Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939 (review)

More than three thousand men died in work accidents in American coal mines in 1907. That dreadful toll was an all-time high, but it was not atypical, for the American coal industry was the most dangerous in the world. So, too, were the railroad and manufacturing industries. As former labor commissioner Charles P. Neill told the newly formed National Safety Council in 1913, American industry led the world in the “maiming and mangling and killing of those who attempt to earn their bread in the sweat of their faces” (p. 79). By the mid-twentieth century, however, industrial accidents had become the exception rather than the rule in much of American industry, though coal mining lagged behind in making working conditions safer.

How and why American mines, railroads, factories, and mills became the most dangerous in the industrial world, and how and why they made great strides in remedying that awful distinction are the subjects of Mark Aldrich’s impressive Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939. According to Aldrich, a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigator, and now professor of economics at Smith College, “both the dangers of the late nineteenth-century American workplace and the safety revolution that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century reflected the interplay of technology, labor markets, business organization, and public policy” (p. 272).

Although the work environments of coal mines, railroads, and factories were vastly different, they shared common, extremely dangerous features. They were technology- and resource-intensive, and managers put maximizing production over all other considerations, including the well-being of their workers. Encouraging that attitude were laws holding employees themselves responsible for safety and accidents on the job. The assumption of risk, fellow-servant, and contributory negligence doctrines insulated employers from responsibility for workplace safety and from liability for accidents. Reinforcing the doctrines was the custom of workers, especially miners and railroad men, to view themselves as the masters of their workplaces. As a result, many workers resented and resisted whatever efforts the managers or government made to improve working conditions. Even when safety devices and techniques existed, managers and workers too often viewed them with suspicion, as costly hindrances to work and production. From management’s point of view, especially, it was cheaper and more efficient to kill a worker and replace him than to try to guard his safety.

What changed this deadly environment? One factor was technology, which transformed the workplace. In factories, new machinery guards protected workers from deadly entanglements with gears, pulleys, and drive belts. Later, electric power enabled machinery to run with individual motors instead of dangerous networks of belts driven by a central steam engine. Electricity, however, was a two-edged sword, at least in its early applications. Workers readily found ways to electrocute themselves, especially in coal mines where high-voltage lines were installed without insulation in entries and workrooms.

Also important in bringing about safer working conditions was the threat of government regulation and the advent of workers’ compensation legislation. By the early twentieth century, Progressive reformers had taken up the cause of workplace safety and achieved some success in enacting factory, railroad, and mine safety laws. Additionally, workers’ compensation imposed at least some financial liability on owners for the consequences of industrial accidents. Finally, courts and legislatures threw out the common law doctrines that had protected owners from significant liability.

These changes in the political economy of American industry, however, were only part of a more fundamental move to safer working conditions. Workers’ compensation, industry regulation, and dismantling the protective common law doctrines not only made accidents more expensive for management but also helped to convince businessmen that workplace safety was a management responsibility. Contributing to this change in attitude was the emergence of a new breed of safety...