OFFICERS NATIONAL METAL TRADES ASSOCIATION 1911-1912 President-F. C. CALDWELL, H. W. Caldwell & Son Co., Chicago, Ill. First Vice-President-HENRY D. SHARPE, Second Vice-President-W. A. LAYMAN, Wagner Electric Co., St. Louis, Mo. Treasurer-HOWARD P. EELLS, Bucyrus Company, Cleveland, Ohio. Commissioner-ROBERT WUEST, Cleveland, Ohio. Sympathy a Necessity To bring about the highest possible perfection of safety conditions in a mill it is necessary for each person in that mill, from the superintendent down, to be in sympathy with the movement, so that he will look for the good points and not the objectionable ones in everything that is done. When this condition is attained every law might be erased from the statute books, and the cause of safety would lose not a particle. Without this condition no volume of legislation can accomplish the desired end. (David S. Beyer.) A MONTHLY PUBLICATION BY THE NATIONAL FOUNDERS' ASSOCIATION AND National METAL TRADES ASSOCIATION IN THE INTEREST OF MEMBERS AND THEIR WORKMEN. STANDARDS OF SAFETY IN MACHINERY. Prevention of the Accident the Primary Need. Legislation Not a Real Necessity. Pioneering Now Being Done by Large Corporations. (From paper presented to National Conference of Charities and Correction by David S. Beyer of American Steel and Wire Company.) Much is being said these days about "workmen's compensation," and "employers' liability," and as you all know, new legislation of this kind is now being drafted in a number of States. Both these lines of effort are valuable, tending as they do to a fairer economic distribution of the burden of industrial accidents, and carrying with them a certain punitive effect for the employer who is careless or indifferent to the safety of his workmen. But how much more important than liability or compensation laws, which take effect after a man has been injured, is the actual prevention of the injury! That eliminates alike both questions of responsibility and remuneration and checks the evil at its fountainhead. Some General Conclusions. Legislation is necessary for the protection and preservation of society, and yet it is largely expressed in terms of negation. We can say "Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"; but who could ever hope to enact a law big enough and broad enough to specify all the positive constructive activities of a social community? And so it is with the accident problem; positive constructive work that does not confine itself to the mere limits of legislation is the thing that is necessary if we are to realize anything like the full possibilities of accident prevention. Illinois now has one of the most rigid factory laws in the United States and its staff of inspectors is probably equal to that of any other State. About a year ago one of the State inspectors in going through an Illinois plant of the American Steel & Wire Company stated that he considered it the best equipped from the safety standpoint of any of several hundred plants which he had visited. He made no report of recommendations for further improvement-and yet each one of our own inspectors who are at work in that plant is making continual additions to its list of safety recommendations, and we have been spending, and will continue indefinitely to spend, about $1,000 per month on safety work in this particular mill. Some time ago an Ohio inspector visited one of the company plants in Cleveland, and in commenting on conditions, he said that it was the first plant he had ever inspected in which he did not make some recommendations. A little later another mill was added to the same honor roll. And yet our local inspectors are busy in those plants, and a constant volume of safety work is under way there at all times. I cite these instances not with any desire to exploit or magnify the work that is being done in our own company but because they cast an interesting side light on the extent to which the work of progressive accident prevention outdistances legislation. The Movement Wide Spreading. And, notwithstanding the indifference that is sometimes |