The ratio of the "quarrels" to this net total is about seventy-five per cent.

There were, in addition, 2,848 homicides due to liquor--that is, without cause.

Thus eighty per cent of all the murders and manslaughters in the United States for a period of seven years were for no reason at all or from mere anger or habit, arising out of causes often of the most trifling character.
Nor are the conclusions changed by the figures of the years between 1904 and 1909.
During this period 61,786 homicides were recorded.

Of these there were 9,302 of which the causes were not known, and 2,480 committed while making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, leaving 50,004 cases of felonious homicides of known causes.

Of these homicides, 33,476 were due to quarrels and 4,799 to liquor, a total of 38,275 out of the 50,004 cases of known causes being traceable in this, another seven years, to motives the most casual.
It would be stupid to allege that the reason men killed was because they had been stepped on or had been deprived of a glass of beer.