As mentioned in the January Red Cross Magazine, Dr. M. J. Shields. Field Agent of the First Aid Department of the American Red Cross, has been carrying on a very successful first aid campaign for the Bell Telephone Company, spending from December 3, 1912, to February 12, 1913, with the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania and from February 14 to March 10, covering the Chesapeake and Potomac Company’s plant. Lectures were given in Philadelphia and vicinity, Chester, Westchester, West Grove, Jenkintown, Doylestown, Norristown, Pottstown, and Lancaster in eastern Pennsylvania: Camden, Atlantic City, Burlington, Bridgetown, and Trenton in New Jersey, and at Wilmington and Dover in Delaware.
The following offices of the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania were also visited during January and February: Reading, Allentown, Harrisburg, Altoona, Lewistown, Bellefonte, Williamsport, Sunbury, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Easton, Pittsburgh, Washington, Uniontown, Greensburg, Johnstown, New Kensington, Rochester, New Castle, Greenville, Erie, Warren, Oil City, Bradford, Du Bois, and Butler in Pennsylvania; in West Virginia, Wheeling, Fairmont, Clarksburg and Parkersburg; and in Ohio, Marietta, Urieville, Steubenville, and East Liverpool.
In Chesapeake and Potomac territory, Washington, D. C., Baltimore, Westminister, Frederick, Hagerstown, Queenstown, Salisbury, all in Maryland were reached as well as Norfolk, Richmond, and Lynchburg in Virginia and Thurmond, Charleston, Huntington, and Martinsburg in West Virginia. In all, the number of meetings held was 142, miles traveled 7,500, and attendance 7,950.
Those in attendance at the meetings were principally from the plant department, the men who build and maintain the telephone lines, put up ærial and underground cables, and install ’phones, but at nearly every meeting numbers from the commercial and traffic departments attended. Special talks were given in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington, D. C., to the chief operators (women) and matrons on what to do in sudden illness and emergencies, on how to keep well, and on personal hygiene. Dr. Shields reports that these lectures were well received. He also reports that the subject of accident prevention was taken up and emphasized at each lecture.
Invitations to attend these lectures were extended to the officials and employes of the various electric light, power and street car companies. Also to the Western Union, Postal and American Telegraph and Telephoto companies, with the idea of encouraging a cooperative movement already started of making a safer arrangement of cross-arms and a better spread and less dangerous arrangement of high tension wires on poles jointly used and in underground conduits, thereby cutting down to the minimum the most distressing of accidents—fatal shock on a pole 30 feet in the air or in an 8-foot man hole.
DEMONSTRATION OF FIRST AID TO BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY, PITTSBURGH, “PATIENT”: HAS FRACTURED HIP, FRACTURED LEG AND WOUNDS ON HEAD.
The press in the towns and cities visited gave the work good publicity both in their news columns and editorials. The Gazette-Times of Pittsburgh, on Sunday, February 16, had a full page with excellent illustrations. The following is an extract from an editorial in the Westminster Maryland Times of February 21:
“Too much cannot be said in praise of the work now being done by the Red Cross in educating people to care for themselves and others in time of accidents. That such work has great economic, as well as sentimental value, is proved by the way the Bell Telephone Companies and other large corporations are spending money to carry on campaigns, with the help of the Red Cross surgeons, that will show their men what they can and should do in the way of giving first aid to the injured, before a doctor can arrive.”
The Telephone-News, January 1st, made first aid and accident prevention a leading article. The Transmitter, published by the Chesapeake & Potomac Company, in the issue of March 1st had an illustrated article on the first aid Campaign.