Foreword

In the year 1898 there were 201 fatal street accidents in the city of New York. Of these, eighty-eight were caused by horse vehicles and 113 by streetcars. In the latter total are included people who died of old age while waiting for cars that were not labelled “Car Barn Only.” The following year brought the automobile to America’s metropolis and the statistics attribute one fatality to its arrival, as against 103 deaths by horse vehicles and 167 by streetcars. It was not until 1913 that the automobile forged to the front as a lethal weapon, never again to be headed. After 1918 the horses and streetcars virtually gave up trying, and the figures for last year show that the thing has ceased to be a contest and become a joke⁠—1,075 deaths by autos, 64 by streetcars and 14 by horse vehicles.

It is estimated that if the horse vehicles and streetcars had kept on fighting and maintained their early leadership over automobiles, by the year 1970 the entire population of New York City would have been wiped out and no harm done.

The World Almanac, from which this information was gleaned, gives us only one ray of hope. In New York’s biggest borough, Brooklyn, there were a thousand fewer births and thirteen hundred more death in 1928 than in 1927. It may also comfort some folks to know that only fifty thousand more New Yorkers speak Yiddish and Hebrew than English and Celtic.