Document G5LKNNVJYm52raOgwL1wwJ36q

Industrial Safety The elimination of accidents is vital to the public interest Accidents produce economic and social loss, impair individual and group productivity, cause inefficiency and retard the advancement of standards of living Philosophy of Industrial Accident Prevention accidents and injuries m this relatively short period of time has exceeded the highest ex pectations of the early safety pioneers In less than one lifetime, safety has become a vital part of industry Expenence has shown that there is no There is no question that accidents are costly to industry and society Today, failure to try to prevent injuries to employees is indefensible The practical and moral aspects of accident prevention are inter-related because accidents result both in a waste of manpower and re sources, and m physical and mental anguish In Medieval days, the master craftsman probably tried to instruct his apprentices and journeymen to work skillfully and safely, be cause he could see the value of high quality and uninterrupted production But it took the Industrial Revolution to create the condi tions which led to the development of acci dent prevention as a specialized field The industrial safety philosophy was de veloped as a result of the tremendous forces of production which were released Without a deterrent to counter this waste of manpower and resources, the number of accidents and injuries would have challenged the imagina tion Although the changes m social responsi bility change more slowly than technology, enlightened industrial management had ac cepted the responsibility for preventing acci dents by the first decade of the 20th Century By 1910, the National Association of Manu facturers was studying the experience ofwork men's compensation laws in Europe This "new" line of thinking held the employer re sponsible for a share of the economic loss suffered by the employee because of an ac cident It was a rather short step from this to the realization that a large proportion of accidents could be prevented and that the same in dustrial brain power that could produce vast quantities of goods could also be used for ac cident prevention Industry soon discovered that production and safety were related From this beginning grew the safety move ment as it is known today The progress in reducing the number of FlC 1-1 --Give the man a cigar or (in summer) a fly swatter1 This 1913 display used by the Joliet Works of Illinois Steel Company, the first plant to organize a safety committee, offers a vanetv of safety incentives watch fobs, paper weights, cigars, and a calendar hazard or operation which cannot be over come by practical safety measures The future may introduce a type of unavoidable accident, but history indicates that all barriers can and will be surmounted In summary, here are the reasons for the Excerpt from National Safety Council policy This chapter was revised by R G Belknap, based upon reviews by selected members of the National Safety Council 2