CHAPTER X

HUMANIZING INDUSTRY Of all the problems with which industry is confronted none is more important or more difficult of solution than that of establishing proper and harmonious relations between the man who works with his hands and the individual or corporation who pays him his wage. Upon its solution depends to a large extent the settlement of the whole vast problem of capital and labor. And the proper treatment of the worker has been a question to which the management of the Steel Corporation has applied itself with energy almost since the organization of the big company. To claim for the Corporation complete success would be an exaggeration. The problem is one that has been growing ever since the dawn of the industrial era and obviously cannot be settled, if at all, without many years of effort and of mutual give and take. To expect any employer, or group of employers, to achieve immediate success in solving the difficulties that naturally arise between capital and labor would be absurd. No one questions the right of the man who works with his hands to decent living conditions, a wage that will give him the opportunity to live with a certain degree of comfort and permit him to bring up his children decently. Most, if not all, modern employers recognize this right and are willing, even anxious, to accord it to the men in their employ. But it has been by no means easy to decide just what are the best steps to be taken to attain the desired ends. And, it must be stated regretfully, the necessary coöperation on the part of the workers themselves is often lacking. There is often a tendency on the part of wage earners to regard with suspicion any steps taken for their betterment by employers. It must be remembered that the industrial era is practically in its infancy still. It was naturally some time after the birth of the era that the evils it brought in its wake came to be recognized and steps could be taken to combat them. To-day every sound thinker on economics realizes that the welfare of the industrial worker and of industry itself are inseparably associated, and that industry cannot attain its highest development unless the worker gets a fair share in its profits and an opportunity for self-development. It is comparatively easy for the successful employer--that is, successful from a financial viewpoint--be he individual or corporation, to spend money with a view to improving the living conditions of his workmen. It is not an easy matter to do this in a manner that will preserve the self-respect of the worker. And it is of the utmost importance that this self-respect should not be injured in any way. Paternalism, or anything that looks like it, must be studiously avoided. About the year 1906, the Steel Corporation initiated a campaign of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare. The enormous success that it has attained in preventing accidents and deaths in its plants is easily demonstrable statistically. The benefits resulting from its sanitation campaign are also obvious to any one visiting the steel districts. It is not so easy to point definitely to the good results from the welfare campaign, but there is no question that they are more far reaching than either of the others. The greatest of the three is welfare. The term “welfare” is used to include practically every activity designed to make life more livable for the worker and his wife and children. It includes education, housing, club activities, and a host of other things. While the policy of the Steel Corporation in regard to improving the living conditions of its employees is the same wherever the big company’s subsidiaries operate, the methods adopted differ in each locality with the varying conditions presented. It would be impossible in the scope of this work to give details of the multitudes of courses adopted in the name of “welfare,” but a few examples will serve to give a general idea of the work that is being attempted. The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance; hence the work that the Corporation is doing along educational lines may justly be regarded as the most important of its operations for ameliorating the workers’ lot. It is not always possible for the Corporation to take direct charge of the education of the young, the children of its employees, nor does it wish to do this directly. But in those localities where municipal, county, or state educational facilities are poor, it has gladly assumed the burden. The most striking instance is the work conducted along these lines by its southern subsidiary, the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. In fact, the work of the Tennessee Co. along all lines of welfare is particularly worthy of description. This does not imply any invidious comparison; it simply means that the southern company had a more virgin field to work on and therefore has been able to lay out a more comprehensive and definite programme. But to return to the question of education of the workers’ children. When the Steel Corporation, in 1907, purchased control of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co., it found conditions decidedly unfavorable, especially in two respects: education, and the treatment of the colored worker who constituted the major part of the common labor supply of that section. The schools in Jefferson County, Alabama, where the mines and mills of the Tennessee Company are located, were in an exceedingly poor condition in every respect. The buildings in many instances were dilapidated and the inadequate pay offered teachers failed to attract men and women competent to train the youthful mind. After a thorough study of the situation, President George G. Crawford, of the Tennessee Company, took up the question with the county authorities and an arrangement was finally arrived at by which the company was to build and equip a sufficient number of schoolhouses in the neighborhood of its plants and mines. The county agreed to turn over to the company the annual appropriations for teachers’ salaries in the neighborhoods affected, these sums to be supplemented by the company with an amount sufficient to pay the type of teacher which the company’s officials desired to obtain. As a result of this agreement there are to-day, in every place where the Tennessee Company operates, well-constructed, thoroughly ventilated, modern, and attractive schoolhouses for white and colored children, combined with the most modern equipment for teaching. The instructors in charge are of a high average type and the schools are recognized as having no equals in the South. How successful the Tennessee Company’s management of these schools has been is evidenced by the fact that when the Steel Corporation, through the southern company, began the erection of its big shipbuilding plant at Chickasaw on Mobile Bay, in the neighboring county of Mobile, the authorities of that county proposed to the company’s officials that they enter into a similar agreement in respect to education in that section and a plan, in all essential respects the same, was drawn up and agreed to. The educational work in the South is not confined only to children, whom it takes from kindergarten to the end of the grammar school period. The schoolhouses are made centres for general community activities, or in some cases special buildings are erected for this purpose. The community work includes cooking, sewing, housekeeping, and similar classes for the wives of employees, club and social activities, athletics, etc. An important function is the maintenance of libraries for workers and their families. The popularity of these libraries is growing rapidly and the type of literature demanded by those who use them indicates not only a desire on their part for self-instruction but an unexpectedly broad and intelligent interest in the problems and events of the period. Before passing on from the South, let us take a brief glance at what is being done for the colored people of that section by the Corporation. The negro has not heretofore had a fair chance in the South for bettering himself. The Tennessee Company has endeavored and is still strenuously endeavoring to give its colored employees an equal opportunity with their white brethren. Although separated, as desired by both whites and colored, the educational facilities it offers the children of the negro workers are identical with those afforded the youthful whites. The community activities are in all respects similar, and in fact, in every way the colored worker at the Tennessee plants and his family have just as much opportunity to live decently and to develop as the white. At Fairfield, Alabama, the Tennessee Company maintains a hospital, recently erected, which, except in mere size, compares favorably with any institution of its kind in the world. The building, costing over $1,000,000, has accommodation for 334 patients, one half being for white and one half colored. The surgical equipment is the last word in modernity, and the wards and private rooms are splendid examples of good lighting and ventilation and the other factors that go to make a sick room comfortable. The roof of the hospital is a large esplanade where convalescent patients may in fair weather enjoy the southern air and sunlight and a view of miles of beautiful rolling country in every direction. It is a far jump from Alabama to Minnesota geographically. The educational and general welfare problems that confront the Corporation in the Northwest are essentially different from those it faces in the South. In fact, in the Northwest the Corporation’s subsidiaries have nothing to do directly with education, which is in charge of the local authorities. The steel companies merely meet the bills through paying at least 85 per cent. of the taxes in the sections in which they operate. But their managements take a keen interest in the educational work being done, and though the taxes are heavy and the local authorities seem over-extravagant in their expenditures for education, the steel interests do not grumble. They take the attitude that even if taxation is heavy, it could not be for a better cause. The small mining towns of northern Minnesota, which, as already stated, depend almost entirely on the Steel Corporation and other steel companies for their revenues, are profligate in regard to education. Their school buildings are imposing. It is not uncommon for a town of 1,000 or so inhabitants to spend three or four hundred thousand dollars for the erection of schools. In one instance at least a splendid garage is attached to the school building, and buses are maintained, giving the children free motor transportation, morning and afternoon, between their homes and the school. And teachers’ salaries are high. The Corporation’s welfare activities are naturally restricted in this territory, due to the fact that the section is prosperous, and the workers there of a more independent, self-reliant type than those of the South. But the Corporation does all it can in the way of promoting healthful recreation and other similar social work such as club houses, the maintenance of hospitals, etc. In another chapter of this volume the city of Gary, Indiana, and its scheme of education has been discussed at some length, and therefore it need not be taken up here. The Gary educational plan has been adopted in all essentials at Morgan Park, where the Minnesota Steel Co. has its big plant. In the older steel sections, such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Youngstown, the Corporation’s subsidiaries coöperate as far as they may with the local authorities, in improving educational conditions. In all these sections a somewhat similar plan of welfare is carried out. In some locations, visiting nurses or domestic instructors are maintained at the expense of the company. In others, the Corporation maintains schools for teaching foreign workers the English language and American ideas and ideals. In every part of the country where any of the Corporation’s subsidiaries has a plant no expense is spared to improve living conditions generally and to make up any local deficiencies for education and social betterment. Housing of workers is another great problem that confronts industry. The Corporation, wherever its subsidiaries operate, has always endeavored to provide its workers with comfortable and sanitary houses at moderate rentals. So far has it gone in this respect that it is seriously open to question whether it has not overshot its mark and created new evils. In the South, in the Connellsville region of Pennsylvania, where it gets the mass of its coal supplies, in Youngstown, Gary, Morgan Park, and other sections, it has built thousands of houses--the figure given as of January 1, 1920, is 17,553 dwellings and boarding houses--for rental at low rate to employees. The rents on these dwellings are so low that the average rental receipts are only about 1½ per cent. of the actual cost of construction. This is not enough to cover taxes and upkeep, let alone depreciation and a reasonable return on the investment. These low rentals are in effect tantamount to an addition to wages. The adverse side of them, however, is that they discourage private construction enterprise, which cannot hope to compete with the Corporation’s rentals, and also remove all incentive to the worker to own his own home. For years the subsidiary companies have constructed houses and sold them to employees on an easy-payment plan, but it was only recently that a general comprehensive plan was developed along these lines for all subsidiaries. The housing plan varies slightly with the conditions of each case, but generally it permits employees to purchase or build a home on small initial payments, with installments running from ten to fifteen years, and with an interest rate of 5 per cent. on the unpaid balance. How varied are the activities of the Corporation in regard to welfare work is illustrated by a list of the facilities constructed or installed for various purposes, as presented by Charles L. Close, manager of the Corporation’s Bureau of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare, at a meeting of the American Iron & Steel Institute in New York in May, 1920. The list was made up as of January 1st of that year. The following are some of the principal items: Number of dwelling and boarding houses constructed and leased to employees at low rentals, 27,553; churches, 25; schools, 45; clubs, 19; restaurants and lunch rooms, 64; rest and waiting rooms, 210; playgrounds, 131; swimming pools, 11; athletic fields, 96; tennis courts, 107; sanitary drinking fountains, 3,077; pipe systems for drinking water, 369; protected wells and springs, 647; comfort stations (complete units, either bath or dry houses, closets, wash or locker rooms) 1,495; showers, 2,672; clothes lockers, 116,749; base hospitals, 25; emergency stations, 286; company surgeons, physicians and internes, 167; outside surgeons on salary, 107; nurses, 189; visiting nurses, 68; teachers and instructors, 222; safety inspectors (spending entire time on safety work) 101; employees who have served on safety committees, 25,948; employees now serving on safety committees, 5,500; employees who have been trained in first-aid or rescue work, 16,801; employees now in training, 801. Many of the above statistics are concerned principally with strictly sanitation and welfare work. While on the topic of statistics, however, it might be well to give Mr. Close’s figures of the Corporation’s expenditures on those activities that come under the operation of the bureau which he heads. These expenditures, from 1912 up to the end of 1919, are: Welfare, $11,751,429; Sanitation, $11,732,666; Accident prevention, $6,530,706; Relief for injured men and families of men killed, $22,652,238; cost of employees’ stock subscription plan, $9,160,000; pension fund payments in excess of income, provided by permanent fund, $1,824,693; for creation of permanent fund, $8,000,000; total, $71,651,732. A sum of $5,113,570 paid in pensions to employees, but derived from the fund originally established by Andrew Carnegie, is not included in the above total. In organizing welfare activities the Corporation’s officials work on the theory that it is infinitely better to help people to help themselves than to give them something that savors more or less of charity. One department of the work that has met with encouraging success is the development of home and community gardens. Practically every worker has in the front or rear of his home a small amount of vacant land, but unless he is offered some incentive to cultivate this, he is apt to let it remain bare and serve for the accumulation of rubbish. Realizing that such a state of affairs was not only a waste economically, but was inimical to the physical and mental welfare of the worker, a plan was evolved to induce him to cultivate these vacant areas. The offering of small cash prizes was found sufficient to give the necessary impetus to this work, and the result is that a great many of the workers’ homes are now surrounded with flower or vegetable gardens to the cultivation of which the men and their families give much of their spare time. From a financial viewpoint these gardens are profitable to their cultivators, regardless of the prizes offered for the best-kept ones. The mental and spiritual benefit derived from them cannot be measured, but there is little question that it far exceeds the financial gain. In many localities, where housing conditions do not permit gardens, the Corporation’s subsidiaries utilize unoccupied land in the mill district, plow the ground, plot it out, and then hand it over to the employees to cultivate, again with the incentive of cash prizes for the most successful results. Last summer more than 3,000 acres of land were thus utilized. Many of these community gardens are made the especial care of the children, who take a great interest in the work and who often achieve results of which their elders might well be proud. Children, in fact, occupy an important place in the welfare scheme. They are the workers of to-morrow, and every effort is made to permit them to develop healthy minds and sound bodies. Children’s playgrounds are equipped and maintained in a great many mill centres, and instructors are employed to devote their whole time to assisting the children to get the best possible benefits from these. Many of these playgrounds have swimming pools, in some cases one for the older and one for very small children, with swimming instructors in charge, and a visitor in the summer needs only the evidence of his eyes to convince him that the little ones make regular and excellent use of them. The care of the worker’s health is one of the most important considerations of the Bureau of Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare. Sanitary measures are general in every mill. There is not a single plant of the Corporation but is equipped with modern facilities for washing, and experts in sanitation give their time to improving these methods whenever possible. Every suggestion that tends to diminish the risk of contagion or of diseases caused by unsanitary conditions, occupational conditions, etc., is adopted and there is a keen rivalry among the different plants to establish some new improvement which the others lack. In almost every plant the visitor is shown some idea or contrivance in the way of sanitation with the boast that this was first used at that plant. All of which makes for a constant improvement in the health of the worker. Drinking water generally is thoroughly purified and piped through the mills so as to be at all times easily obtained by the men. Cups, with their possibility of contagion, are eliminated. Fountains, with guards to make it impossible for the drinker’s lips to touch the outlet, are substituted. Most, if not all, of the comfort rooms maintained at the plants are equipped with shower baths and every workman has his private locker where he keeps soap, towels, and a change of clothes. The results of these measures are not reflected only on the health of the men. The worker who is able at the end of a strenuous day’s endeavor in a hot mill or a coal mine to enjoy a cool shower and leave the plant clean and comfortably dressed must necessarily be a more self-respecting member of the community than he who has to return to the bosom of his family grimed with the sweat and dirt of his day’s toil, and his family also benefits, both in self-respect and comfort. It was a difficult job for the wife to maintain a pride in her home under the conditions that once existed in the steel districts. Cleanliness is far-reaching in its results. It benefits not only those directly affected but the entire community. [Illustration: Ore Cars at Proctor Yards] There is one aspect of the sanitation work that is hardly obvious, but nevertheless important. America is the great melting pot of the races. History has shown that it normally takes several generations in the crucible to produce the out-and-out American. And cleanliness, probably more than anything else, is the birthright and symbol of the American. Many of the foreign races that flock to our shores are regrettably lacking in this respect, but they learn quickly. And the more quickly we can accustom them to the idea of the necessity of personal cleanliness the more speedily will they become real Americans and good citizens. [Illustration: General View of Duluth Ore Docks] Which all harks back to the question of self-respect. The American is naturally self-respecting and independent. And his accustomed use of soap and water is no small factor in making him so. And the Corporation’s welfare workers see to it that its employees shall never lack soap and water. Incidentally, among the many activities of the Welfare Bureau is that of instruction for citizenship. This includes the teaching of the English language to foreign workers, instructing them in American ideas and institutions, and assisting them in obtaining their naturalization papers. Foreign workers’ wives are instructed in American standards of housekeeping and in the proper care of their children, and every effort is made to encourage and assist the foreign-born worker to realize the opportunities that this country offers to all and to enable him to take advantage of them. As the world grows older and wiser and civilization progresses, old ideas are being discarded one by one, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in the realms of business and industry. Principles of doing business, once held as cardinal, have in many cases later been recognized as immoral, not only from the human, but from the economic standpoint. The old trading doctrine of _caveat emptor_, or “let the buyer beware,” is no longer relied on by reputable merchants. They realize that the man who hopes to build up a sound, steady business must take upon his own shoulders the responsibility for what he sells both as a question of honesty and policy. Another principle which may be called “let the worker beware,” one which laid down the law that the industrial worker was supposed to be cognizant of whatever risks were involved in his employment and to assume these risks himself, is gradually being legislated out of existence, compensation laws of recent years taking the burden of the dangers of industrial employment off the shoulders of the worker and placing it where it rightly belongs, on the industry. But the United States Steel Corporation did not wait for the law-makers to force upon it the assumption of this liability. Cheerfully and voluntarily, it accepted for itself the onus of accidents in its plants before a single state of the Union had passed a Workmen’s Compensation Act. More, the compensation relief plan for injured workmen, adopted by the Corporation in 1910, has served as a model for a number of states in drawing up liability legislation, and is more liberal in some respects than the plans of most, if not all, states. Yet though the Steel Corporation, as evidenced by its action in putting its compensation plan in force, heartily approves of the theory of industrial liability legislation, the big company’s management is strenuously opposed to certain forms that state legislation sometimes takes. One of these is state insurance, the objection being that this takes away from the employer all incentive to adopting measures for accident prevention. For compensation, after all, is not a cure but a palliative. It does not strike at the root of the disease; and in the final analysis, the important thing is the prevention of accidents rather than payment for them after their occurrence. In this respect the up-to-date employer has gone much further than legislators. He has gone to the very heart of the industrial accident question by taking what means he could to eliminate, or at least to minimize, the risks incidental to the industry in which he is engaged. He subscribes to the slogan “safety first,” safety even before profit, for he is beginning to realize that accidents are uneconomic and unprofitable, and that their prevention, even if apparently costly at the beginning, must pay in dollars and cents in the final showing. In other words, the modern employer of labor is becoming convinced that safety methods, or insurance before accident, are as necessary as are measures to prevent fire instead of relying upon fire insurance companies to make good losses from conflagration. Although individual effort to minimize industrial hazards had been made by some companies before the Steel Corporation existed--notably in the case of some of the very companies merged into the “Steel Trust”--the Corporation may with reason claim the distinction of being the real pioneer of the safety movement. For not only did it organize, systematize, and enormously expand the work of the several companies, but it championed the cause of safety, and trumpeted it to the industrial world. Through its example, as well as by means of a vigorous campaign carried on by the Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare Bureau, it preached the doctrine of “safety first,” a slogan originated by the Illinois Street Co., to all. The largest employer of labor in the world, by its adoption of such a policy, forced the recognition of this policy upon industry generally, and as a result of the safety campaign inaugurated by the Corporation in 1906, safety-first methods and appliances are generally employed in every steel mill in the United States to-day, and, in fact, by a vast number of plants devoted to other industries, and they have spread and are still spreading to other countries. The results of the work of the Corporation’s Safety committees are at the disposal of whoever cares to avail himself of them. A Safety Museum is maintained at 71 Broadway, New York, the Corporation’s executive headquarters, and from this centre the work of promoting safety radiates to every part of the industrial world. Further, the efforts of the Corporation have resulted to a great extent in educating the worker to expect and demand that every reasonable precaution be taken to protect him from pain and injury, his family from the loss of its head and wage-earner, in teaching him to seek safety for himself and to recognize the right of his fellow-workmen to it. From the aspect of liability, accidents may be divided into two broad classes as recognized by law--injuries due to the worker’s own carelessness, and those attributable to the negligence of his employer. But the Steel Corporation, in its accident relief plan, which supplements its safety work, makes no such distinction. It recognizes only that the worker has been temporarily or permanently prevented from earning a livelihood, or that his family has suffered, and it compensates for the loss without question as to where the blame lies. In order to secure the best results, economically and otherwise, from its safety campaign, it was obvious that the mere setting up of safety guards, warnings of danger, etc., was not sufficient. It is just as necessary that the worker should be taught to take advantage of the safeguards provided him, to regard the seeking of safety as a duty he owes to himself, his family, and his fellow-workmen. In its campaign for the prevention of accidents the Corporation has sought to accomplish both these ends, and the educational work has been by far the most difficult. How much so may be gathered from the fact that after many years of instilling the doctrine of safety into the workmen, investigation showed that nearly 50 per cent. of all accidents occurring in the Corporation’s mines or plants were indisputably traceable to indifference or thoughtlessness on the part of the men themselves. The worker is inclined to regard with something of disdain the risks incidental to his occupation. Often he deems it rather cowardly to seek to avoid these risks. Indifference to danger is too often accepted by the thoughtless as a hallmark of personal courage, and indifference to the dangers of one’s employment as a sign of experience and skill. Just as a small boy will jump on a moving car to “show off,” the worker will often incur unnecessary risks for the same reason. A railroad man will board a moving engine from the middle of the track simply because to do so seems to indicate that he is past the apprentice stage. It is to such causes that a large percentage of industrial accidents are due, and the employer of labor, in instituting a safety campaign, generally finds that the greatest problem he faces is to persuade the worker that such indifference to danger is childish, and that real skill and efficiency lie in doing things in the correct, which is synonymous with the safe, way. The Corporation’s safety work may be divided into three parts: organization, safety devices and danger warnings, education. It goes without saying that to get the best results in any campaign, efficient organization is essential. The Corporation has organized a central Safety Committee under whose charge the general work of prevention of accidents falls. Each subsidiary company has its own Committee on Safety, and there are further sub-divisions into sub-committees at each mill or mine. It is the duty of the sub-committees to see that all safety rules are obeyed, and to make suggestions for furthering the cause of accident prevention, while the main committees receive and act upon these suggestions and attend to the financial and other aspects of the campaign. For the prevention of accidents costs a good deal of money, the Corporation having expended, from 1906 to 1919, about $11,000,000 in this work alone. But the necessary funds are never stinted. Judge Gary’s promise that the Finance Committee would recognize any practical step undertaken for reducing the risk of injury to the workmen, and would vote the wherewithal to pay for it, has been scrupulously kept. So as to bring home to every worker the safety idea, the personnel of the sub- or mill-committees is constantly changed with the view that each worker will sooner or later take part in the promulgation of safety. Figures already quoted show that 101 inspectors spend their entire time on this work, 25,948 employees have served on safety committees, and 5,500 were thus serving at the end of 1919. This practice of changing the members of the mill committees, more than anything else, educates the men to think safety for themselves and for others. Installation of devices designed to make accidents impossible, or at least extremely improbable, on machines that had previously been prolific causes of injuries to workmen, was naturally the first work of the Safety Committee. It was the obvious step. The educational campaign came later, as it became evident to those engaged in the work that the saving of the worker from injury lay largely in his own hands. Once this was recognized, the educational work was taken up enthusiastically, and to-day forms the most important side of the “boost-for-safety” campaign. Print and paint are used liberally to keep the idea of caution before the mind of the worker at all times. Safety warnings are painted here and there in conspicuous places in the mills and mines, and at the entrance to many plants there are big display signs, electrically illuminated at night, on which changing mottoes serve constantly to impress the idea on all and sundry. Blank walls, pay envelopes, and all available spaces that may be printed or painted on are impressed into the work. A million dollars, in round figures, is spent annually by the Corporation in the erection of safety appliances. The men are encouraged to suggest ideas for the prevention of accidents of however trivial a nature and these are all given careful consideration, and the records show that something like nine out of ten of them are used. The safety workers have adopted this motto: “Not only is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure, but it is better to have a pound of prevention than an ounce of cure.” So numerous and varied are the safety devices that have been developed over the course of years that it would be impossible to describe them in detail. They run from guards on the handles of wheelbarrows, to prevent fingers being crushed in passing through a doorway, to appliances for derailing cars in danger of collision; guards over exposed flywheels, belts, and other moving parts of machinery; enclosed ladders to prevent falls; goggles to safeguard workers’ eyes from explosion of metal or flying chips, and subways under railway tracks to eliminate the danger of crossing the rails in a busy yard. Although a workman who invents a marketable safety device may secure a patent on it if he desires, the Corporation itself never patents, being only too glad to put at the disposal of other employers every means it can to assist them in eliminating accidents. Its management holds that the safety campaign, while good economy, is largely humanitarian, and should not be commercialized. For several years past the Safety Committee of the Steel Corporation has been trying to make the safety idea universal, and it has put into use a danger signal which has been adopted by a number of industrial organizations in this country. This signal is a plain red ball, innocent of lettering. It is pointed out that this sign, speaking no language and therefore speaking all tongues, can, by educating the worker of the world, be made understandable everywhere and at all times, and will therefore be especially serviceable in promoting safety among foreign workers. The adoption of the red ball of safety was urged upon the International Convention for the Prevention of Industrial Accidents which was held at Milan some years ago, and it has been accepted and put into use by such organizations as the American Iron & Steel Institute, the National Metal Trades Association, National Association of Manufacturers, as well as by a large number of railroads and manufacturing concerns of one kind or another. The satisfactory results of the safety-first campaign are demonstrable statistically. Taking 1906 as a basis, this being the year of its inception, the number of serious or fatal accidents in 1918 and 1919 was reduced 46.84 per cent. notwithstanding the fact that the figures for recent years include a number of accidents that were classed as minor injuries in 1906. The following chart speaks for itself. [Illustration: ACCIDENTS 1906-1919 INCLUSIVE PER CENT DECREASE IN ACCIDENT RATE UNDER 1906 SAVED FROM PER 1,000 EMPLOYES SERIOUS INJURY +-----------------------------------------------------+ |1906|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■| |1907|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 10.40%| 832 1907 |1908|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 18.21%| 783 1908 |1909|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 25.28%| 1,236 1909 |1910|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 43.49%| 2,215 1910 |1911|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 41.26%| 2,012 1911 |1912|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 35.05%| 2,023 1912 |1913|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 38.29%| 2,273 1913 |1914|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 40.52%| 1,748 1914 |1915|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 43.54%| 2,145 1915 |1916|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 31.60%| 1,957 1916 |1917|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 41.63%| 2,891 1917 |1918|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 46.84%| 3,094 1918 |1919|■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 46.84%| 2,944 1919 +----+------------------------------------------------+ ------ TOTAL 25,853 A CHANGE IN THE SYSTEM OF REPORTING ACCIDENTS MADE JAN. 1, 1911, RESULTED IN MORE ACCIDENTS BEING REPORTED AND CLASSED AS SERIOUS THAN FORMERLY WAS THE CASE UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION. BUREAU OF SAFETY, SANITATION & WELFARE. ] In fourteen years a total of 25,853 men saved, by educational work and by the taking of precautions, from serious injury, many of them from death. Probably two-thirds of the number had wives and children, and so some seventeen thousand families were saved from sorrow, from the loss of or injury to their heads. But this is not all. The figures represent the saving accomplished in the mines, mills, and so on, of the Steel Corporation itself. No account can be obtained of the number of men employed by other steel companies, or in other industries, who, by reason of the example set by the Corporation, were saved from death or loss of limb. And the safety campaign is yet in its infancy. The men who are devoting themselves to it look forward to the day when the only accidents that shall occur will be those that may be said truly to be unavoidable, and the number of men killed or injured in industry will have been reduced to a minimum. A concrete example of the results of the safety programme is afforded by comparing the figures for accidents in the coal-mining industry in the United States and other countries with those in the Corporation’s mines. DEATHS PER MILLION TONS PRODUCED 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 Scotland 3.35 4.32 4.03 4.55 South Wales 5.84 5.51 6.72 6.48 Great Britain 4.38 4.39 4.70 5.24 United States 4.27 3.77 4.14 3.80 4.24 H. C. Frick Coke Company 1.75 1.89 2.20 2.38 2.81 TONS COAL PRODUCED PER DEATH Scotland 298,342 231,627 248,266 219,870 South Wales 171,174 181,634 148,822 154,312 Great Britain 228,402 227,807 212,652 190,998 United States 234,297 265,094 241,618 262,873 235,918 H. C. Frick Coke Company 567,098 528,735 493,188 419,758 363,844 N.B. Figures for Frick Coke Co. (United States Steel) and for United States apply only to underground workers. Figures for other countries include workers above ground where casualties are lower. Has the Steel Corporation really gained from its large expenditures for safety work? That it has secured returns in the way of loyalty and increased efficiency can hardly be doubted; but has there been any tangible monetary saving? The economy in the matter of compensation payments saved is sufficient to answer this question. A careful calculation made several years ago by the Safety Bureau showed that had the same number of accidents occurred in the three years, 1911-1913, as occurred in 1906, when the safety campaign was organized, the big company’s disbursements, as a result, to the injured workmen and their families would have been several millions of dollars more than the entire amount expended in safety work. The aggregate saving to date would probably run well into the tens of millions. The gain in production that is derived from increased safety in manufacturing processes is also an important financial consideration. In the first place, every accident means a more or less prolonged interruption, possibly a complete though temporary cessation of operations, with a consequent loss. Next, it means that a new man must be trained to fill the place vacated by the injured worker. It will be a happy day for industry when every employer realizes that the injury of a workman is as harmful, from the viewpoint of profits alone, as a breakdown of a piece of machinery. The human machine is no less important than that made of steel or wood. And safety appliances are insurance against the breakdown of that machinery. It is the first step that counts. Once started on the job of saving the employees of the Corporation itself from injury and mutilation the ambition of the men in charge of this work extended and reached out through the steel trade, then to other industries and finally to other countries. Strictly speaking, safety should be classified under the general head of “Welfare.” But in practice a distinction must be drawn between what may be considered the plain duty of the employer to prevent needless accidents--a duty to the workmen and a duty to himself--and the work that reaches out and, by bettering the worker’s lot generally, benefits his family and the community in which he lives. Work of this character grows of its own impetus. It is doubtful if the Corporation’s management, when it first outlined its propaganda for helping employees to lead happier and healthier lives, realized how far afield it would be carried, how many different activities the work would come to include. Each step accomplished suggests another and often a bigger. As the welfare campaign progresses its workers become imbued with enthusiasm, make more demands upon the Corporation’s finances to carry out their ideas. And so the welfare programme has taken on a broad scope, has a wide horizon, and will have a still wider one as the years roll by. Those in charge of the welfare and safety work, whether at the mills or at the Corporation’s headquarters, do not claim, nor for that matter do any of the Corporation’s officials claim, that the work is entirely altruistic. They are perhaps rather too inclined to emphasize its importance purely from the efficiency standpoint. It is impossible to judge motives, and generally those behind any course of action are more or less mixed. The outside observer, however, studying the operation of the Safety and Welfare movement, and noticing the enthusiasm of those engaged in it, cannot but be convinced that the deeper motive behind it is an unselfish one. The consideration that the employer benefits financially from the health and happiness of his employees is there, but it occupies a decidedly secondary place. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to demonstrate statistically that welfare work, as distinct from safety work, is financially beneficial to the employer; that the Corporation has received any tangible return for the large sums it spends yearly to give its workers the opportunity to lead cleaner, healthier, happier, and broader lives. But no work thus done can fail to give the doer a return, full measure and overflowing. The stock subscription plan, discussed in the early part of this work, is in reality a part of the welfare programme. It has a two-fold object: that of creating a direct personal interest on the part of the worker in the Corporation’s affairs, and that of encouraging thrift among the men and women employees, setting their feet on the first rung of the ladder of success. All welfare work, in the end, whether it be the salvation of the worker from accidents, the teaching of individual or community hygiene, the care of the sick, financial compensation for the injured, the teaching of languages, trades, sciences, or the inculcation of thrift, has for its object the making of better men and women, the giving to the worker born under unfavorable social conditions the opportunity to lift himself above these conditions. And from this both the employer and employed must benefit together. But every other consideration aside, welfare work had paid in the satisfaction that the management and the stockholders of the great industrial enterprise feel in the knowledge that they have given the man who works with his hands, not in the Corporation alone, but industry generally--for where U. S. Steel leads, others follow--better working conditions, cleaner homes and communities, and better educational facilities for their children. In the satisfaction of knowing that, by this work, better citizens are being made, and finally, in the realization that it has helped to bridge the chasm that separates capital from labor. Sooner or later the time must come when it will be recognized that what is known as “welfare work” is a simple duty that industry owes to labor. If it is not freely accorded, the working man will eventually demand that his work and his home be surrounded with those conditions, tangible and intangible, that make for decent citizenship, for self-respecting manhood. If industry as a whole, as the Steel Corporation has already done, will recognize without compulsion these rights it will go a far way toward smoothing out the differences that exist between capital and labor, toward eliminating radical agitation and Bolshevism. It must offer this practical recognition of the workers’ rights as evidence of its claim that the real interests of the man who works with his hands and of him who pays him his wage are identical. Welfare work is the humanizing of industry. It may prove the salvation of industry.