OCCUPATIONS. The leading source of informa tion regarding the mortality in various occupa tions is the English statistics. The influence of occupation is most marked during the ages between twenty-five and sixty-five, after the per son has been for some time thus engaged. and before retirement to some less exacting work or to industrial inactivity has come to a large proportion. For the purpose of comparison be tween the several occupations the 'comparative mortality figure' is computed. This is found by ascertaining the number of men twenty-five to thirty-four, thirty-five to forty-four, forty-five to fifty-four, and fifty-five to sixty-four years of age, necessary to yield in one year, at the death rates determined for the entire male population of those ages, 1000 deaths, thus: The death rate of the married is uniformly least and that of widowers uniformly greatest. Various reasons for the difference have been as signed. Among them are the more regular life of husbands, their better economic condition, and their better health at the start, the weak and sickly tieing unable or unwilling to enter matri mony. Probably all of these reasons are at work. An interesting evidence of the beneficial influence of marriage upon the health of men has been drawn from the figures for Norway and Sweden. rls a rule the death rate rises slowly but steadily from the minimum in the early teens t.0 the maximum at the end of life. Ifut if mar riage is a healthier state than single life. then during the years when large numbers of men are passing from the less healthy to the ncorc• healthy condition the tendency to an increase of the death rate with age might diminish or disappear. And
that is precisely what is observed. The death rate of bachelors and of husbands taken sepa rately increased steadily with age, lint the (loath rate of all males between thirty and thirty-four was less than between twenty andtwenty-four, an anomaly which Kiner explains by pointing to the muc•li larger proportion of married men at the biter age period. The effect of marriage on the vitality of women is not so clearly beneficial.
A comparative mortality figure above 1000 indicates that the mortality of men engaged in tln• in question is above that of all men twenty-live to sixty-four years of age and vice versa. The following table gives the num ber of deaths reported for a few of the leading occupations and the comparative mortality figures: But within the foregoing great groups, includ ing all those for which at least 10,000 deaths were reported, widt: differences are ObscrITII. among those engaged in transport service, railway engineers and firemen have a couparas five mortality figure of 810, and dock and wharf laborers a comparative mortality figure of Is29.
'l'he healthiest occupations, is shown by these English figures, are those of elergyman (5331, farmer (563), teacher (604), and lawyer (521).
The occupations coming near to t he a verage for all occupied males are physician (906), tailor (980), and bricklayer or mason (1001). A 11101Ig those ranking high in mortality are brewers (1427), hotel servants and innkeepers (1059), potters ( 1706) , and file-makers ( 1810 ) .