for twenty-four hours at least, merits serious consideration. That the return of our “glorious Fourth” is looked forward to with dread by our hospital-sick, as well as by those who are concerned in their care, was made pathetically clear to me last summer when I interviewed the superintendents of almost all our municipal institutions. One and all deplored the needless suffering inflicted on their patients by our barbarous manner of celebration, and begged me to bring the matter to the attention of the Police Department.[18]
In this connection, a letter from Dr. Thomas Darlington, Commissioner of Health, is of interest:
I agree entirely with you in regard to the serious injury inflicted upon patients in the hospitals occasioned by the common practice of exploding firecrackers and torpedoes in the immediate vicinity.
Professor William Hanna Thomson took the same stand when he stated:
I rejoice to hear that your Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise proposes to have measures taken to lessen the explosions of firecrackers and firearms in the neighborhood of our city hospitals on the Fourth of July. Such noises are particularly injurious, both from their nature and their being of an unusual kind, to patients with any high fever, such as typhoid, and it will be a great service to humanity to have them suppressed, if not altogether, as most sane people will acknowledge, yet at least near institutions harboring a variety of patients.
One feature of our celebration which has not yet been touched upon is the cost. Last year, New York City boasted of an outlay of four million dollars, while the country as a whole burned up the huge sum of twenty million dollars in fireworks. Finally, we must add the vast sum lost by conflagrations before we are in a position to realize the whole price that we pay for our day of jollity.
It is interesting to remark how strongly the press is beginning to voice its protest against our “noise-fest”—a protest now largely seconded by public opinion, although a few years ago it would have been regarded as woefully unpatriotic. Here are a few excerpts gathered last July from widely scattered papers, which are unanimous in decrying our present-day observance:
The most ridiculous and senseless celebration of any great national event.—New York Commercial.
What the connection is between explosives and patriotism, no one has ever undertaken to describe.—Utica Press.