Document oe546BmXMrzxQ8g0Y48py4Owr

THE INDUSTRIAL SAFETY MOVEMENT Fig. 1*2 The employee safety meeting was pioneered about the same time the Na tional Safety Council was organized This safety rally at the Falk Company, Milwaukee, was mode more effective by use of flip chart (right) os visual aid dustry and society On the moral side, there are two related premises the first, that need less destruction of human life is, of itself, evil, the second, that failure to take pre cautions against predictable accidents in volves senous guilt These two aspects of the industrial acci dent problem--the practical and the moralare not easily separated, for waste is a moral failure, and sound morality finds expression in practical realities There could, of course, be no real devel opment of industrial safety philosophy until industry began to approach its modem stat ure Although the medieval master probably tried to instruct apprentices and journeymen in the safe use of tools and safe work pro cedures, it was the technological advance known as the Industrial Revolution that cre ated conditions m which accident prevention could be considered as a specialized field of knowledge Now were unleashed tre mendous forces for production Without checks and safeguards, these forces pro duced death and injury on a scale that was bound to challenge conscience This challenge could not be accepted at once, for ways of thought on matters of social responsibility changed more slowly than did the technology of production By the first decade of the 20th Century, enlightened industrial management had ac cepted responsibility for the suffering caused by accidents In that decade, the National Association of Manufacturers was studying most carefully the European experience with workmen's compensation laws, which held industrial employers responsible for a share of the economic loss that accidents caused to workers From the acceptance of financial responsi bility developed a philosophically more ad vanced premise that a large proportion of accidents are preventable, and that industry could and should utilize some of its technical brainpower for the prevention of accidents In adopting this premise, industry discov ered, almost from the start of the modern period, that concern with safety produced efficiency, and that concern with efficiency should include concern with safety Intelligent concern with safety demanded 1-2