United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

The results of the work of the Corporation’s Safety committees are at the disposal of whoever cares to avail himself of them. A Safety Museum is maintained at 71 Broadway, New York, the Corporation’s executive headquarters, and from this centre the work of promoting safety radiates to every part of the industrial world.

Further, the efforts of the Corporation have resulted to a great extent in educating the worker to expect and demand that every reasonable precaution be taken to protect him from pain and injury, his family from the loss of its head and wage-earner, in teaching him to seek safety for himself and to recognize the right of his fellow-workmen to it.

From the aspect of liability, accidents may be divided into two broad classes as recognized by law—injuries due to the worker’s own carelessness, and those attributable to the negligence of his employer. But the Steel Corporation, in its accident relief plan, which supplements its safety work, makes no such distinction. It recognizes only that the worker has been temporarily or permanently prevented from earning a livelihood, or that his family has suffered, and it compensates for the loss without question as to where the blame lies.

In order to secure the best results, economically and otherwise, from its safety campaign, it was obvious that the mere setting up of safety guards, warnings of danger, etc., was not sufficient. It is just as necessary that the worker should be taught to take advantage of the safeguards provided him, to regard the seeking of safety as a duty he owes to himself, his family, and his fellow-workmen. In its campaign for the prevention of accidents the Corporation has sought to accomplish both these ends, and the educational work has been by far the most difficult.

How much so may be gathered from the fact that after many years of instilling the doctrine of safety into the workmen, investigation showed that nearly 50 per cent. of all accidents occurring in the Corporation’s mines or plants were indisputably traceable to indifference or thoughtlessness on the part of the men themselves. The worker is inclined to regard with something of disdain the risks incidental to his occupation. Often he deems it rather cowardly to seek to avoid these risks. Indifference to danger is too often accepted by the thoughtless as a hallmark of personal courage, and indifference to the dangers of one’s employment as a sign of experience and skill. Just as a small boy will jump on a moving car to “show off,” the worker will often incur unnecessary risks for the same reason. A railroad man will board a moving engine from the middle of the track simply because to do so seems to indicate that he is past the apprentice stage. It is to such causes that a large percentage of industrial accidents are due, and the employer of labor, in instituting a safety campaign, generally finds that the greatest problem he faces is to persuade the worker that such indifference to danger is childish, and that real skill and efficiency lie in doing things in the correct, which is synonymous with the safe, way.

The Corporation’s safety work may be divided into three parts: organization, safety devices and danger warnings, education.

It goes without saying that to get the best results in any campaign, efficient organization is essential. The Corporation has organized a central Safety Committee under whose charge the general work of prevention of accidents falls. Each subsidiary company has its own Committee on Safety, and there are further sub-divisions into sub-committees at each mill or mine. It is the duty of the sub-committees to see that all safety rules are obeyed, and to make suggestions for furthering the cause of accident prevention, while the main committees receive and act upon these suggestions and attend to the financial and other aspects of the campaign. For the prevention of accidents costs a good deal of money, the Corporation having expended, from 1906 to 1919, about $11,000,000 in this work alone. But the necessary funds are never stinted. Judge Gary’s promise that the Finance Committee would recognize any practical step undertaken for reducing the risk of injury to the workmen, and would vote the wherewithal to pay for it, has been scrupulously kept.

So as to bring home to every worker the safety idea, the personnel of the sub- or mill-committees is constantly changed with the view that each worker will sooner or later take part in the promulgation of safety. Figures already quoted show that 101 inspectors spend their entire time on this work, 25,948 employees have served on safety committees, and 5,500 were thus serving at the end of 1919. This practice of changing the members of the mill committees, more than anything else, educates the men to think safety for themselves and for others.

Installation of devices designed to make accidents impossible, or at least extremely improbable, on machines that had previously been prolific causes of injuries to workmen, was naturally the first work of the Safety Committee. It was the obvious step. The educational campaign came later, as it became evident to those engaged in the work that the saving of the worker from injury lay largely in his own hands. Once this was recognized, the educational work was taken up enthusiastically, and to-day forms the most important side of the “boost-for-safety” campaign.

Print and paint are used liberally to keep the idea of caution before the mind of the worker at all times. Safety warnings are painted here and there in conspicuous places in the mills and mines, and at the entrance to many plants there are big display signs, electrically illuminated at night, on which changing mottoes serve constantly to impress the idea on all and sundry. Blank walls, pay envelopes, and all available spaces that may be printed or painted on are impressed into the work.