SAFETY AND PRODUCTION
through the processes of manufacture is increased and the exposure
to accident, other things being equal, is proportionately greater.
Apparently, then, this recent increase in the number and severity of
accidents is not a mysterious thing, after all, but appears as a natural
concomitant of the increased intensity of the industrial process. It is
not surprising that this era of increased productivity, an era which is
so striking that it may even be called the modern industrial revolution,
should have among its other important by-products an increase in the
intensity of the industrial hazard.
While, however, there has been this recent increase in the hazard
of industry per man-hour, production per man-hour has increased so
much more rapidly that the hazard in terms of production has de-
creased. Today a barrel of flour, a pair of shoes, an automobile, or
a barrel of cement can be made with less loss of life and limb than ever
before.
These two facts together form a striking antithesis: less accidents
measured in terms of things produced ; more things produced, however,
so that the result, after all, is more accidents. If industrial well-being
is to be measured in terms of goods produced, then this condition is
satisfactory. If industrial well-being is to be measured in terms of
working conditions, then the situation is unfavorable and even alarm-
ing. There will be a general agreement that the latter criterion is the
more fundamental. We cannot view with composure a condition that
makes a man’s working life more hazardous under any circumstances.
It is, therefore, with no sense of complacency that we view this
modern condition, but with a determination that accidents must be
decreased, not merely in terms of goods produced, but in actual number
as well. The first years of the safety movement were spent in clearing
up the accumulated bad conditions that were the result of years of
neglect, and results were comparatively easy to produce. The new
safety movement will be very different, for it will have to meet, not
static conditions, but the increasingly difficult conditions of an industry
that is continuously growing more intense.
This, then, is the modern problem, the problem that definitely under-
lies this present study: how can accidents be controlled under modern
industrial conditions, conditions that are becoming continuously more
difficult? The question arises: “Can they be controlled? Perhaps,
after all, with an increasing intensity of industry an increasing hazard
is inevitable.” The answer is a simple one, and not only con-
clusive, but suggestive of the solution in general; the answer is,
namely, that individual cases exist, characterized also by high indus-
trial efficiency, in which this control has been secured. The United
States Steel Corporation in thirteen vears has decreased its accidents
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