June 18, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



905 



ured with a sextant) 22° 10' and 46° 45', 

 respectively. C was tbe whitish parhelie circle, 

 of radius 20° 5' corresponding to the solar 

 altitude of about 70°. At the intersection of 

 the circles A and C there were slight increases 

 of intensity but no conspicuous parhelia. D 

 and E were much fainter arcs intersecting the 

 parhelie circle at the point opposite the sun. 

 If prolonged they would have been approxi- 



N 



Fig. 1. 



mately tangent to the 22° circle. The phe- 

 nomenon was first noticed at 11 a.m. and faded 

 soon after noon. 



Horace Clark Eichaeds 

 Bandal Moegan Laboeatoet of Physics, 

 Univeesitt of Penkstlvania 



QUOTATIONS 



THE CONDITIONS OF INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS 



The enactment of laws in various states on 

 ■workmen's compensation for injuries has 

 aroused increased interest in the statistics 

 and physical and psychic conditions of indus- 

 trial accidents. The total number of these 

 accidents is almost appalling. The lowest 



estimate places the fatal accidents to adult 

 workers in the United States at 35,000 a year, 

 with an additional 1,250,000 non-fatal acci- 

 dents. The Massachusetts Industrial Acci- 

 dent Board, on the other hand, placed the num- 

 ber of workers killed by accident yearly at 

 75,000, which apparently includes not only 

 adults, but also workers of all ages, while the 

 number of injured of the same classes was 

 placed by this Massachusetts authority at 

 3,000,000 or over. An earthquake in a for- 

 eign country that kills half this number of 

 persons and maims one fiftieth of those in- 

 jured in our United States industries is 

 spoken of as catastrophic. 



Among the interesting elements of these 

 accident statistics is the fact that a greater 

 proportion of accidents occurs on Monday 

 than on any other day of the week. Accidents 

 are said to be due often to fatigue. As, after 

 the day of rest on Sunday, workmen should 

 be less fatigued than on other days, some 

 other factor must be sought to explain this 

 feature of the statistics. It has been sug- 

 gested that the " blue Monday " accidents are 

 really due to the fact that workmen take more 

 spirituous liquor on Sunday, and thus be- 

 come unnerved and more liable to accidents 

 during the following twenty-four hours. 

 There is, perhaps, something in this conten- 

 tion, though it has been disputed. In the 

 Massachusetts Industrial Accident Board Ee- 

 ports, in which the official figures are given, 

 there is scarcely more than one twentieth more 

 accidents on Monday than on Tuesday, while 

 Tuesday is not much above the average in the 

 number of accidents reported for other days. 

 Saturday, of course, shows a noteworthy re- 

 duction, because of the half holiday in some 

 trades. 



By far the larger number of accidents occur 

 at about 10 a.m and 3 p.m. This fact is con- 

 firmed by the reports of two state boards, 

 Washington and Massachusetts, which have 

 secured rather careful records. As they rep- 

 resent the extremes of the country, the con- 

 clusions from their statistics would seem to 

 be incontrovertible, though the fact is not 

 what might naturally be expected. The State 



