30 SAFETY AND PRODUCTION 
Number of employees in factories in which production rate was In- 
creasing and accident rate Decreasing (Tables 1-A and 1-B)...... 
Number of employees in factories in which production rate was In- 
creasing and accident rate Increasing (Table 1-E).............. 72,200 
Number of employees in factories in which production rate was De- 
creasing and accident rate Decreasing (Table 1-F)............... 2,754 
Number of employees in factories in which production rate was De- 
creasing and accident rate Increasing (Table 1-H)....... 7,377 
The total of Table 1-B has been included in the group indicating 
positive correlation notwithstanding its somewhat increasing accident 
frequency rate. The rate of increase, however, was less than that of 
the production rate and the accident severity rate decreased materially. 
Because of the importance of the latter rate, the Committee felt that 
this accident experience could be interpreted as generally favorable. 
On the other hand, the 8 industrial groups with 59,211 employees in 
Table 1-C had frequency rate increases greater than their production 
rate increases, while 5 groups with 21,172 employees in Table 1-D 
and 2 groups with 5,255 employees in Table 1-G had their decreasing 
frequency rates offset by increasing severity rates. The indications 
of the accident rate trend in these three groups were considered to be 
conflicting and the correlation, therefore, indeterminate. 
The coefficient of correlation indicated by these four figures is 
835. Perfect correlation, that is causation, is represented by a coeffi- 
cient of 1. The degree of correlation shown is therefore impressive. 
The same result can be expressed in a more popular way as follows: 
Using “safe” to express decreasing accident rates and “produc- 
tive” to express increasing production rates, it can be stated that, while 
among “unsafe” factories there are only 10 (measured in number of 
employees) which are “productive” against one that is “unproductive,” 
among “safe” factories the ratio is 109 to one. This may be para- 
phrased by stating that a “safe” factory is eleven times more likely to 
be “productive” than is an “unsafe” factory. 
Of course, it must be borne in mind that the coefficient in this case is 
derived from a broad and somewhat loose grouping of the general 
experience data, which, in the case of individual companies, covered 
different periods, varying numbers of years and fluctuating employ- 
ment. It is a correlation obtained by mass treatment of a body of 
general information, the component parts of which are not entirely 
comparable. The result leads unmistakably, however, to the implica- 
tion that there exists a high degree of correlation between industrial 
safety and industrial productivity and that the combination of low 
accident rates and high production rates is possible of attainment by 
any industrial group.