The statistics regarding accidents[26] are necessarily unreliable, as railway companies are not eager to publish their calamities from the house-tops, and only in those States in which prompt reports are required to be made by law are the figures given at all accurately. Even in these instances the yearly reports lead to wrong conclusions, for the State Railroad Commissioners become more exacting each year as to the thoroughness of the reports called for, and the results sometimes show an increase compared with previous years, whereas there may have been an actual decrease. In 1880, the last census year, an effort was made to collect statistics of this kind covering all the railways in the United States, with the following result: ------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+------- | Through causes | Through | | To whom | beyond their | their own | Aggregate. | Total happened. | control. | carelessness. | | acci- +-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+ dents. |Killed.|Injured.|Killed.|Injured.|Killed.|Injured.| ------------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+------- Passengers | 61 | 331 | 82 | 213 | 143 | 544 | 687 Employees | 261 | 1,004 | 663 | 2,613 | 924 | 3,617 | 4,541 All others | 43 | 103 | 1,429 | 1,348 | 1,472 | 1,451 | 2,923 Unspecified | | | | | 3 | 62 | 65 +-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+------- Total | 365 | 1,438 | 2,174 | 4,174 | 2,542 | 5,674 | 8,216 ------------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+------- [Illustration: "Show Your Tickets!" (Passenger Station, Philadelphia.)] Mulhall, in his "Dictionary of Statistics," an English work, uses substantially these same figures and makes the following comparison between European and American railways: _Accidents to Passengers, Employees, and Others._ ---------------+---------+----------+--------+------------- | | | | Per million | Killed. | Wounded. | Total. | passengers. ---------------+---------+----------+--------+------------- United States | 2,349 | 5,867 | 8,216 | 41.1 United Kingdom | 1,135 | 3,959 | 5,094 | 8.1 Europe | 3,213 | 10,859 | 14,072 | 10.8 ---------------+---------+----------+--------+-------------