"No Accident" Year at Port Colborne Cement Plant

On January 7 the Port Colborne plant of the Canada Cement Company held a banquet to celebrate the attainment of their goal of making 1925 a "no accident year." The clean record extended beyond the year, no accident having occurred in the company's "Number 8" plant for fifteen months up to January 1, 1926. The proceedings at the banquet are recorded in the plant magazine Plantate News.

Mr. Frank P. Jones, president and general manager of the Canada Cement Company, complimented the staff on their fine work. The company encouraged accident prevention work at all the plants, and the number of accidents had dropped steadily, having been 197 in 1921, 76 in 1922, 63 in 1923, 38 in 1924, and 37 in 1925 in all plants. He stated that at present twenty per cent of the stock of the Canada Cement Company is held by the employees and he hoped to see the day when a majority of the stock would be held by the employees.

Mr. H. G. Jacobsen, manager of the Bureau of Accident Prevention and Insurance of the Portland Cement Association said that in

June, 1925, "we decided to make a campaign to have a pre-determined month set aside as a "No-accident" month for the whole Cement Industry in Canada and the United States. Many were dubious of the outcome and one gentleman wrote and said "It is impossible."

We went ahead, however, and set aside the month of June as the month in question and 72 out of the 125 operating cement plants on the continent came sucessfully through the month. Needless to say, your plant was one of these. It is not a question of the perfect condition of a plant alone, but of the men. If the men get the right idea of safety work, the machinery will take care of itself."

Mr. R. B. Morley, manager of the Industrial Accident Prevention Associations of Ontario spoke of the importance of prevention work. "During the last eleven years." he said, "there were 502,014 accidents reported to us, of which 4,328 were fatal. In that time there was paid out as compensation the huge sum of $51,000,000 or an average of over $100 for each accident. Last year alone, there were 60,012 accidents reported to the Workmen's Compensation Board, of which 345 were deaths and Plant No. 8 was not on that list. In 4,018 days there were 4,300 death cases, or over 1 a day. In fact, to put it in rather a brutal

manner, the "blood cost" of manufacturing an article was an item to be seriously reckoned with. Your plant has eliminated the "blood cost" from your cement."

"No Accident" Record of Chatham Harvester Factory

Mr. George Hodge, of the International Harvester Company, in an address to the fourth annual Mid-West Safety Conference of the American Society of Safety Engineers and the Chicago Safety Council, asserted that accidents can be prevented in industrial occupations generally considered by insurance companies as hazardous.

"There has not been an accident in the works of the International Harvester Company at Chatham, Ontario, in two years," he said, "as a result of the educational non-accident campaign conducted along lines recommended by the National Safety Council."

"The Safest Mill in Canada"

The Pulp and Paper Magazine of Canada, the valuable weekly magazine published at Gardenvale, Quebec, is offering two trophies for "the Safest Mill in Canada." In an

nouncing this competition, it says:

"One of the regrettable points in the safety situation in Canada is the more or less haphazard manner in which the work is being carried on in some of the provinces, and the attitude that still obtains in some mills of

doing only what the law requires, even in some cases waiting until the law requires it. A more spontaneous and general introduction of safety work and safety methods, would save a great deal of unnecessary sickness and suffering and it would also be of economic advantage to the whole industry.

"There is as yet no dominion-wide organization of safety work in the paper industry, the basis of which is necessarily a uniform system of reporting accidents. The beginning of such a system may possibly be started through the reports that will be submitted in connection with our contest. In any case, there will be the unquestioned advantage of an increased interest throughout the Dominion in striving to accomplish a very worth-while object."

The two trophies now offered for competition are two challenge shields, one for the best record in mills in "Group A," comprising those having payroll-hours of 60,000 per month and up, and the other for mills in "Group B" comprising all other mills.

The period of contest will be the six months from March 1 to September 1, 1926.

All accidents involving loss of time beyond the shift in which the accident occurred to be taken into consideration in making up records. New construction, woods operations or townsite accidents to be excluded, making the competition straight contest between operating mills.

Copies of all reports of accidents to be sent immediately to Mr. A. P. Costigane, 811 Federal Building, Toronto, Ontario, who will be responsible for the compiling of records.

A monthly statement showing the total number of employees (including office staff, superintendents and foremen) and total number of payroll hours (payroll hours to be based on straight time where overtime is worked) all to be sent promptly to Mr. Costigane.

Each competing mill will be put on its honour to report all accidents. Care should be taken to see that no accident is omitted.

Severity rate will be based on percentage per 1,000 hours exposure to hazard. Lost time continuing after terminating day of contest to be estimated by the doctor in charge of the case. Such estimation to be accepted by other contestants and to be included in lost time.

Frequency will be computed on the basis of accidents per 100 men employed.

In the event of any dispute as to the winners the decision of Mr. A. E. Cadman, 701 Drummond Building, Montreal, is to be accepted by all competitors as final. "New construction" is understood to include all work in connection with the building of a new mill, or new buildings in connection with an existing mill, and the installing of new machinery therein, but does not include repairs, changeovers, replacements, or the moving of existing machinery or material.

Plan for Reducing Accidents in Forest

Industries

Mr. Alexander R. White, chief sanitary inspector of Ontario, in a paper read before the Paper and Pulp section at the recent fourteenth annual Safety Congress, made some recommendations for the reduction of the accident rate in the forest production industries.

His proposals were as follows:

1. The establishment of first aid facilities at every camp, irrespective of size, or the number of men employed.

2. The industrial physician associated with each camp, is to agree to teach the camp clerk the practice of first aid to the injured (with special emphasis upon the proper sterilization of open wounds), the splinting of 15134-51

broken bones, proper methods of stopping excessive blood flow, and resuscitation. He shall also teach, by practical demonstration, the kinds of cases which may be treated in camp and those which should immediately be sent out for hospital treatment. I am stressing this last item particularly as I find that there are a great number of cases sent to the hospital which could be better dealt with at a camp and a man remain at light work.

3. The foreman in each camp is to be responsible for directing the injured man to the first aid officer as soon after the accident as possible, and shall further attempt to fix responsibility for the accident.

4. The woods boss or manager is to oversee the work of both first aid officer and foreman and is to report to the safety engineer or to the Association, any failure on the part of this machine to function at 100 per cent efficiency. Steps will then be taken to probe the situation and apply a proper remedy. The clerk who, under this plan, is also to be the first aid officer, as you will note, is to be subject to discipline in the same manner for failure to perform his new duties as if he neglected his regular work of book-keeping or other duties.

5. The industrial physician who enters into a contract annually with the company, is to agree to take an interest in accident prevention, and is further to do all in his power to hasten the return to work of all men who may be injured, consistent with good service.

Twelve Years of Accident Prevention

A slight downward trend in the industrial death rate during the period 1912 to 1924 is shown in a chart prepared by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and published in the Company's Statistical Bulletin. The decline is shown by an analysis of the records of industrial accident, to white males of 15 years of age or over. The decrease amounted to about one per cent per annum for the period. The death rate from machinery accidents in industry declined at the rate of about one-half of one per cent per year. The Bulletin, commenting on these records says: "Much interest attaches to the experience of the past decade for industrial accidents. The country-wide development of workmen's compensation insurance, the accompanying development of industrial safety work, the rise of industrial medicine and surgery, have all taken place practically within this period. Attention has been directed, as never before, to the incidence of serious accidents in in

dustry and to their prevention. Commendable and demonstrable progress has been made in certain industries in the control of industrial accidents. Where uniform and dependable records have been available, it has been shown that life and limb can be safeguarded by protective measures adopted after a careful study of plant hazards.

"The increase in accidents in any given year may be due to increased industrial activity in times of boom and expansion. Men in industry, working under stress for maximum production, do not exercise the thought and care that would be used in slack time. The fluctuation in the number of men employed, as well as the intensity of industrial activity, also definitely influences the industrial accident rate. The general trend of accidents in industry is affected by the introduction of labour saving devices, that is, by the substi

tution of mechanical for manual processes. Little attention has been given to this latter factor in industrial studies."

Explosives Regulated at Montreal

A city bylaw is under consideration at Montreal to regulate the firing of dynamite and other explosive charges in the city quarries and in all construction operations. The proposed regulations specifically set the limits for explosive charges of various kinds which may be placed in a blast, and contain explicit instructions as to the methods and precautions to be used. The bylaw further states the quantities of blasting powder, dynamite, fuses, caps, and other explosives that may be kept or transported in the city limits, and gives detailed regulations as to permits, safety methods, etc.

AN

N Address on Factors in organizing for Future Accident Prevention was delivered before the American Association for Labour Legislation, at New York on December 30, by Mr. Richard H. Lansburgh, secretary of Labour and industry of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Importance of Sound Statistics Sound methods of statistical presentation, he said will form the basis for accident reduction organization within the next ten years. Statistics will be helpful not only in adequately presenting exposure, but in presenting accident cause. The efforts of the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics to have State departments develop standard methods of analysing accident data are just beginning to bear fruit. Great strides have been made in the last year in Illinois, and Ohio, and we have a definite program on foot in Pennsylvania to better our methods of statistical presentation which we feel are already among the best. Given cause analyses of accidents, all of those organized for accident prevention have real targets at which to aim. Half of our safety efforts have been misdirected for lack of such targets.

Safety Education

The realization of the extent to which accidents and particularly serious accidents are caused by factors over which employees have control cannot be reached until methods of statistical presentation are such as to clearly

indicate this condition. In the opinion of the Pennsylvania Department of Labour and industry, each year a larger percentage of industrial accidents are preventable only by safety education of the worker. Safety education, as has just been shown, to be effective must include all phases of safety, particularly highway safety as well as industrial safety. Any educational program must be directed toward making a hero of the man who is safe rather than of the man who is successfully reckless.

ACCIDENTS IN THE BUILDING AND CONTRACTING INDUSTRY REPORTED TO THE PENNSYLVANIA BUREAU OF WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION DURING THE YEAR 1925.

Definite Organization

One of the chief means of organizing for future accident prevention must be to correlate closely the activities of all those who are now working more or less separately toward the same end. Some individual industries are correlated more or less through the National Safety Council. But the efforts of the National Safety Council have not been entirely co-ordinated with those of the various State Departments or with those of the American Association for Labour Legislation. Industry, the National Safety Council, State and Federal government, the American Engineering Standards Committee, the American Association for Labour Legislation, and all other agencies must co-operate and correlate their efforts. We feel in Pennsylvania that we have made some progress within the last year toward such correlation and will make more progress shortly. We are closely allied with the National Safety Council and with the American Engineering Standards Committee work as well as with the various local safety councils throughout the State. We are interested in the development of new local safety councils and we are definitely engaged in safety programs in co-operation with individual industries.

Profession of Factory Inspector

No such program of co-operation can be developed unless State factory inspection work is placed upon a professional basis. The professionalization of factory inspectors offers one of the real opportunities for accident reduction. We have it placed upon such a basis in Pennsylvania and expect that it will remain so. The new Director of our Bureau of Inspection is a trained engineer who was a safety engineer before coming with the Department five years ago and who since then has been in charge of the development of all safety codes and other regulations of the Department. We have under his direction seven division supervizing inspectors located throughout the State to whom the factory inspectors report directly. On these supervisors the success of our operations largely depends. We have replaced the supervizing inspectors in those divisions in three instances with highly trained men, two of whom are engineers. The other supervisors who remain are equally competent men. We have, in the past year, appointed about twenty new inspectors within the Department, each one of whom is either a college graduate, generally in engineering, or who has had long experience in manufacturing industry.

These changes, together with definite steps which have been taken to further educate the members of the factory inspection force who have been retained by us, have placed this force on a one hundred per cent professional basis. They can take analyzed causes of accidents into their districts and reduce hazards.

Safety Engineers

In addition to this, when we desired to find Bureau of Inspection, in the development of the successor to the present Director of the codes, we went to the National Safety Council in Chicago, and secured a safety engineer of long experience who will take up his duties as Director of the Bureau of Industrial Standards of our Department on the first of January. Such an organization merits and secures the confidence of employers, employees, and all others working for safety in the State of Pennsylvania and makes possible real cooperation between the State Department and others interested in safety within the State.

Uniform Safety Codes

Another factor offering the most promise in organizing for future accident prevention is the progress which has been made in the development of uniform safety codes through the American Engineering Standards Committee and the adoption of such codes by the various states. Of course, I feel that it is fundamental that these national codes be subjected to criticism from the various states prior to their adoption if they are to be enforceable within the State after promulgation. It is fundamental that any safety code which does not have the co-operation of a reasonable number of employers in industry will be unenforceable or very difficult of enforcement. Therefore, national codes, to be adopted by states, must secure the approval of the employers within the state prior to passing the national body, just as codes developed within a state must receive such approval. Arrangements have been made by the National Engineering Standards Committee for such prior approval and I feel that with this assured, more of the leading industrial states can adopt the national safety code program as the foundation of their own program and that the uniformity which will result will mean much for reducing accidents. This is particularly true because it will mean that much machinery, heretofore unguarded, will be guarded at the time of manufacture. Not only in the development of national safety codes is progress being made in safety code development. For instance, in Pennsylvania our Bureau of Industrial Stan