United States Steel: A Corporation with a SoulCotter, Arundel
History
United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul
Cotter, Arundel
United States Steel Corporation
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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