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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