Industrial health received special scientific and public attention in the Progressive period and was the subject of several government and private investigations.
By Judson MacLaury
Retired Historian
U.S. Department of Labor
Introduction
“The social battles which men have fought … mark eras in social conditions …. Among these social contests may be classed the efforts of humane men to correct so-called factory evils.”1
During the era of industrialization in America, between the Civil War and World War I, dangerous and unhealthy working conditions and frequent serious accidents with resulting economic and social losses prompted calls for government to take action. The initial pressure for government remedies came primarily from labor groups. Investigations by state labor bureaus of dangers to workers’ safety and health helped fuel a successful drive by labor for state factory acts in the industrial North, beginning with the Massachusetts Factory Act of 1877. The system of factory inspection that evolved produced significant improvements in the workplace. After 1900, middle- and upper-class Progressives added their support to the movement for government regulation of workers’ safety and health. These reformers sought to overcome shortcomings that had developed in factory legislation and enforcement. They also introduced the twin innovations of workers’ compensation and administrative rule making by industrial commissions. Complementing these new public initiatives, many corporations established voluntary safety programs. In addition, industrial health received special scientific and public attention in the Progressive period and was the subject of several government and private investigations.
State Investigations
The first steps toward legislation and regulation were the investigation of conditions and publication of the results. In response to labor lobbying and public concern for the condition of the working classes, most states had established bureaus of labor statistics. Massachusetts set up the first such bureau in 1869. These bureaus conducted investigations into all facets of labor and industry and published the data in their annual reports. One of their primary concerns was the emerging problem of hazardous industrial working conditions. They sent questionnaires to employers, interviewed workers, collected descriptive and statistical data on deaths, injuries and illnesses, and investigated unhealthy trades. The bureaus’ reports also included examples of safe and healthful workplaces. These published accounts constituted a relatively unscientific but often shocking survey of the conditions under which millions of Americans worked. State bureaus helped arouse public opinion to rally behind labor’s campaign for protective legislation.
The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor was the pioneering and pace‑setting agency among the states. Its first annual report in 1870 described accidents to children working in textile mills, paper mills and other establishments. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, primarily under the leadership of Carroll Wright who was appointed Commissioner of Labor Statistics in 1873, the bureau mailed questionnaires to employers and sent investigators out to observe conditions first‑hand. Working conditions varied widely and the annual reports presented a mixed picture. In 1871 the bureau found that ventilation in the Lowell Mills was poor because the windows had to be kept closed during the manufacture of certain types of fabric. In 1873, however, the bureau reported that improvements there in factory architecture, machinery, and ventilation had reduced the threats to the operatives’ health. The next year investigative agents went into most of the state’s textile mills, checking machine guarding, ventilation, protection of shafting, fire escapes elevators, and amounts of air space per worker. They found shafting and machines guarded fairly well, though air space was not always adequate. Most of the mills were pronounced to be in good order.2
To get labor’s side of the picture, in 1882 Massachusetts sought the views of workers in three towns. It reported no complaints on machine guarding and few on lighting or ventilation. One worker said “our machinery is well guarded, and we have plenty of heat in the winter, and there is always good light and perfect ventilation.” There were however, complaints about disagreeable odors from the machinery and about cotton dust getting into the throat, which gave “every one the appearance of having a cold.”3
Two dangers in the mills, one to safety and the other to health, drew particular attention from the Massachusetts Bureau. In 1875 it reported on a tragic fire at the Granite Mills in Fall River in which many were killed, some of them young children. The bureau found that poor means of exit from the upper stories accounted for much of the carnage. The health hazard was “a shuttle which is simply death to the (textile mill) operatives.” To draw thread through a hole in the shuttle, the worker had to put their mouth to it and suck it through, in the process inhaling quantities of lint and dust. This had to be repeated every 2 or 3 minutes over a 12 to 14 hour work day. Most operatives became sick after 2 years of exposure to this “kiss of death” shuttle, as it became known. The annual report for 1874 mentioned one mill that had developed a shuttle that was safe to use and said that “if, by this little notice of a truly valuable invention, other factories are induced to adopt it, the whole cost of this Bureau will have been amply repaid.”4
Another special concern of the Massachusetts Bureau was the general condition of young working women, including the effects of jobs on health. An 1875 report on “Special Effects of Certain Forms of Employment Upon Female Health” found that excessive physical demands on immature bodies, long hours and generally unhealthy conditions frequently caused illnesses among this group. In the cotton mills, excessive dust, excessive heat and humidity (both necessary for efficient textile production), and hard, monotonous work were “quite sufficient to wage successful war upon the general health” and particularly on women’s reproductive systems. Typography, telegraphy and sewing machine labor were also determined to be particularly hard on women. The bureau report appealled to industry to reduce the fatiguing and generally unhealthy aspects of work. An 1884 report on “The Working Girls of Boston,” while mainly concerned with a possible connection between prostitution and work, surveyed the health effects of occupations. It found a general deterioration of health. Many of the girls questioned complained of poor ventilation, long hours and having to be on their feet all the time. In button factories, the girls frequently got their fingers caught under punch presses. They reported that the factory gave free dressings the first three times an employee was injured, but after that she had to pay for her own. However, it should be noted that comments on bad conditions came from only a small proportion of the girls questioned.5
There were many occupations in Massachusetts outside of the textile industry that were found to be hazardous. One of the worst was the making of phosphorus matches. “No one who has investigated the history of those employed in the manufacture of matches,” the Bureau reported in 1874, “can doubt that the terrible disorganization of the tissues of the body, which results from long employment therein, is worse than death.” The bureau complained that little improvement had been made, although the dangers had long been known. The report listed picking hair for mattresses, tending vats in tanneries, and other jobs involving the handling of organic matter as particularly unhealthy. Dry steel grinding, woodturning and machine sand papering were excessively dusty. Parasitic diseases from wool handling and preparation of human hair were common.6
Massachusetts pioneered also in collecting statistics on industrial injuries, but encountered difficulties in this effort. In 1883 it noted that there were wide variations in accident statistics from different countries. It accounted for this variation as the result of differing definitions of “serious” injuries. The bureau also ran into difficulty in trying to gauge the effects of textile mills on operatives’ health and longevity. It found that few persons died while working in the mills and concluded that when they saw their health decline they left their jobs. Unless they died in a company hospital their death was not recorded as job‑related. The high turnover in mill workers made it difficult to collect accurate data on the average length of life, cause of death or state of health.7
Like Massachusetts, Rhode Island was primarily a textile manufacturing state, and its Bureau of Industrial Statistics published workers’ responses to questionnaires. Two “drawers‑in” from the woollen mills reported very damp conditions. One said the workroom was a “swampy place … water bubbles through the floor” and sprinklers used to keep the wool damp also kept the workers’ clothing soaking wet all day. On the other hand, a loom fixer of 36 years experience said he had worked in many mills and did not believe they caused any particular disease.8
In 1899 the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics published one of the first large‑scale surveys of industrial accidents in a report on workers’ compensation. It asked labor unions and thousands of employers for accident data over a 3‑month period, and received returns covering almost half a million workers. The returns were tabulated and broken down into 12 industry groups. There were tables on types of injuries, causes of accidents, sizes of workplaces involved, and so on. The results probably told more about the limited state of the art of measuring industrial injuries than about the true extent of industrial injuries themselves. The special survey revealed an accident rate much higher than that which resulted from the employers’ reports which were normally sent in. The implication was that ordinarily employers did not fully report accidents. The bureau concluded, based on its experience, that:
“In gathering statistics of industrial accidents, this country has made only a beginning…. The incompleteness of these figures … has been so patent that no statistician has ever undertaken to use them for the measurement of the relative hazard of occupations.”9
The New York bureau’s 1884 report revealed a mixed picture of conditions in textile mills. It included testimony from physicians with first‑hand experience. One doctor who practiced among mill workers reported adequate fire‑safety measures and good sanitary conditions in the mills: “I think they have done all they can; the rooms are high, tolerably well ventilated and clean.” On the other hand, he said there were many accidents to the children and their health was not as good as that of children outside the mills. A physician from Massachusetts testified that in his town, the workers were physically dwarfed because the long hours in the mills exposed them to noise and heat, and cut them off from breathing fresh air. He noted the “careworn, dejected appearance of the operatives.” The report concluded that there was, in general, little effort made in the mills and other establishments to provide healthful conditions.10
The health of working women, according to the 1885 New York report, was “as good, perhaps, as the health of women generally.” Men usually had the more dangerous, unhealthy jobs. Frequently the factories in which women were employed were more healthful than the tenement homes in which many women made garments for sale. The report acknowledged that long hours and poor living conditions took their toll on the health of women, but stressed that the particular work they did was not responsible for this.11
Health conditions in New York bakeries were exceptionally bad. In an 1895 study the bureau did in cooperation with the bakers’ union, it found that bakers worked inhumanly long hours, sometimes over 100 per week and that 11 percent of them had been ill the previous year. Over a thousand bake shops in New York City were in basements. Some of them were “cellars of the worst description …. damp, fetid, and devoid of proper ventilation and light.” Many of them had very low ceilings, forcing workers to labor in a stooped-over position all day. Two‑thirds of the bakeries inspected were classed as “totally unfit.”12
A pioneering study on “Hygiene of Occupation” by health inspector Roger Tracy, M.D., appeared in the 1884 New York bureau report. The Tracy study was a systematic survey of cases and research involving a wide range of health and safety problems. It classed the dangers of occupations into three groups: substances introduced into the body, such as dusts and gases; physical conditions, which interfered with well being, such as heat; and mechanical dangers. Tracy pointed out that as larger concerns replaced smaller workshops, there were certain benefits to workers because the new surroundings were often more healthful and sanitary. On the other hand, new hazards resulted from some of the new substances and processes.13
From 1889 to 1895 the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics on Labor and Industry engaged in an effort to produce useful statistics on occupational health. For seven years it collected statistics on the health of workmen in 16 different trades, primarily in an effort to discover the effect of the length of time spent in a trade on workers’ health and longevity. The first and largest installment, titled “The effect of occupation on the health and duration of trade‑life of workmen,” filled 300 pages of the 1889 annual report of the bureau, including 164 pages of detailed statistical tables. Data was collected directly from workers, often in house‑to‑house canvassing, in the glass, pottery and hat‑making industries, and from death records kept by several unions. Tables were developed showing relationships among worker’s age, length of time in the trade, estimated age at onset of decline in health causes of decline, disability or death, and so on.14
While the study was reportedly well received and was extended to the building trades, printing, mining, textile mills and many other trades, it ran into problems and was basically a “noble failure.” Setting the exact date of the onset of decline in a man’s health was an extremely subjective judgment. Furthermore, there was no effort to separate occupational factors from diet, living conditions and other environmental influences. The difficulties were compounded in industries such as textiles, in which a recent influx of new workers, many of them young and vigorous, distorted the results, or leather‑working, for which there was no data collected on health disabilities.15
The New Jersey study was not a complete failure, however. Besides collecting valuable, if somewhat imprecise, statistics on workers’ health in various trades, it included workers’ comments and vignettes of particular trades. A plumber told investigators that a worker was rarely found who had worked at the trade as long as thirty years because they generally succumbed to rheumatism and “after becoming stiff in their joints they are obliged to quit the trade.” A painter said that, while many in his trade would not admit it, most were affected by disease that was often “so gradual that they do not realize their danger until they are far gone.” “It is rare,” he continued, “to meet an old painter who has not the evidence of disease stamped on his face.” The New Jersey study reported conflicting views on the healthfulness of cigar making. Some complained of poor ventilation in the shops. Others believed the pervasive odor of tobacco was good for their health and helped prevent typhus and other diseases. The bureau singled out for praise the management of a corset factory for its “wise and humane” treatment of workers and for providing a well‑lighted, pleasant place to work.16
The Bureau of Industrial Statistics of Pennsylvania listed all reported victims of industrial accidents alphabetically by name, with brief descriptions of the cause and nature of the accident. The most common types involved falls from a height, heavy objects falling on workers, a part of the body, usually the hand, getting caught in machinery, and contact with hot or explosive liquids. Many were simply listed as due to carelessness. A 19year‑old was burned on the neck and face by an explosion of benzene; a man was stabbed through the hand in a quarrel; a 14‑year‑old girl lost four fingers because of “curiosity.”17
Pennsylvania, like many other states, was concerned with the widespread practice of using immigrants for sweatshop labor in the clothing industry. Historian Melvin Dubofsky wrote that many immigrants to the U.S.:
“exchanged the stagnation of a feudal society for the bondage of an industrial system. The riches of the new world were frequently a mirage, and the dream of American opportunity led often to the sweatshop, where laborers slept on upswept floors littered with work refuse while their worktables doubled as dining tables.”18
In 1893 the Pennsylvania bureau sent investigators into 273 sweatshops and homes. They discovered two groups of laborers working under vastly different circumstances: German immigrants and American‑born citizens in clean, well lighted, separate workrooms, and Russian Jews working in their own living rooms with poor lighting, filthy conditions, and no fresh air. In one of the worst examples, a family of seven lived and worked in a two room apartment. “The dirt could absolutely have been shoveled out of the rooms, garbage and filth of all kinds was strewn about the floor, and … one of the agents was made sick.”19
Like a number of other states, Ohio published individual descriptions of serious accidents, some poignant, some repulsive, in the annual reports of its Bureau of Labor Statistics. A boiler in a steam engine running a threshing machine exploded, killing three men and scalding a young boy. One man was thrown 80 feet through the air to his death; another had his head blown off, which landed grotesquely in a basket. A buzz‑saw operator got caught in his machine and lost an arm and a leg. A year earlier he had lost his right arm in the same manner. An engineer trying to oil machinery while it was in motion was killed when his head was caught against a post by a heavy fly wheel, “grinding out his brains.” A boy in a printing house working at a press tried to straighten out an improperly placed sheet of paper and had several fingers crushed when he did not get his hand out of the way in time.20
Ohio also investigated health conditions, although it was hampered in this because the bureau lacked the power to enter workplaces without the employer’s permission. Statistical studies of iron‑molders in the state revealed that they took “desperate chances in the ‘lottery of life.’” In 1886 the death rate for molders in Ohio jumped to over 24 per thousand workers, versus a rate of 14.3 for molders in England. In Ohio their average age at death was 37; in England they lived to age 51. Molders in Ohio were exposed to sudden changes in temperature and were “taking in with every breath a compound composed of slaked lime, cement, the dust of coal coke, black‑lead.” It was not lung disease, however, but rheumatism, heart disease and consumption that took the heaviest toll of the molders.21
The picture was not all bleak in Ohio, however. The town of East Liverpool, which had a heavy concentration of the pottery industry, was judged to be a healthy place, leading the bureau to conclude that potting was “ordinarily not injurious to the system,” It did note several diseases peculiar to the industry, such as “potter’s rot,” an asthma caused by inhaling dried clay, and “potter’s paralysis,” found among those who dipped ware in glaze and suffered a brief paralysis (probably lead poisoning). Cited as an outstanding example was a potato‑chip factory employing 25 women which was found to be “clean, light and comfortable.”22
Wisconsin did not require employers to report workplace accidents to its Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, though some volunteered the information anyway. The bureau was convinced, however, that systematic, complete data was needed both to pinpoint problems and to publicize the true extent of industrial injury and death. The 1897‑98 biennial report said:
“No manufacturing state or nation can in the long run afford to neglect the collection and representation of complete and reliable statistics and facts concerning accidents to working people.23
In 1902 Wisconsin published the results of a survey of the health and working conditions of working women by the state bureau. The bureau concluded that, although there were many workplaces with atrocious conditions, on the average, the health of factory women was about the same as that of other working groups. It reported that 18 percent of the women surveyed said their job was injurious to their health, and 82 percent said it was not. The bureau also reported that 96 percent of the women considered the sanitary condition of their workplaces “good” or “fair,” and only 4 percent rated it “bad.” The report pointed out, however, that these were very subjective categories, and that conditions often appeared worse to the investigators than the workers’ ratings would indicate.24
Among the worst examples were the shops where old rags for papermaking were sorted. The workers were mostly poor, Eastern European immigrant women. The shops were “open to every sort of objection.” They were dirty, poorly ventilated, unheated, usually on the cramped second floor of a dilapidated building and reached by steep cluttered stairways. An Inspector reported that “as the door was opened, it was at first impossible to see the sorters because of the clouds of dust.” The investigator found it “difficult to give an adequate picture … without seeming to overstep the limits of truth.”25
There were many other examples of the minority of plants with bad conditions. Women working as core‑makers in brass foundries preparing sand molds for castings were subjected to very dirty surroundings and they “inevitably get themselves covered with the greasy sand.” Enamels making baked enamelware sometimes had to use powdered glaze that got into their lungs. Heat from the firing furnaces was intense, despite efforts to conduct it away from the work area, and the girls were often overcome from it. Girls working at the dipping vats in varnishing plants sometimes found themselves “varnished” from head to foot and when they washed the varnish off with a benzene solution they suffered skin irritation.26
While Iowa was not heavily industrialized, it did have a number of industrial establishments, and conditions in them were often bad. The newer plants had large, airy rooms and good ventilation, but the older ones had low ceilings, dark, damp interiors, and almost no ventilation. As in many other states, the iron works were the worst offenders. The furnaces, forges, and anvils produced excessive smoke and gases that were sometimes so thick one could not see across a workroom. The employers seldom furnished the expensive ventilating systems necessary to carry off the pollutants.27
Minnesota was another of the states that lacked mandatory reporting of industrial accidents, but, like Pennsylvania, it did list known accidents individually in its reports. At a fiber ware factory a girl was disemboweled when she became caught in the gearing. At a flour mill, a man leaned over a power shaft and his shirt became caught on a set screw, resulting in a dislocated shoulder and cuts on the arm. A boy was swinging on a loose belt hanging from the shafting when the belt suddenly started moving and the boy was pulled up and whirled around the shaft. He fell to the floor horribly maimed and died within an hour.28
Factory Inspection Legislation
Besides publicizing occupational safety and health problems, many state labor bureaus explicitly supported remedial legislation. As early as 1870 Massachusetts, in the first annual report of its labor statistics bureau, concluded that:
“There is a peril to life and limb from unguarded machinery, and peril to health from lack of ventilation, and insufficiency of means of escape in case of fire, in many establishments…. These evils can only be prevented by detailed enactment.”
This included establishment of a factory inspection system. In 1875 the Massachusetts bureau again called for legislation and included a draft law covering machine guarding, fire protection, elevator safety and adequate ventilation. The New York labor statistics bureau pointed out that the safety and health information the states published justified legislation to protect workers. The 1890 report of the New Jersey bureau noted labor agitation for healthier conditions in factories and stressed that “whatever tends to increase the constructive power of the labor force, or prolong the life of the individual worker, operates for the general good.” The bureau hoped that its reports on working conditions would stimulate general interest and arouse public opinion to demand action. “It is not probable,” the report concluded, “that any radical changes will occur, or effective remedies be applied, unless there are some drastic measures adopted by the State.” In 1891 the Maryland chief of labor statistics called for creation of a factory inspection system in his state.29
Not every state was for factory legislation. The state of Connecticut had laws in the 1880s on fire safety and railroad safety, but the commissioner of labor statistics did not believe that a factory inspection and safety and law was warranted. He felt that there were more serious occupational safety and health threats in non factory work. He also feared that a rigid system of factory inspection would arouse opposition from employers and would be inferior to the companies’ own ongoing inspections. He pointed out that “There are a great many things which a man will submit to voluntarily but which he will denounce as tyranny” if compelled to do them.30
The precedent and model for factory legislation had already developed in England. Her industrial revolution far predated that in the United States. By 1802 working and living conditions for English textile mill workers, many of whom were young apprentices, had become so bad that humanitarian mill owner Sir Robert Peal persuaded the Parliament to pass the world’s first factory act. This limited law required mill owners to protect the health and morals of pauper apprentices, set a limit of 12 hours of work a day, banned night work, and required the employer to provide them with adequate clothing. While the 1802 law was virtually ineffective because there was no provision for enforcement, it opened the door for further enactment. England steadily expanded protections through a series of factory acts, at first applying only to women and children, but gradually including all workers. It established the world’s first factory inspection system in 1833. By the 1870s England required that factories be clean, well ventilated, and not overcrowded, and that hoists, exposed gears, and other dangerous devices be fenced or railed off. Concerned Americans were well aware of the English factory acts and the widely imitated factory inspection system.31
Government reports and foreign precedents helped, but it took political pressure to wring protective laws from the state legislatures. Organized labor provided most of the political muscle to do this. Workers in the late 19th century had retained a good deal of power and status in their local communities. This translated into political power in the state capitals.32 In addition to publicizing occupational accidents and dangers in its journals, organized labor became a powerful champion of efforts to protect workers on the job. The Carpenter, in its July 1881 issue, conceded that businessmen risked capital, but pointed out that:
“The workers have their risks of life and limb, of body and health…. Think of how many are crippled and maimed, who are shattered in constitutions and broken down for life in the service of capital! Many a time have we seen our fellow craftsmen fall from ricketty scaffolds and dizzying heights to be carried off … more dead than alive.”
Years earlier workers’ organizations had begun agitating for laws to limit hours worked and to protect woman and child workers, though not initially as safety and health measures. Organized efforts to shorten the workday from the sunup to sundown system dictated by the needs of agriculture had begun as early as the 1820s. The “ten hour” movement that sprang up was based partially on the argument that workers needed time in order to be well informed citizens. Health considerations did not become significant until after the Industrial Revolution took hold, but then they became the primary justification.33 While the shorter hours movements had only limited success through legislation, in 1840 they pressured President Martin Van Burin to shorten the workday for employees on federal projects to 10 hours.34 Women, who comprised a large part of the industrial work force, had been prominent in the early 10-hour movement and in 1852 Ohio passed an ineffective law limiting women’s hours. A few other states followed Ohio’s lead. Among them was Massachusetts with a 10-hour limit for women in 1874. One of the arguments raised there was that the law would benefit women’s health. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1908, in the case of Muller vs. Oregon, that hours laws for women were constitutional as health measures.35 Children were generally considered wards of the state, and efforts to set a minimum age for employment resulted in legislation as early as 1832, though, as with women’s hours laws, the early child labor laws were not very effective.36
As early as the 1830s labor groups investigated shop safety and health conditions and published accounts of them. In 1868 the National Labor Union convention passed a resolution deploring the “neglect of employers generally for the protection of human life.”37 The Knights of Labor, which was the dominant labor organization of the 1870s and early 1880s, and other labor groups were the driving force behind the establishment of state labor statistics bureaus and provided support for their investigations.38 While unions had little public support in seeking laws regulating wages and hours of work, “From the first,” wrote United Mine Workers president John Mitchell, “public sympathy has been with the working men” in seeking factory safety and health laws.39 As the American Federation of Labor gained strength after its founding in 1881, the state federations that sprang up began to lobby the state legislatures actively on many matters, including job safety and health.40
Massachusetts passed the first factory safety and health law in America in 1877 and established an inspection force in 1879. Other Northern industrial states soon followed and fourteen states had similar factory acts on their books by 1897. Ten of those states gave their inspectors authority to require guarding of machinery; eight banned cleaning of moving machinery by women or children; ten required guarding of elevator openings; eight required regulation of ventilation and sanitary conditions; seven required exhaust fans for dust and fumes; eight required reporting of accidents. In addition, many inspectors enforced child labor laws, wage payment laws, and other requirements not related to safety and health. Initially, six of the 14 states gave the existing state bureaus of labor the duties of inspecting. The others provided separate departments for factory inspectors. Eventually most labor bureaus were relieved of this duty. In addition to general factory laws, numerous specialized laws passed applying in such areas as mining, sweat shops, bakeries and construction.41
While to one political scientist writing in 1908 the factory laws seemed “a mass of unconnected attempts” to do for working people “a something as yet undefined by court or legislature,” there was a pattern to its development.42 U.S. Bureau of Labor investigator W.F. Willoughby summarized the growth of factory legislation to 1897:
“One state has led the way by the enactment of tentative measures, which it has afterwards developed as dictated by experience. Other states have profited by the example and have taken similar steps. The moral influence of the action of the States upon each other in the United States is great. A movement at first grows slowly, but as State after State adopts similar measures the pressure upon others to do likewise becomes stronger.”43
Through the influence of other states and internal pressures from workers and reform groups, the initial gaps between state safety and health laws steadily narrowed.
The Massachusetts factory act passed after repeated calls for legislation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and persistent agitation by organized labor. This historic act was imitated by many other states, portions of it even appearing verbatim in their laws. Massachusetts, in turn, borrowed heavily from British factory legislation. Titled “An act relating to the inspection of factories and public buildings,” it laid out quite broad requirements for the protection of workers on the job. It required that belts, shafts and gears be guarded adequately; it banned cleaning of machinery while it was in motion; it required ventilation as needed; elevators and hoist ways had to be partitioned off; there had to be adequate emergency and fire exits. The law also directed the governor to appoint members of the state detective force to act as inspectors and enforce all state labor laws, not just the factory act. This led to poor enforcement initially, but in 1879 the detective force was abolished. In its place was established a district police force, at least two of whose members were to act as factory inspectors. The governor immediately appointed three inspectors, making 1879 the year in which factory in inspection really began in Massachusetts.44
Successive laws in the 1880s and 1890s enlarged the scope of factory inspection in Massachusetts and increased the staff that carried it out. In 1880, inspection was extended to include “mercantile establishments.” An 1886 law provided that in any factory with steam driven machinery, the inspector could order the proprietor to install a bell, speaking tube, or other means of communication with the plant engine so that machinery could be shut off quickly in an emergency. The next year a law was enacted requiring those factories be kept in proper sanitary condition. Factory inspectors were to notify local boards of health about any unsanitary conditions not covered by this law. Also in 1887, a new law on ventilation empowered inspectors to order the installation of fans or other apparatus in factories with five or more employees, provided the cost to the employer was not excessive. A third law in 1887 banned child workers under 15 from cleaning machinery in motion. In 1891 the first of a series of laws regulating tenement workshops was enacted, with the goal of choking off growth of the “sweating system” of garment manufacture. As this whole body of law built up in Massachusetts, it became unwieldy, and periodically it was rectified and the requirements refined.45
In the neighboring state of Connecticut there was no factory inspection law until 1887, ten years after the Massachusetts act. The Knights of Labor had begun calling for legislation in 1885 to deal with industrial accidents. However, as we have seen, the commissioner of labor statistics opposed factory legislation and manufacturers and others successfully fought off passage. In 1886 several factory inspection bills were introduced in the legislature and the labor committee reported out a bill. Opponents decried the expense to the state of performing inspections and the danger of trade secrets being revealed through inspections. They also argued that inspections would weaken employers’ efforts to voluntarily reduce accidents. Again, there was no legislation. Finally, in 1887, principally through the support of the Knights of Labor, the state enacted a factory inspection law modeled on the Massachusetts act. It provided for appointment of a factory inspector who would visit all workplaces where machinery was used. Factories were to be clean and well ventilated, dangerous moving parts guarded, doors and hatchways protected, and so on. Violators had four weeks to comply with an inspector’s order. If they failed to do so they were liable for up to $500 in fines. An 1893 law beefed up the ventilation requirement, allowing the inspector to order the installation of dust removal devices. In 1899 the state passed a law requiring adequate light in workrooms. The whole inspection program was severely hampered by the fact that, even though there were funds available for the appointment of special agents as assistant inspectors, in 1897, ten years after initial enactment, there was still only one factory inspector.46
The first state to follow Massachusetts’ lead was New Jersey, which established a factory inspection service in 1883 for woman and child labor. With strong support from the state labor federation and a sympathetic governor, a full factory safety and health enforcement system emerged in the 1880s. In 1884 the inspection force was increased from one to three. In 1885 the legislature passed a general factory act which set detailed safety and health requirements for the inspectors to enforce. Over the next two years this act was amended to add a number of items, such as requiring an employer to report all serious accidents to the state inspector, ordering additional fire safety precautions, and forbidding children under 16 from taking jobs that were considered hazardous to their health, unless they had a doctor’s certificate of fitness for such work. In the 1890s the duties of mine inspection, which was done in most states by a separate inspection force, and regulating the sweating system were given to the inspection force, which by 1897 had been expanded to seven inspectors.47
Heavily industrialized New York state passed a factory inspection law in 1886 that applied mainly, as with New Jersey’s 1883 law, to woman and child labor. In New York, too, the scope of factory legislation gradually expanded. The inspectors themselves played an important role in that expansion. The annual reports of the factory inspector regularly recommended changes and improvements in many provisions of the laws, including safety and health. In 1886, the first year of operations of the inspection law, the inspectors called on the legislature to prohibit women and children from cleaning machinery in motion, to require protection for elevators and hoistways, to see that adequate air space was provided for employees, and to require employers to report injuries to the factory inspector. Many suggestions such as these were adopted in an 1887 statute revising the 1886 law. The inspection force was also increased from two to eight. The 1887 report noted that Massachusetts required means of communication between plant and engine room to allow quick cut off in an emergency and called on the legislature to adopt such a measure for New York. The report also called for a law requiring the guarding of saws, belts, gears and other machinery. It complained that the lack of such authority meant that inspectors “must now pass silently by plenty of dangerous machinery which could be rendered comparatively harmless.” One reason the inspectors pressed the legislature for new authority was that complaints frequently came to them about areas over which they had no legal control. Countering manufacturers’ objections that factory legislation meant unconstitutional infringements on their freedom of action, the 1887 factory inspector’s report asked, “Has not the State the right to protect its weakest members from undue stress?” Further, it argued, if the law would punish someone who forges a businessman’s signature, it should certainly “insist that the life and limbs of the citizen shall be as sacred as the capitalist’s signature.” In 1892 the various factory laws that had passed since the initial act of 1886 were rewritten into a single law, creating a uniform code. By 1897 the inspection force had been expanded to 26.48
Pennsylvania first passed a factory act in 1889. The germ of this law originated when complaints to the state labor bureau about working conditions led the bureau to send a staff member off to Massachusetts to study their factory inspection law and develop recommendations. A bill based on this report aimed primarily at protecting woman and child workers was introduced in the legislature in 1889. Social reformer Florence Kelley, then secretary of the National Consumers’ League helped organize a Working Women’s Association to support this bill, after a similar one had failed in 1887. Business interests lobbied hard against it and for a while the bill’s future looked doubtful. Kelley and her group persuaded the Atlantic Sugar Refining Company to pressure a key state senator who had bottled the bill up in committee into recommending it favorably for passage. The Knights of Labor added their support to the measure and helped insure its passage.49
The act was aimed at protecting the safety of women and children, and only applied to workplaces employing ten or more of them. However, it benefited all workers in a plant that was covered. It required many of the same protections mandated in other states — covered shafts, belts and gears, protected hoist ways, vats, and pans, and so on–and gave employers 60 days to rectify violations before they would be subject to a fine. The law established a factory inspector and six deputy inspector positions, with power to inspect all workplaces employing women and children. The legislature failed to provide funds for salaries and other expenses of enforcement, but the governor went ahead and appointed an inspector, who visited New York and Massachusetts before starting operations. As in other states, a body of factory law developed, increasing the inspection force and broadening its powers. Sweatshops in 1895 and bakeries in 1897 came under the scope of the inspection laws. The factory safety and health provisions were gradually widened and made more specific. By 1906 the factory law required the use of belt shifting devices (to protect against “scalping” accidents), there had to be adequate floor space around machinery, tampering with installed safeguards on machinery was forbidden, and there had to be exhaust fans around grinding wheels and other machinery that created dust. Inspectors were given the authority to shut down any machinery that posed a serious danger by posting a notice on it that was not to be removed until the dangerous condition was eliminated.50
The first state west of the Appalachians to pass a factory inspection act was Ohio, in 1884. With the strong support of organized labor, a Department of Workshops and Factories was created, which included an “Inspector of the Sanitary Condition, Comfort, and Safety of Shops and Factories.” The inspector was to visit all factories employing 10 or more persons, not, as with most other early factory acts, just those employing women and children. He or she was to see that machinery guarding, lighting, ventilation, fire exits, and so on, were adequate. The act provided for fines for violations not eliminated within 30 days, but made no provision for legal prosecution to collect those fines. The first major addition to the act came in 1888 when employers were required to report all accidents to the state. Further legislation in 1892 and 1893 increased the inspection force to eight, set stiffer fines, and spelled out more detailed safety and health requirements. In 1900 the inspector was given the power to shut down machinery that posed an imminent danger.51
Wisconsin, destined later to take over Massachusetts’ role as the pacesetter in state job safety and health regulation, established a factory inspector position in 1885. Two years earlier, in 1883, the law creating the state labor statistics bureau gave it the duty of inspecting factories for safety, sanitation, fire exits, and so on, but it did not provide personnel to carry out the inspections. In 1887 the inspection force was increased to three and for the first time fines for violations were prescribed. Politically active labor organizations played a large part in passing all these laws. The inspectors’ duties included enforcing most of the usual requirements set in other states’ factory acts — shielding of shafts, belts, gears and other dangerous machinery and equipment, elimination of overcrowding in workrooms, safeguarding of elevators and hoistways, adequate fire exits, and so on. In a slight variation in enforcement procedure, if an employer promised to take care of a violation the inspector would take no further action. Otherwise he would serve the employer with a notice that he had 30 days to comply before being subject to arrest.52
In some states spectacular disasters spurred enactment of factory safety and health legislation. In Missouri, the Rich Hill mine disaster of 1887, in which 23 persons died, prompted passage in 1889 of a law giving the existing head of the state labor statistics bureau the right to inspect factories and mines for overcrowding, ventilation, and adequate fire exits. The inspector could not levy any fines, but he could publish the names of firms that refused to clean up dangerous conditions. It was but a short step from the limited 1889 inspection law to passage in 1891 of a broad factory inspection act with penalties for infractions. The act required most of the usual safeguards, and set up a dual enforcement system. Towns with populations of 5,000 or more were to perform their own inspections, but state inspectors retained certain enforcement powers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor later commented that “it would be difficult to conceive of a system less likely to productive of valuable results.” Few towns made any attempt to perform inspections. After eight years under this system, in 1899 the new head of the state labor statistics bureau called the 1891 law a “dead letter” and sought legislation to ensure that inspections would take place. “The pressures were on,” historian Martin Nemirow wrote, “to remove the state from its increasingly embarrassing position as the only state with an unenforceable factory inspection law.” In 1901 the state legislature obliged and created a special department of factory inspection with a staff of eight. Overcoming labor opposition, rural legislators established a fee system, such as was used in several other states, whereby the employer would pay a small amount at the time of the inspection to defray costs.53
In 1902 Iowa became one of the last northern states to enact factory inspection legislation. Historian E.H. Downey writing in 1910 argued that since Iowa’s industrial and legislative development lagged that of other regions, this gave the state the opportunity to profit by mistakes made in legislation elsewhere. That this opportunity was not well used, Downey attributed to several factors: conservative, rural legislators not familiar with industrial problems, powerful economic interests opposing protective labor laws, the fear that burdensome factory laws would discourage investment in the state, and a lack of information about what was going on in the other states.54
Like Missouri and several other states, Iowa first gave its labor statistics bureau authority, in 1896, to enter workplaces to gather information. The Commissioner who performed these inspections used the opportunity, however, to recommend voluntary improvements. The commissioner reported in 1900 that about 75 percent of the workplaces he entered had unguarded machinery, poor ventilation and other problems. This report prompted introduction of a factory inspection bill in the legislature. With the support of the state federation of labor and other labor groups, it was enacted in 1902. Besides requiring machine guarding, the law required dust removal for grinding wheels but made no mention of light, heat or general ventilation.55
Ironically, the most advanced industrial state in the Midwest, Illinois, was the one in which factory inspection legislation developed the slowest. Historian Carl Beckner attributed this to effective business opposition, particularly from the Illinois Association of Manufacturers. On the other hand, the Illinois Federation of Labor, from its inception in 1884, worked actively and steadily to obtain legislation, but success only came in bits and pieces. A sweatshop act in 1893 set up an inspection force, but it was limited strictly to the sweatshops. A limited child labor law and a law against excessive dust from emery wheels in 1897, a construction safety law in 1907, and other narrow statutes added fragmented responsibilities to the duties of the factory inspection force. A comprehensive factory inspection system was finally established in Illinois in 1909 with the passage of the Health, Safety and Comfort Act.56
Inspection, Enforcement, Compliance
Enforcement of factory acts in the states was as varied, and yet as similar, as the body of laws itself. There were wide variations in size of inspection staff, ranging from over a hundred to none at all. Some states emphasized enforcement of laws on woman and child workers and other labor legislation rather than safety and health laws. Right from the start, however, most states adopted a cooperative and educational approach to enforcing workplace safety and health laws. In some states, delayed hiring of inspection staff made it difficult for them, even if they desired, to start out aggressively enforcing the law and fining large numbers of employers. However, even states such as New York and Massachusetts, which had strong laws and good support for inspection, stressed compliance through cooperation rather than coercion.
Compliance with the laws and with inspectors’ orders and suggestions varied widely also, but there is no question that enforcement had a significant impact on employers and on workplace safety and health. Manufacturers accepted factory safety and health legislation fairly readily. The obvious benefits of reduced turnover, increased employee morale, and higher productivity more than offset, in most employers’ minds, the required financial outlay for improvements.57 The low key approach seemed to allay many employers’ concerns and won a degree of voluntary cooperation from manufacturers in almost every state involved. Many employers went beyond the minimum legal requirements. Some, however, resisted the laws, because they resented government interference in principle or they believed that particular safety precautions interfered with efficient production or they considered the cost of installation too high, or all of the above. Moreover, safety devices were often improperly installed or used. Sometimes the workers themselves tampered with safety guards, either out of ignorance, resistance to change, or, if they were paid on a piece‑rate basis, a desire to increase their rate of production.
Massachusetts, the pioneer in factory safety and health, found a generally high level of cooperation from employers. The Bay State was considered to have a high proportion of conscientious employers who sought voluntarily to reduce hazards. This was due partly to a long tradition of social welfare legislation, partly to a paternalistic attitude many employers had toward their workers. Enforcement did not go smoothly, however, in the early stages. Investigator Sarah Whittelsey noted in 1901 that early investigations revealed “an appalling neglect of precaution, and there was a good deal of grumbling at the requirements of old maidish inspectors.” Whittelsey pointed out that in general, employers actively opposed enactment of new labor laws, but after enactment, “they, nevertheless, fall one after another into line and obedience.” Compliance grew. A decrease was reported in accidents involving unguarded machinery. Sanitary conditions were much improved. Inspectors began to attest to employers’ “cheerful spirit of compliance” and “courteous treatment.”58
The pattern was repeated in Connecticut. Manufacturers who had opposed passage of the state’s 1887 factory inspection law, at first also opposed enforcement by the inspectors. However, they became “accustomed to the law and its enforcement.” Initially, the inspectors concentrated on machine guarding. Much of the machinery in use was already 15 or 20 years old. Dangerous projecting set screws on rotating shafts, unguarded gears, and other hazards were common place. As of 1890 there were 1.09 orders for protection of machinery per factory inspected. By 1905 this figure declined to 0.05 such orders per factory. “Most of the new machinery is now fairly well guarded when it is manufactured,” investigator Alba Edwards reported in 1907. Overall, the number of inspections increased from 250 in 1887 to almost 2,000 in 1905. The proportion of factories found in violation of one or more provisions of the factory act averaged 50 percent in the 1887‑1895 period, but dropped sharply to 18 percent for the 1897‑1905 period. At the same time, Edwards noted, the requirements of the law had grown significantly.59
A recurring theme in inspectors’ and state labor bureaus’ reports was the list of improvements, spontaneous or induced, that employers made in working conditions. In the cotton textile producing state of Rhode Island it was well known that the dust, steam and heat in the mills caused throat and lung disease. Even before passage of a factory inspection law in 1894, the state labor bureau reported in 1887 that mill owners were beginning to provide for the well being of workers. Many factories had higher ceilings, better ventilation and sanitary conditions, and improved fire protection and fire escapes. “The tendency in our mills,” the bureau reported in 1888, “is toward improvements in the method of manufacture, in the care and comfort of employees.”60
Technological change cut two ways, however. This was illustrated in the glass industry in New Jersey. The state labor bureau began a series of surveys of different industries in 1901 to determine the degree of improvement in health conditions and to collect suggestions for further progress. Glass making was one of the first industries to be covered. Early glass factories were very unhealthy. The buildings were just shells, in wintertime exposing employees to cold drafts on one side while they were sweltering from the furnaces on the other. Many succumbed to throat and lung diseases. Later, factories were more weatherproof, but this was partially offset by the development of the continuous tank furnace, which produced a great deal of heat and required more workers, making the work area very crowded and cutting down the amount of fresh air per worker.61
Improvements predated factory inspection in Pennsylvania as well. In 1887, two years before the state’s first inspection law, the state labor statistics bureau, in a report on a saw making works, described improved machinery which “economized the use of labor, and rendered the manufacture more healthful and agreeable.” Under the old way of grinding saws, for example, the grinder sat astride the rapidly revolving wheel, which was very dangerous because grinding wheels frequently broke apart. He was constantly wet from water used on the wheel to keep the dust down. The new machinery eliminated all that, and resulted in lower costs besides.62
When factory inspection did begin in Pennsylvania, the inspector had the legal right to enter any workplace to enforce the law. A few employers attempted to deny entry to the inspectors. However, most employers reportedly exhibited “a wholesome respect for the law,” allowed inspectors to enter, and complied promptly with any orders the inspectors gave. Employers did not seem to mind meeting safety or health standards, as long as everyone else complied.63
The comprehensive and well-publicized Massachusetts and English factory inspection laws had led to high public expectations for inspections in the state of New York. The factory laws there were not as broad in scope, however, and factory inspectors complained: “We are continually receiving complaints concerning matters over which we have no jurisdiction, and being blamed for not doing things which we have no power to do.” The state had to investigate all complaints sent in, which made them “a source of great annoyance and expense to the department.” The silver lining was that this indicated the existence of “a healthy public sentiment in favor of stronger … legislation concerning factory inspection.”64
The New York inspectors’ watchwords in enforcement were “rigorous, yet reasonable.” If an employer was in violation without criminal intent, the department would only admonish, rather than prosecute. The inspectors felt that “it would be neither wise nor just … to be continually embroiled … with the employers … for technical violations of the law” and that this would tend to defeat the whole purpose of legislation. The inspectors were reluctant to make specific recommendations on safeguards because they lacked complete knowledge of what was available.65
As in most states, the employers’ abatement of industrial hazards in New York ran the gamut from full compliance to stubborn resistance. Here again, technology eliminated some of the problems even before enforcement began. A doctor who had long practiced in a textile mill town told the state labor bureau that the little girls who worked in the mills frequently used to suffer broken legs because they used their feet to shift the belts that connected their machines with floor mounted power shafts. The doctor estimated that by 1884 there was less than one sixth the number of accidents of this nature.66
In the first years of enforcement, New York’s inspector reported that manufacturers had been generally pleasant and were “willing and anxious” to comply with the law. They proudly showed inspectors safety measures that they had taken, and were even willing to go beyond the provisions of the law if the inspectors had any further suggestions. While the inspection department did not have the chance to follow up on all inspectors’ orders, it believed that most employers complied. The inspectors seldom found it “necessary to even remotely hint” at a penalty to obtain assurance of compliance. Many employers seemed glad to be told of any safety violations in their plants and took care of them immediately. The state reported in 1888 that among the manufacturers, “There is no longer the feeling that we come to them as enemies to pry into their private affairs.” The inspectors did not hesitate to make recommendations that went beyond the scope of the law, and the employers usually assured them that the suggestions would be carried out. Many manufacturers demanded that the machinery they bought be built for safe operation, which spurred the invention of new safety devices and features in machinery.67
Balancing the safety picture in New York, the factory inspectors reported examples of less than perfect compliance. One inspector reported that employers who were charged with violations often simply delayed abatement until a second inspection, which because of limited time and personnel might not come for a year or more. Repeated visits and threats of legal action were sometimes necessary to obtain compliance. Known hazards were often allowed to persist, even after they had caused accidents. For example, a tailoring room in one clothing factory had unprotected shafting which once caught on an employee’s dress, yet nothing was done until an inspector came and ordered the shaft covered.68
Employers were not the only violators, however. Most factories in New York posted notices forbidding the cleaning of machinery while it was in motion before this was required by law, but employees commonly ignored the warnings. The issue was complicated, however, by the fact that the companies usually expected the workers to do clean up on their own time when the machinery stopped. The employees got around this by cleaning up while the machinery was still running. Another inspector reported that sometimes after he had ordered safeguards installed on machinery, employees removed them. The employers sometimes had to threaten to fire them to compel them to leave the devices alone.69
Further complicating the compliance picture, the law itself was not always in tune with technology. For example, the 1886 New York factory act required the use of automatically opening and closing hatches over elevator holes. At the high speeds at which most elevators ran, however, these hatches did not work very well. Many employers refused to install them. The inspectors recognized the problem, but they had to enforce the letter of the law regardless. Furthermore, without these hatches, open elevator holes acted as giant flues in case of fire. The problem was ultimately solved with the installation of completely enclosed elevator shafts.70
Four years after Wisconsin’s first factory inspector was appointed in 1885, the commissioner of labor and industrial statistics reported that manufacturers generally complied with inspectors’ orders. In 1889, only one manufacturer was reported to have given the inspector a hard time. He refused to allow an inspection until the inspector threatened to obtain a court order. More typical, however, was a bakery owner who told the inspector, “You are just the man I wish to consult.”71
Despite improvement in compliance, problems remained. In 1898 the Wisconsin bureau reported that it was often difficult to find safety devices that did not reduce efficiency. Sanitary improvements and fire escapes were expensive, which led many employers to resist their adoption. Constant pressure and attention were needed to obtain compliance. Employers objected to the posting of laws in their establishments and some tore them down. The proprietor of a shoe factory with very poor fire escape routes showed “a disposition to defeat” an inspector’s request for more fire escapes, though he complied in the end. A cloak maker who was also found to have inadequate fire escapes went to the extreme of relocating his operation to avoid compliance. Such delays were not uncommon. When an inspector found abominable conditions in the dipping rooms of a match factory — poorly ventilated rooms filled with poisonous fumes from the liquid phosphorus which made up the match heads — he tried to persuade the operators to make improvements. They objected because of the costs involved and the inspector “left without expecting to see the changes made.” When a machinery manufacturer equipped his ripsaws with guards after an inspection, a reinspection revealed that the employees had removed the guards.72
In neighboring Minnesota, the initial factory inspection law of 1887 gave the state labor statistics bureau the duty of examining safety and health conditions. Since it was given virtually no enforcement powers, the bureau stressed, out of necessity, an educational and voluntary approach:
“The introduction of safety devices is … an appeal to the humanity, intelligence, and self interest of the manufacturer. The successful factory inspector must, in the beginning, rely more upon reason than upon the power of penalties. The public must be educated to see how machinery can be made safe and factories more healthful, and through this education a public sentiment (will be) created which will enforce the better way upon the few who are slow of comprehension or hard of heart.”73
This approach seems to have been fairly effective. The state labor commissioner found in discussions with various manufacturers that many were favorably disposed toward a factory inspection system, if it was well administered. One of them pointed out that businessmen had little time to study safety and health, but a factory inspector could specialize and could “show the busy manufacturer many devices that will at once protect the workers’ lives and limbs and also guard the employer’s pocketbook.” The inspector reported on factory conditions and advised employers on improvements. He claimed that he got as good compliance with his suggestions as did inspectors in other states where orders were backed up by the law.74
In a sad story repeated many times over in workshops across the country, however, workmen in a Minnesota furniture factory thwarted the best intentions of both inspector and employer. The commissioner of labor statistics reported that when the manufacturer adopted, at the inspector’s suggestion, guards for his buzz saws, the workmen did not accept the change in procedure that resulted. Despite the employer’s warning of the necessity of using the guard, the men insisted on removal of the devices. Within a week one of the men lost several fingers on a saw. The guards were then put on to stay.75
When Indiana passed its factory act of 1897 it was not apparent until after a factory inspector was appointed that there was a serious constitutional question about the law. The Indiana constitution required that all laws passed by the state legislature had to deal with one main subject, which was to be expressed in the law’s title. The factory act covered safety and health for all workers, as well as regulating woman and child labor, but its title mentioned only women and children. Since the law was defective, the inspector, Daniel McAbee, “deemed it unwise to proceed hastily or harshly in its enforcement.” Still, he managed to obtain voluntary compliance, both in workplaces that employed women and children and in those that employed only men. In 1899 McAbee, with the support of the state federation of labor, persuaded the legislature to revise the earlier act to remedy the faulty wording so that the bill would clearly cover all workers. The bill also added a few requirements and created a department of inspection.76
Even before the revision in 1899, inspector McAbee reported that businessmen who had opposed the initial inspection act “are now in sincere cooperation with the law.” Factory operators who had feared interference from the inspector learned that “it is not the purpose of this department to ‘run’ their establishments.” In the first year of operation, the inspector made numerous “orders” (without legal force), such as seeing that fire escapes were provided, exhaust fans installed, fly wheels shielded, and so on. About 88 percent of these requests were complied with. Some companies went beyond the inspector’s requests, at great expense, in providing the best possible exhaust fans, fire escapes, and other safety equipment. One woodworking plant installed an exhaust fan system that caught up the dust and shavings and conducted them to the boiler fires, producing enough steam to power the whole plant. In many cases, companies could not comply with the inspector’s requests for want of room, but when they built new plants, up‑to‑date safety improvements were included. While the 1897 act excluded small employers with less than ten workers from the requirements, many of them had the inspector visit them anyway and took care of hazards that he pointed out. McAbee pointed out that these smaller places had more total accidents than larger establishments and he called for the law to be changed to include small employers under its requirements.77
Among the enforcement problems inspector McAbee reported was the difficulty of getting employers to report accidents within 48 hours. He considered this one of the most important provisions of the factory act because “it is a constant reminder that the hand of authority is over the establishments where (accidents) occur.” Improper installation of required equipment was another problem. Dust in iron mills was very difficult to control, for example, and control devices had to be carefully fitted to certain machines. The factory operators buying and installing the devices knew little about the nature and workings of ventilation systems, however, and the workmen using the machinery often discarded the hoods and other equipment. McAbee believed that workmen were “prone to view such things as guards with contempt, and as a reflection on their ability.”78
Ohio provided some interesting contrasts in regard to factory inspection. On the one hand, in 1887 the inspectors reported “marked improvement in the character of the workshops.” On the other, there were examples, such as a private employer who had leased a pottery shop at the state penitentiary using prison labor. The sanitary conditions were terrible and the atmosphere was heavy with dust. The proprietor refused to make changes recommended by the inspector. When confronted by a legal order to comply, the man sought a court injunction against the inspector’s order. The matter was only resolved when the establishment went out of business.79
There were diverse indications in Ohio of a positive response by business to factory inspection. Col. James James Kilbourne, head of a Columbus manufacturing company who lectured frequently on social problems, asserted that it was only “common humanity that employers should take every practical precaution against bodily hurt to their employees.” He argued that even if all employers were “alive to their duty … public supervision would still be desirable.” On a more practical level, a magazine advertisement by the Dodge Manufacturing Co. of Cincinnati asked the reader: “Are you using safety collars? The State Factory Inspectors are making more rigid search than formerly for dangerous machinery … and are … throwing out all shaft collars having projecting set screws.” Dodge offered their set screw collars as safe substitutes.80
As occurred elsewhere, the impersonal forces of technology and economic growth in Ohio produced progress in which factory inspection played only at most an indirect role. When industrialist John H. Patterson built new National Cash Register facilities in Dayton the state bureau of labor statistics featured it in an article on “A Wonderful Factory System” in the 1896 annual report. “The new factory building has been conceded by experts to be … the best heated, best lighted and best ventilated factory building in the world.” The bureau quoted Patterson as saying, “Give a person good surroundings and you will receive good work in return.”81
Missouri’s factory inspection program faced as severe limitations as could be found in any state. Under the 1891 Missouri factory inspection law, cities with at least 5,000 population had to provide their own inspectors. Rather than hiring qualified inspectors, they ordered city clerks, police officers, engineers and other employees to do inspections on top of their regular duties. For much of the 1890s the legislature refused to give adequate support to factory inspection by the state. In addition, the state economy slowed down, which meant that older, more dangerous plant and equipment was less likely to be replaced by new facilities.
Despite these problems, there was a significant degree of compliance. Under a limited 1889 inspection law and the 1891 factory act, the commissioners of labor statistics reported widespread voluntary abatement of hazards. Oddly, industry in the city of St. Louis, which made no effort to provide the inspections required by the factory act, achieved good compliance, according to the state inspectors who tried to fill in the gap. Nemirow concluded that this very lack of regular inspection and enforcement was a significant factor. Since the state was obliged to adopt a voluntaristic, cooperative approach, with no compliance orders or strict deadlines to enforce, “The forces for change … were allowed to operate at their own pace.” Elsewhere, inspectors gave employers 30 days to make necessary changes, but enforcement was widely supplemented by the provision of educational and technical assistance. The factory inspector in Missouri functioned as “a kind of bumblebee, bringing safety and health insights … from one workshop to the next.82
In 1887 Ohio factory inspector Henry Dorn, a machinist and an active trade unionist, invited the inspectors from five states to meet to discuss mutual problems. At this meeting, held in Philadelphia, was born the International Association of Factory Inspectors (IAFI). Its primary goals were the education of the public on the purposes of inspection and the promotion of communication and mutual assistance among inspectors. The organization existed mainly through its annual conventions, which became more elaborate and well attended as states established and expanded their factory inspection programs. The IAFI generally favored a moderate, cooperative approach to enforcement. At the second meeting in 1888 Association president Rufus Wade, chief inspector for Massachusetts, told his colleagues:
“Our chief duty… is to enforce the laws …. We are expected to exercise common sense…. It is not wise to exert authority in an arbitrary, unreasonable and offensive manner. We are not to assume that every slight and technical violation of the laws … must be dealt with as if the offender was a willful wrongdoer.”83
Critique of State Action
State factory legislation and enforcement gradually came under close scrutiny from historians, social scientists, and even state legislatures. They traced the origins of workers’ safety and health laws and the history of factory inspection, and evaluated the system that had developed. Some looked closely at one state, while others surveyed the national picture. They published extensively. Some of their criticisms were very specific and limited. Some were broad and sweeping. Critics conceded that it was very difficult to gauge one state’s laws or enforcement against another’s because of the wide differences in conditions, and harder still to measure beneficial effects on working conditions. They often disagreed in their evaluation of state laws and enforcement efforts. By highlighting the general problems and particular failings of state regulation of workers’ safety and health, they strongly influenced the system and laid the groundwork for major changes in it.
The critics revealed a multitude of problems and unanswered questions regarding factory legislation. The historian of Maine’s factory laws found that the 1893 inspection law had given the inspectors the additional and completely irrelevant duty of enforcing certain safety requirements in school buildings — “one of those mistakes which result from poor drafting of legislation.84 A much later critic wrote in 1976 about problems in Missouri’s inspection laws that must have been apparent when they first took effect. There was a serious fragmentation of coverage, with separate laws for railroad workers, trolley operators, bakeries, tenement workshops and mines. This was a problem in many other states, and it was compounded in Missouri by the failure of the legislature to provide adequate funds or to indicate clearly which government body was to enforce a particular law.85 Leonard Hatch, writing in 1911, criticized the vagueness of many factory laws. He noted with disapproval that “The most common provision for … power driven machinery, the principal… source of factory accidents… is the single declaration … that such machinery ‘shall be guarded.’”86 In a 1911 article on “Legal Protection from Injurious Dusts,” insurance statistician Frederick L. Hoffman pointed out that, although dust is the most insidious industrial health hazard, laws on dust control and ventilation were generally ineffective. They covered only the most obvious hazards, without setting specific minimum requirements for air purity and so on. Hoffman argued that “drastic legal requirements” were badly needed.87 On this matter of specificity, a special study done on Massachusetts noted that there were two schools of thought. There were those who favored very specific and precise safety and health requirements. They argued that inspectors needed fixed standards in the law for effective enforcement. Others favored generally worded flexible laws. These latter claimed that an inspector with flexible rules could obtain a higher level of performance.88
One of the greatest concerns of students of occupational safety and health regulation was the degree of variability between states. After noting the similarities and dissimilarities between states’ factory laws, Leonard Hatch found problems with both aspects. He found it curious that, despite the fact that many industrial dangers were widespread, there was great variability in coverage. Pennsylvania, for example, had a law requiring the covering of shaft holes in floors, yet neighbor state Ohio had no such requirement. On the other hand, there were many provisions which appeared in almost identical words in different states’ laws, such as the “striking uniformity” with which various states began their lists of dangers to be guarded with “vats and pans.” Hatch believed that states sometimes copied each others’ laws verbatim, in order to at least give the appearance of doing something for safety. Hatch concluded pessimistically that safety laws bore no “evidence of having been formulated in the basis of careful study” and that the trend in factory legislation was “toward the simple propagation of early forms and not toward progressive development.”89
Most commentators recognized the drawbacks of the lack of uniformity between states, but balked at handling the problem at the federal level. J. Lynn Barnard noted that with the states rather than the federal government in control the more progressive states could move at a faster pace, but it made the whole problem harder because “there are forty five battles to fight instead of one.” The Massachusetts study mentioned earlier noted that the expense of providing a safe and healthful place to work would not be shared equally among all employers until all the states had uniform legislation. Lower standards for competitors outside a given state such as Massachusetts encouraged firms inside the state to resist legislative improvements. There was a movement among employers around 1905 for a national safety law. The Factory Inspector journal considered this an unwise idea because, “that which might apply with the best results in Maine would perhaps be a grave injustice in California” as well as possibly infringing on states’ rights. Local inspectors would understand local problems and conditions better than would federal agents. At the same time, the journal argued that state laws should be fairly uniform and that the states should be aware of what each other were doing.90
In a study of the labor laws of Connecticut, Alba Edwards noted that, in general, state labor legislation was frequently inadequate to deal with the existing conditions and was usually delayed until well after the initial need arose. The growth of protective legislation lagged the development of the industrial system, Edwards argued, because of deep rooted social conservatism: “the people clung to their old laws after they had adopted a new system of production.” When new laws were passed, they were often marred by carryovers from the past. For example, Edwards noted that frequently the authority to enforce laws was divided and delegated to local officials, following a tradition from colonial times. As a result of this social conservatism, new laws were “wholly inadequate to meet the new conditions.”91
Two of the principal critics, and probably the two most influential figures in the early development of government regulation of job safety and health, were John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. Commons taught economics at the University of Wisconsin and was a state labor official. Andrews was secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation and investigated occupational hazards. Both men were active throughout the early — l900s. They summarized their criticisms and recommendations in Principles of Labor Legislation, which they coauthored in 1916.
Commons and Andrews provided a rationale for legislation to prevent casualties in the workplace and categorized such laws into three classes: reporting, prohibition, and regulation. Reporting of accidents and illnesses was essential as a basis for effective legislation. Prohibition was a clear cut but drastic way to deal with dangers in the workplace, either by banning a hazardous substance or process, or limiting the employment of what were considered susceptible groups, such as women and children, in dangerous situations. They felt that this method was appropriate only under “severe provocation.” Since most people were not willing to give up certain dangerous machines and processes that were essential parts of the industrial system, it was more practical, Commons and Andrews recognized, to use the method of regulation, based on the idea of toleration of hazards up to certain limits. While employers had a recognized duty to provide protections for their workers, they were not all equally responsive to this obligation, hence the need for public authority to assure that protections will be provided.92
There were four main flaws in state labor legislation, including that on occupational safety and health, according to Commons and Andrews: incompleteness, absence of well defined standards, absence of direct responsibility, and the lack of responsiveness to change. Many laws were incomplete because they narrowed down too specifically the hazards and industries to be covered, and left the rest alone. The authors of Principles of Labor Legislation give the example of a law in one state that required that poisonous fumes generated in a manufacturing process be removed from a work area. The law did not apply to maintenance during “down time,” however, and two men varnishing inside brewery vats died from fumes that accumulated there. Often because of a lack of knowledge, legislators would set only vague requirements such as having machinery “sufficiently guarded,” and left it up to the inspector to use his discretion on enforcement. Many laws placed no duty on employers to provide protection or take any measures until they were inspected and ordered to do so. When detailed standards were set by a legislature, changing conditions and technology often quickly rendered the rule obsolete. “The impracticability of embodying in statute law specific danger points and specific remedies became clear.”93
Laws on reporting accidents were far from satisfactory, in the judgment of Commons and Andrews. A number of states enacted such laws early on, but because of lax enforcement and lack of cooperation, the results were not good. Often companies did not want accidents publicized. Prosecution of offenders was rare, and penalties even rarer. Reporting laws and enforcement improved over the years and spread to more states, but there were wide variations. A key item, such as the definition of a disability meant vastly different things in different areas, ranging from only fatalities to all injuries resulting in as little lost time as two work days.94
Commons and Andrews surveyed the body of labor laws that regulated safety and health hazards, and found much to criticize. They noted that ventilation of factory air was one of the most widely recognized needs and one of the most frequently covered in legislation. There were laws on it in half the states, but they were all vaguely worded until 1909 when Illinois set exact amounts of fresh air to be provided under various circumstances. Lighting had long been a neglected part of working conditions. Artificial lighting in most factories was “notoriously bad,” yet few states had laws on it, and those laws were vague and useless. Few states regulated temperature or humidity either, even though these were recognized hazards.95
Enforcement of factory laws was criticized even more severely than the laws themselves. Some of the shortcomings in enforcement followed from legislation; others were the fault of the enforcing officials. Some of the critics, such as John B. Andrews and Dr. George Price, looked at the national picture; most focused on individual states.
Expectations exceeded performance in most states with factory inspection. Barnard’s study of Pennsylvania’s inspection program deplored the state’s failure to assume “her rightful place of leadership in this splendid experiment in… social politics.” Although the Pennsylvania factory act gave inspectors the power to freely enter workplaces at any time, Barnard charged that some deputies failed to exercise this power effectively when employers resisted them. Further, he charged that machine guarding, “the very heart” of factory inspection, was neglected because of incompetence and political influence. Barnard said of the state’s inspectors that “the sort of machinery with which they have the best working knowledge is that of their respective wards and voting precincts.”96 In Connecticut, the law required that when inspectors found a violation they were to file a complaint with the state attorney. This made enforcement a “dead letter,” in the opinion of political scientist Alba Edwards, because, as often happens with such divided authority, neither officer took responsibility for enforcing the factory inspectors’ orders.97 The 1911 Massachusetts study deplored the fact that in that state, an inspector could only enter a workplace in response to a specific complaint from a worker.98 In Wisconsin, a later study revealed that in the early 1900s, employers felt that inspectors had too much latitude in specifying methods of abating hazards and took advantage of loose phrases in the laws, such as “where the inspector considers it necessary.”99
Expectations were particularly high in Massachusetts, whose industrial safety and health laws were considered by many the best in the country. However, its inspection system lagged behind those of some states and by 1910 it had developed serious problems from divided effort. In that year the state legislature established a special “Commission to Investigate the Inspection of Factories, Workshops, Mercantile Establishments and Other Buildings.” The commission was to determine if inspections were being done properly, see if there was any duplication of effort by the different agencies involved, and recommend needed changes in inspection laws. After it got organized, the commission decided to limit its work to industrial inspections. They held hearings around the state, heard from a variety of witnesses, and journeyed to New York, Wisconsin and other states to study their systems. The focus of the investigation was on the district police inspectors, who were the primary enforcers of safety and health laws, and the state health board, which was responsible for industrial health inspections.100
A specialized factory inspection service was not created in Massachusetts by the factory law of 1877. However, in 1879 the governor was authorized to appoint local police inspectors and by 1888 an inspection department was established in each police district to ensure enforcement of labor laws, including safety and health. By 1910 there were 15 police (factory) inspectors around the state. The duties of these inspectors were to see that workers were protected from unguarded machinery, investigate accidents, inspect elevators and see that legally required safeguards were provided. When an inspector found a violation, he usually gave the employer an oral order to comply. He would follow this up with a written order and he was supposed to return to see that the employer had complied. Employers could appeal to have an order overturned, but otherwise they had to pay a fine.101
While the factory inspectors had some responsibility for health matters, such as approving ventilation, lighting and sanitation measures in new industrial buildings, the state board of health was more directly involved. The board’s industrial health duties included enforcing laws on cleanliness, ventilation and lighting in factories, seeing that dust and gas removal equipment was installed where required, seeing that heat and humidity in textile mills were not excessive, and collecting information on working conditions. The health inspectors were hampered because they could not directly order changes in a workplace but had to go through the factory inspectors. The health board did have the power to exclude the hiring of minors under 18 years of age from trades, which it considered unhealthy for young workers.102
The main problem associated with the factory inspectors was a two fold, one involving personnel. Many people, including the inspectors themselves, complained there were not enough inspectors to adequately cover their districts. In most states there was a rule of thumb that each workplace should be inspected at least once a year, but Massachusetts inspectors were often unable to meet that minimum. One inspector protested that it took him two years to “make the rounds,” which he considered inadequate to keep employers informed of their legal requirements. In addition, many felt that the qualifications of those hired as inspectors were too low. One critic urged the appointment of inspectors from the working classes with practical training and understanding of the workplace and the problems of working people. Another criticized the practice of giving preference in hiring to aged Civil War veterans.103
There were many other problems. Inspectors did not have complete, up‑to-date lists of the factories in their districts. While they did try to inspect each workplace in their district once before repeating, there was no set inspection route, and inspectors were constantly being diverted for investigations of emergency situations and for other reasons. In 1908, factory inspectors were given the added duty of checking the growing numbers of movie theaters. This related primarily to public safety and caused a serious diversion of manpower from job safety inspections. There was little coordination between factory inspectors within a district. One inspector, when asked by the investigating commission how they divided the work in his district, responded, “There is no division that I know of.” While records were kept of all inspections, these were never analyzed or used to develop statistics. Workers protested that, whereas formerly they could complain directly to the inspector about safety hazards in their plants, now there was too much “red tape.” They had to write to the chief district inspector, and wait for the matter to come to the attention of a regular inspector.104
There were also problems that related mainly to the Massachusetts health board inspectors. The investigating commission estimated that the board, which was responsible for many aspects of public health, spent only about one fifth of its inspection time on industrial health. Further, its inspectors had to spend about a third of their time on clerical work. Many of the health inspectors were physicians and, partly because of the low pay for inspectors, took time off to maintain their medical practices. Of the small portion of staff time devoted to industrial inspections, most of that was taken up with collecting data on hygiene for the state board.105
The commission concluded that the basic problem with the whole system of factory safety and health inspection in Massachusetts was the lack of coordination and cooperation between the district police inspectors and the state board of health. In the first place, there was no clear definition of powers and responsibilities, although the police inspectors and health board maintained that their duties were clear to them. There was no direct communicating between the two groups. In fact, they were ordered not to communicate. There was supposedly an understanding between them that whenever an inspector from one group found a violation of laws which the other group enforced, his office was supposed to notify them. The commission found it “impossible to determine” to what extent this was practiced. This lack of cooperation was inevitable. It was only human nature, the commission maintained, that whenever two groups of men were assigned to the same general field of work the result must be “either friction, jealousy and antagonism, or absolute mutual aloofness.” The commission concluded that the police inspectors and the health board “go their separate ways without assisting each other at all in the enforcement of the laws.”106
One of the strongest blasts against factory inspection in the U.S. was delivered in 1919 by Dr. George Price, who for many years had been one of the leading investigators in industrial hygiene. In the first place, Price wrote, “factory inspection has always lagged behind labor legislation.” Only after legislators saw that enactment of factory acts alone was insufficient did they provide for inspection. Price believed that the inspection of factories emulated enforcement of earlier laws on woman and child labor. This was an unfortunate choice of models, in Price’s opinion, because these laws were relatively simple to enforce. Unlike inspecting for hazards to safety or health, it took no special knowledge of industrial conditions or great expertise to ascertain whether there were underage workers or women or children working at prohibited occupations. Factory inspection also suffered from poor organization, inadequate definition of scope and functions, limited enforcement powers, low quality of leadership, a poorly trained inspection force, and political influence.107
The low quality of most factory inspection systems, Price charged, had led to “disregard and contempt … among workers and employers.” In investigations in 1911 and 1912, Price reported, businessmen repeatedly told him how little they trusted and how they looked down on inspectors. One employer told him that the factory inspector in general is “an absolute ignoramus” who could not “distinguish a belt shifter from a steam pipe … His criticisms are often foolish and his recommendations ridiculous.” Price had close contacts with labor unions and he asserted that workers were well aware of “the incompetence of the average factory inspector, his lack of knowledge and experience and the absence of zeal and enthusiasm for his work.”108
Price’s harsh judgment was that in the U.S. “factory inspection is not a profession.” Whereas European inspectors were highly trained, their American counterparts were recruited from an inferior group of unqualified applicants. This was so not because of a lack of capable people, but because the job was not a desirable one. Pay was low and there was no state that provided a pension for inspectors. Tenure was uncertain and heavily dependent on the wishes of politically appointed chief inspectors. Since they were political posts, the chief inspectors changed frequently, which added to the insecurity of the inspection staffs and prevented continuity of policies.109
A more temperate analysis by John and Irene Andrews in 1911 focused on factory legislation and the difficulties it created for inspectors. “The best intentioned law for the protection of… factory workers,” they wrote, “may be worse than disappointing unless it can be easily and effectively enforced.” They noted that while there had been much criticism of the quality of enforcement by factory inspectors, the question was seldom raised as to whether the laws were formulated in a way that allowed them to be easily enforced. Frequently in the past, they observed, labor laws had been “hastily drafted and as hurriedly enacted into law.” Because of lack of expertise and failure to carefully consider all problems and facets, labor laws were generally “confused, indefinite and full of loopholes.”110
The Andrews distinguished three types of factory legislation. The first type set very general safety and health requirements and left it up to the inspector to decide whether or not they applied in a given situation. Acts of the second type narrowed the range of inspectors’ discretion, limiting him to determining measures employers should take to meet the legal requirement that they provide machine guarding, dust removal, and so on. A third type, which was fairly rare in 1911, specified the exact procedures an employer had to use to come into compliance with the law.111
The second type of law was predominant, and there were many problems in enforcing it. It was up to the inspector to decide what protective measures were “suitable” or “reasonable” or “practicable.” Therefore, rather than take some step that the inspector might reject, employers frequently did nothing until the inspector showed up at their door and issued his orders. The Andrews argued that this procedure of “securing protection by convincing employers one by one, until the state is covered” was too time consuming. They gave the example of laws on poisonous gases and fumes, which have no more definite directions that that harmful agents should be removed “if necessary” or “so far as practicable.” Some required that a mechanical device be used, but did not say what kind. The other laws did not even go this far. Such indefinite laws allowed great variation not only between states, but also within a state, since different inspectors in the same state were free to require different measures, with widely varying costs, to comply with the same rule.112
Progressive Era Investigations
There was great interest during the Progressive Era (1900-1917) in investigation and amelioration of hazardous working conditions. President Theodore Roosevelt had championed the conservation movement and broadened its scope to include the saving of human life. It was but a short step from there to protecting the lives and limbs of industrial workers. Through settlement houses and other urban social work, reformers aided workers and their families and entreated employers to eliminate dangerous working conditions and other abuses. Muckraking journalists and others gave nation‑wide publicity to accidents and unsafe conditions.113
From 1902 to 1907 The Factory Inspector, unofficial journal of the International Association of Factory Inspectors, regularly published accounts gathered by state labor bureaus of industrial accidents. The steel industry produced some of the most violent accidents that this journal reported. At a steel mill in Butler, Pennsylvania, a heavy pot of hot metal spilled molten steel onto wet sand, causing a huge explosion which destroyed part of the plant. Streams of hot metal poured down on the workmen, engulfing and literally cooking some of them. Four men died and 30 more were injured. The explosion shook buildings in the town and caused panic among the populace. Thousands turned out to watch the huge fire that ensued.114 Two employees at a steel plant in Youngstown, Ohio were sent to clean out the dust underneath the blast furnaces. Suddenly there was a slippage of tons of molten fuel and ore inside the furnace, causing large amounts of very hot dust to fall on them. One of the men was completely buried in it and died in great agony. The other escaped with severe burns.115
Less spectacular but more frequent were the individual tragedies reported in The Factory Inspector resulting from unprotected machinery in a variety of industries. A machinist got his arm caught in a rapidly moving belt. It was jerked from its socket, and he fell 50 feet to the floor. His fellow workers, aghast at the man’s shrieks, ran in panic from the shop. A young boy working in a coffin plant was decapitated and had both arms and both legs torn off when he was caught on shafting rotating at 300 revolutions per minute. A worker in a brick‑making factory was caught in a belt and had most of his skin torn off. A sawmill worker fell onto a large, unguarded circular saw and was split in two. When a worker got caught in the large flywheel of the main steam power plant of a navy yard, his arms and legs were torn off and the lifeless trunk was hurled against a wall 50 feet away.116 Perhaps the most horrifying accident reported in the journal was described as follows:
“In plain sight of a hundred fellow‑workmen, Martin Stoffel was cut into small pieces at the Philadelphia Caramel Works … He was dragged into the machinery and his head severed… A second later both legs were cut off. Then one arm after the other fell into the lesser wheels below, both being cut into many parts. Before the machinery could be stopped, Stoffel had been literally chopped to pieces.”117
Dramatically underscoring the frequency of industrial accidents, The Factory Inspector once reported on “the peculiar coincidence of two men of the same name meeting their doom in the same manner at the same hour” in different cities. John Minick of Escanaba, Michigan, and a namesake in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, both millwrights, were killed when their clothing became entangled in rotating shafting. No one witnessed either accident, but the bodies were found later.118
The steel industry had come under intense public scrutiny with the formation of the U.S. Steel Corp. and several muckrakers also turned their attention to this industry. In Chicago, home of U.S. Steel’s huge South Works, bad working conditions were widespread. Writer William B. Hard came to investigate in 1907 and attracted nation‑wide attention with his article “Making Steel and Killing Men.”119
In this fair‑minded but tough expose, Hard showed why he felt that “steel is war” in the huge mill, in which he found an almost “diabolical hypnotism exercised … by (its) overwhelming majesty.” Hard estimated that each year 1,200 men were killed or injured out of a work force of about 10,000. He described an accident in which a man was roasted alive by molten slag that spilled from a giant ladle when a hook from an overhead crane carrying it slipped. The ladle lacked proper lugs and the hook had been attached precariously to the rim. Hard argued that U.S. Steel had ample ability to reduce accidents but lacked strong incentive to do so. When a man was killed on the job, there was only one chance in five that the company would ever have to pay compensation to his survivors.
Vivid first‑hand accounts of conditions similar to, if somewhat later than, those Hard encountered are found in Charles Rumford Walker’s Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker. He wrote it around 1920 after he had graduated from college and worked for a while in a steel mill. Walker and a foreign‑born co‑worker named Adolf went to the top of a blast furnace. Adolf asked him if he smelled the gas (which contained carbon monoxide) that issued from the furnace. “‘You stay li’l bit, pretty soon you drunk …. You stay li’l bit more,’ he continued, his grin broadening, ‘pretty soon you dead.’” The stoves used to heat the air blast in the furnaces had a brick checker work on the top of the furnace to retain the heat. This checker work filled up with flue dust periodically and had to be cleaned out. The dust was so thick one could hardly see, and the heat so intense that one could work only three minutes at a time. When Walker went up there he reported that “my lungs were like paper on fire.” There was an open shaft next to the checker work that went all the way to the bottom of the furnace. Walker was told a man had fallen down that shaft to his death.120
Walker became sharply aware of the difficulties faced by the non‑English speaking immigrant workers in the mills. It struck him, after being bawled out “picturesquely for not knowing where something was that I had never heard of, that this was what every immigrant Hunky endured.” Once, when the pit boss told a Slavic worker to do a particular job, the man did not understand, and the pit boss said, “Lord! but these Hunkies are dumb.” Walker was convinced that most of the accidents, misunderstandings and wasted motion that took place would disappear if there were “a common language, of mind as well as tongue.”121
Immigrant steelworkers were generally willing to put up with the long hours, hard, work, and bad conditions as long as they had steady employment. They were usually stuck with the dirtiest, hottest, most hazardous jobs. Steel making, dangerous enough for experienced workers, was even more so for these unseasoned peasants. From 1906 to 1910, the accident rates for immigrants at the South Works were double those for English‑speakers. Each year, about one‑fourth of the immigrant workers were killed or injured on the job.122
In 1907‑1908 the Russell Sage Foundation sponsored a massive survey of living and working conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, focusing on workers in the steel industry, though it included mining and railroading. Titled the “Pittsburgh Survey,” it was well publicized and revealed an ugly side of industrializing America. One of the many publications that grew out of it was Crystal Eastman’s Work Accidents and the Law, published in 1910.
Eastman based her book on data gathered on all industrial deaths in the Pittsburgh area for one year, on accidents for three months, over a thousand cases in all. Investigators tracked down data on the nature of each accident — the cause, who was at fault, economic effects on families, and so on. Mines and railroads were included, but steel mills constituted the largest manufacturing sector. Eastman hoped to find the answers to two questions: what was the true distribution of blame for accidents between workers and employers; and, who bore the brunt of the economic burden of work accidents.123
The answer to the second question was fairly clear. Of the 526 deaths in the year of the Pittsburgh Survey, 235 involved survivors. Of those, 53 percent received $100 or less from the employer. Of the 509 workmen injured in a three month period, employers paid hospital costs for 84 percent of them, but only 37 percent received any benefits beyond that, according to Eastman. “For our present purpose this fact is significant enough: In over one-half of the deaths and injuries … the employers assumed absolutely no share of the inevitable income loss.”124 Further underlining the shifting of the burden of lost income from employers to victims, Eastman wrote:
“In work accidents we have a peculiar kind of disaster, by which… only wage earners are affected, and which falls upon them in addition to all the disasters that are the common lot. A special cloud always threatens the home of the worker in dangerous trades …. (I)t is not just that those whose lot falls in this part of the work should endure not only all the physical torture that comes with injury, but also almost the entire economic loss which inevitably follows it.”125
Eastman’s answer to the question of blame for accidents differed from the prevailing views. At that time, employers commonly believed that around 95 percent of all accidents were due to workers’ carelessness. Eastman challenged this conviction with figures showing that, of the 377 accidents covered in the Survey for which fault could be determined, 113, or 30 percent, of them were solely the employers’ fault. Further, at most, only 44 percent could be even partially blamed on the victim or fellow workmen.126
Shifting the statistical focus somewhat, Eastman made a strong case that even those accidents due to “carelessness” were not very clear cut. Of the 132 deaths which were found to be the victim’s fault, 47 involved very young or inexperienced workers, or those with physical conditions that made them vulnerable. That left 85 experienced, able‑bodied victims of “carelessness”:
“For the heedless ones, no defense is made. For the inattentive we maintain that human powers of attention, universally limited, are in their case further limited by the conditions under which the work is done — long hours, heat, noise, intense speed. For the reckless ones we maintain that natural inclination is in their case encouraged and inevitably increased by an occupation involving constant risk.
Regarding the workman who was reckless, not on impulse but in a deliberate effort to cut corners, Eastman wrote in their defense:
“If a hundred times a day a man is required to take necessary risks, it is not in reason to expect him to stop there and never take an unnecessary risk. Extreme caution is as unprofessional among the men in dangerous trades as fear would be in a soldier.”127
Three interrelated reforms developed in the Progressive era in response to the industrial safety problems that Crystal Eastman, William B. Hard, The Factory Inspector and others helped publicize — one of them private, and two public. Advances in technology and plant construction continued to improve conditions, but also many companies began to look at accidents as a problem to be solved, not simply an acceptable cost of doing business, and voluntarily instituted their own safety and health programs. Workers’ compensation, already established in Europe, was widely adopted in this country, in large part as a preventive measure. Many states adopted administrative rule making, another European idea, to get around the difficulty they had in maintaining up‑to‑date factory laws in the face of changing industrial conditions. Many states established industrial commissions which administered one or both of these programs. At times, industry assisted the public program. These, in turn, gave a powerful boost to the voluntary private movement to reduce accidents.
Before the Pittsburgh Survey, U.S. Steel and its subsidiaries initiated in‑plant safety programs. Several factors contributed to this development. The enormous publicity generated by its formation made U.S. Steel particularly sensitive to public opinion in a period of growing criticism of accidents and deaths in the mills. Centralized records of accidents throughout the corporation made the company more aware of the exact dimensions of the safety problems in its mills. A reduction in intensity of competition in the industry freed up more company resources for workers’ welfare measures such as safety. Explosive growth in unions in the early 1900s added pressures to improve conditions.128
Several subsidiaries of U.S. Steel had safety programs of their own even before the creation of the mother company in 1901. Safety quickly found a leading place in the corporate agenda. In 1906, company safety officials began meeting annually at U.S. Steel headquarters in New York. This led to the creation in 1908 of a company‑wide Central Committee of Safety with a strong mandate from company president Elbridge Gary to bring about improved conditions and bring down accident rates. The committee had the power to set safety rules for the plants, perform inspections, and advise plant managers of new safety devices and methods. Local plant safety committees carried these duties out. Backing up this committee, U.S. Steel spent about $750,000 a year on safety improvements. It sought to include the latest safety features in all new plant and equipment and encouraged suppliers of machinery to keep it informed of any new devices or safety features that came along.129
Progressive Ideas
Industry’s efforts to protect workers’ safety and health in the early 1900s in no way preempted calls for further government action in this field. Progressives were convinced that job safety and health was too important to remain solely a responsibility of employers. Secretary of Commerce and Labor Charles Nagel stressed at a conference on industrial safety in 1911 that “the great enemy of this country is waste” and that “it takes the government to establish the rules of the game” to assure fair play for workers and others who could not protect themselves. The Progressive Party platform of 1912 declared that “The supreme duty of the nation is conservation of human resources” and it called for strong safety and health legislation.130 One of the two new public programs that developed in the Progressive period was “administrative rule‑making,” whereby labor departments or industrial commissions could independently issue safety and health regulations without having to go back to the legislature. The other program was the system of pre‑determined fees paid without regard to fault to injured workers or their survivors and, financed from employers’ contributions. It was known as workmen’s compensation.
In 1884 Germany became the first country to provide compensation to workers injured in accidents. Other countries quickly imitated the German system. In America, the addition continued that workers had to sue their employers for compensation for injuries. It was difficult under common law principles to prove to a jury that the employer was at fault, and the size of awards varied enormously. As juries became more sympathetic to injured workers, and states, under pressure from organized labor, passed laws making it easier to prove an employer was at fault in an accident, the size and frequency of jury awards to workers increased. To avoid the possibly ruinous injury claims, many companies took out expensive employers’ liability insurance.
To some critics of this whole system the European workmen’s compensation idea seemed an attractive alternative, and numerous articles and government studies about it began to appear. By the early 1900s a few states had passed workmen’s compensation laws, but they either failed to survive court tests or were very limited in scope. In 1902 Maryland became the first state to pass a law providing accident compensation regardless of fault, but the law was declared unconstitutional in 1904 by the state supreme court. Further, neither business nor labor was enthusiastic about workmen’s compensation, yet.
In 1910 Crystal Eastman’s Work Accidents and the Law helped put workmen’s compensation in a new light — as a preventive program — and won support for it from business and labor on that basis. After 1908, as we have seen, muckrakers and investigators had begun to arouse public opinion nation‑wide against industrial safety and health conditions. In the opinion of Isaac Rubinow, a leading advocate for social insurance in that period, Eastman’s book was “the single strongest force in attracting public and arousing public conscience” on industrial accidents. Eastman’s finding that workers bore the economic brunt of accidents even though the largest share of blame for them lay with the employers, was a powerful basis for her argument that if only employers had an economic incentive to eliminate workplace hazards, they would do so. This became one of the fundamental justifications for adopting workmen’s compensation.131
The economic incentive to employers was tied to the premiums they would pay to the state or to the insurance company that underwrote compensation payments. Premiums would vary from industry to industry and from plant to plant, depending on the safety record, extent of hazards, and the efforts companies made in accident prevention. The employer would pay a lower rate as safety efforts and the accident record improved in his company or his industry. Supporters of workmen’s compensation asserted that the potential savings in premiums would more than cover the costs of necessary safety improvements, making it in the employers’ own best economic interest to reduce accident rates. Compensation had the further advantage to employers of substituting the certain but limited cost in premiums for the uncertain but highly variable cost in successful damage suits by injured employees, who would be barred from suing under workmen’s compensation.132
Labor was swayed strongly enough to drop strong objections and support workmen’s compensation, which it had long opposed. Labor leaders did not want to give up the right of their members to sue employers for damages. Even though success was not guaranteed, awards were sometimes very large. United Mine Workers president John Mitchell was not convinced that employers would eliminate hazards in order to get lower compensation rates. Perhaps most important was the fact that, as John Mitchell put it, workers wanted prevention more than compensation. Labor’s efforts had for some years been concentrated heavily on obtaining factory inspection legislation, and compensation was seen as a diversion from this effort. Then around 1909 Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, led the Federation and its affiliates in a historic switch from opposition to support.133
Large corporations did not have the long‑standing dislike of workmen’s compensation that organized labor had to overcome and they became strong allies of the compensation movement. At about the same time that they were developing voluntary safety plans, U.S. Steel, International Harvester and several others instituted their own workmen’s compensation programs. These large corporations soon realized that smaller companies lacked the resources to start similar voluntary programs and endorsed compensation laws so that all companies would be covered. Two business‑connected organizations gave key support. The National Civic Federation, composed of business and labor leaders, had long supported workmen’s compensation, but could do little about it until member Samuel Gompers dropped his opposition to it. After that, the Federation became a center of agitation for workmen’s compensation bills. The National Association of Manufacturers, representing the interests of the larger corporations was a strong advocate of compensation. In 1911 the Association studied and was enormously impressed with the preventive efforts associated with the German system instituted by Bismark.134
In 1908 the federal government established a very limited compensation system for its employees which, in combination with the growing movement for compensation as a preventive measure, helped spur the states to action. In 1909 New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota set up commissions to investigate the question of employers’ liability for accidents. Eight states followed in 1910; nine more in 1911. The reports of these commissions showed that most employers were in favor of workmen’s compensation. In May 1911 Wisconsin became the first state to establish a workmen’s compensation system. Nine other states passed compensation laws that year, three in 1912, and eight more in 1913. By 1921, 46 jurisdictions had workmen’s compensation laws in force.135
One of the principal contributions that the Progressive era made to workers’ safety and health was the concept of an industrial commission enforcing safety and health as well as other labor legislation. The industrial commission idea had great appeal in an era when there was much dissatisfaction with the old factory inspection and factory law system, and much debate over just what form factory safety and health laws should take. Some critics had focused on the lack of flexibility in the factory laws, which could only be changed by the legislature. Others had criticized the vagueness and lack of clear guidelines on what was required of employers. The industrial commission idea, whose principal advocate was John R. Commons, took into account both criticisms by proposing an agency that would set highly specific standards, but that could change or revoke them without going back to the legislature for approval. These commissions, Commons pointed out, would be able to develop or utilize specialized expertise and could work continuously, whereas the legislatures had many other concerns and only met intermittently. Crystal Eastman applauded the concept, as did John B. Andrews, who felt that specific rules which were clear to both employer and factory inspector would make factory inspection less subject to the cloud of political influence.
Since the legislature would be excluded from this process once a commission was established, Commons thought it important that the agency regularly consult labor, management and other interested groups before issuing or changing its regulation. Being based on the major facts and pertinent viewpoints, the rules would be less likely to be rejected by courts. Also, employers, it was hoped, would be more likely to accept rules in which their peers had some say.136 John and Irene Andrews agreed, saying:
“In few relations of industrial life is there greater need for complete understanding between the representatives of the various interested groups, than there is in the preparation of a common rule which is calculated to restrict the activities of factory owners and employees or place upon either unusual burdens of legal responsibility.”137
Commons taught at the University of Wisconsin, and it was in that state that the first rule‑making industrial commission was established. It became known as the “Wisconsin idea.” Like many other states, Wisconsin had become dissatisfied with its rigid code of factory laws in the early 1900s and was looking for an alternative. In 1907 Massachusetts created a state board of steam boiler rules after two disastrous explosions, with the then novel feature that it set rules on safe construction and operation of boilers without referring to the legislature. The board also held public hearings every six months to hear requests for changes in the rules. The boiler safety board was praised and widely imitated. In 1909 Wisconsin began an experiment of its own in which the bureau of labor statistics met periodically with labor and management representatives and insurance experts and developed a set of voluntary factory safety rules. Prof. Commons put his students to work studying labor law administration in Germany and other countries which had adopted the administrative regulation method. Commons helped draft a bill to establish an industrial commission in Wisconsin in 1911 and, with the support of progressive elements dominant in the legislature, it was enacted.138
The Wisconsin Safe Place Statute of 1911 embodied the basic ideas expressed in the Massachusetts boiler safety board and espoused by Commons and others. It was widely imitated. The law required employers to furnish employment and a place of employment, in which workers’ lives, limbs, health and comfort would, within reasonable limits, be protected. An industrial commission was established whose principal powers were:
“To investigate, ascertain, declare, and prescribe safety devices, safeguards, or other means or methods of protection best adapted to render the employees of every employment … safe …. To ascertain and fix such reasonable standards and to prescribe, modify, and enforce such reasonable orders for the adoption of … means or methods of protection.”139
The commission’s orders became law 30 days after they were published. Labor, management, and other interested groups were included in the rule making in two ways; through open hearings on proposed rules or changes, and through representation on advisory committees that drew up and reviewed rules the commission proposed to adopt. Commons, who served on the commission for its first two years, from 1911 to 1913, experienced first‑hand the advantage of not having to get labor unions and other groups together and go back to the legislature when it was found that projecting set screws or some other hazard had been omitted from the safety laws. In 1913, six states established similar industrial commissions, and by 1936 administrative rule making had become the dominant form of state regulation of job safety and health.140
Like factory inspection in the 19th century, Progressive reforms had a substantial effect on workers’ safety. Voluntary programs were far from universal throughout industry, but where adopted were successful. Workers’ compensation had relatively little effect as a financial incentive, but insurers pressed companies to workplace hazards. Administrative regulation, while slower and less flexible in operation than expected, was still a definite improvement over cumbersome, purely legislative regulation.
Safety drives in the steel, various agricultural implements, and certain other manufacturing industries built impressive records. Safety pace setter U.S. Steel reported that “where open gears were the rule a few years ago, everything is now smoothly covered.” The corporate safety committee received 6,000 safety suggestions and adopted 90 percent of them. As a result, accident rates declined a dramatic 43 percent after just a few years and the company estimated that it had saved 2,000 men from death or injury each year. Soon other steel companies imitated U.S. Steel and produced equally impressive results. Inland Steel quickly reduced accident rates by 55 percent, Jones and Laughlin by 71 percent. A steel industry‑backed “Safety First” movement developed after 1910, gained broad support and led to the establishment of the National Safety Council in 1915.141
Administrative rule making did not completely supplant the earlier factory legislation or solve the problems associated with it. Nor was the new system free of shortcomings. The difficulty of providing competent inspection did not disappear. Furthermore, this system was often very slow in producing safety codes, and some of the rules obtained were no more specific than the factory laws they superseded. However, John Andrews noted in 1936 that since 1911, the most important legislative activity on labor matters in the states had been in the area of administrative regulations. Of that, “the most extensive development … occurred in the field of industrial hygiene.” The “Wisconsin idea” also provided the model for comprehensive federal regulation of workers’ safety and health beginning in 1970.142
Expectations were high that workmen’s compensation legislation would provide a potent tool for the prevention of industrial accidents. Insurance premiums were somewhat lower for safer workplaces under the “merit rating” system used by many insurance companies. However, this did not provide a real economic incentive for employers to make greater efforts to reduce accidents. The average rates were so low that it made little financial difference to an employer whether he had a good or a poor safety rating. On the other hand, inspectors for insurance companies helped employers eliminate unsafe practices and conditions. Steel and machinery firms redoubled their safety programs after passage of workmen’s compensation. In 1912, the Wisconsin Industrial Commission hired a safety expert from International Harvester to help other employers set up plant safety programs. Other states adopted this approach and an alliance began to develop between industry and state government in the safety field. In short, workers’ compensation compelled employers, perhaps more than any other state legislation, to consider the need to prevent accidents.143
In addition to a three‑pronged movement focused largely on industrial safety, there was a sharp increase, during the Progressive period, of interest in occupational health. Some progress had already been made in the 19th century in understanding and controlling occupational illness. In 1837 Benjamin McCready published a textbook on the subject, but it was one of a very few. As early as the 1830s, workers had protested unhealthy conditions in New England textile mills. Factory laws usually included provisions for ventilation and a few states passed laws on such specialized problems as preventing the “bends” in caisson workers. Some state labor bureaus studied illnesses, although statistics on mortality and illness rates were very poor. Many Americans in the 19th century clearly recognized the existence of health dangers in the workplace, but efforts to deal with them had only limited success.144
The first major public attempt to investigate occupational disease in general was done by a special occupational disease commission established by the state of Illinois, which published its results in 1911. This pioneering commission, created in 1907, grew out of the recommendations of the Illinois industrial insurance commission and of Charles Henderson, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who was studying Germany’s sickness insurance system for workers and who favored such a plan in this country. The commission was composed of governmental labor and health officials, physicians, and other interested citizens. It was to “thoroughly investigate causes and conditions relating to diseases of occupation” and recommend remedial legislation. In a preliminary report in 1909 the commission summarized a sampling of hazards in the metal trades, glass trades, brick and stone works, and other dusty trades, in an effort to make people more aware of “the vastness and complexity of the problem.” The commission noted that it had covered only a small portion of the field and declared that “Justice to the public health and welfare and to the workmen… demands a continuation of the investigation which we have only begun.” The legislature agreed and the commission’s life was extended to 1911.145
In the meantime, Alice Hamilton, a young reformer and medical researcher living in Chicago, was developing an interest in the neglected field of occupational disease that would lead her to pioneering work with the Illinois commission. The sister of the famous popularizer of mythology Edith Hamilton, Alice had taken a medical degree and was doing settlement work at Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago. Living among working‑class people, Hamilton’s interest in industrial diseases was aroused by “tales of the dangers that working men faced, of cases of carbon monoxide gassing in the great steel mills, of painters disabled by lead palsy, of pneumonia and rheumatism among the men in the stockyards.” A tragic fire at a pumping station in Lake Michigan in which many men were killed shocked Alice. It prompted her to look more seriously into the area of occupational health hazards in the medical literature. To her surprise and disappointment, she found almost nothing on the subject in the American journals, although the European ones had a great deal of material. She discovered that American medical experts did not consider industrial disease a serious problem in this country and the subject was not deemed “respectable” in the profession.146
When the occupational disease commission was renewed in 1909, Hamilton was asked to join it as a member, but she chose instead to be its chief researcher. She headed a staff of 20 volunteer scientists, physicians and others. The University of Chicago and several medical institutions and libraries allowed the commission free use of their facilities. In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and several labor unions and corporations assisted in various portions of the study. The preliminary report in 1908 had listed 30 known toxic substances. The scope of the later investigation was narrowed down to a more manageable range of selected hazards and maladies, including lead, brass, mercury, arsenic, carbon monoxide, caisson disease and deafness. Hamilton personally took over the studies on lead, mercury and arsenic, in addition to overseeing the rest of the investigators. They all had to start virtually from scratch, as there were no lists of the trades in which a particular danger was to be found. Hamilton and the others started with known unhealthy trades, in the hope these would lead to others. Years later, Hamilton looked back on the Illinois commission’s work as “exciting and rewarding” and a “voyage of discovery.”147
The final report of the commission covered a number of hazards, but Alice Hamilton’s section on lead poisoning was the most thorough and important. Hamilton found dangers from lead poisoning in many trades, among them lead smelting and refining, making white lead pigment, painting, printing, and making storage batteries. In one interesting bit of detective work, she followed up on a case of lead poisoning that she found in a hospital and traced the lead exposure to a sanitary‑ware enameling plant — an industry not previously considered a source of lead poisoning. Hamilton found two forms of lead danger: airborne particles inhaled into the lungs and particles ingested because of lead‑contaminated hands or food. She came across hundreds of cases of lead poisoning. In one enamel ware plant, out of 148 men she examined, 92 were definitely or probably “leaded.”148
Many of the lead workers Hamilton studied were foreign and had no idea of what they were getting into. A young Bulgarian immigrant took a job in a white lead factory and was put to work emptying pans of the dry powder. He was not given a respirator and did not know to ask for one: “Nobody told him the white dust on his hands and mustache was poisonous.” After only five weeks on the job he suffered a severe attack of lead poisoning. A Russian Jewish immigrant made red lead paste in a storage battery factory. As he moistened his fingers in his mouth he had no idea he was ingesting a dangerous substance and became severely poisoned after ten days work. Hamilton found “almost no effort in the lead works to instruct the foreigners … in the avoidance of danger.”149
The Illinois commission on occupational disease helped establish the problem of industrial disease as a matter for public concern and helped to alleviate the problem in a number of ways. In its final report, the commission recommended proper ventilation, temperature and humidity control, and sanitary measures, which would lead to more healthful workplaces. It also stressed the need for special protections for women, children and other groups considered especially vulnerable. A draft occupational health law was included in the report, similar to earlier factory acts and aimed particularly at protecting workers in the lead trades. The bill also would have required employers to notify workers of dangers with posters in their native language. This bill was introduced in the Illinois legislature but did not pass. However, another, somewhat less inclusive bill that followed most of the commission’s recommendations was successful and became the Illinois Occupational Disease Act of 1911.150
An important side‑effect of the commission occurred when it sent Alice Hamilton to an international conference on occupational disease held in Brussels in 1910. The only other American on the program was Charles P. Neill, U.S. Commissioner of Labor. When they met, Neill was very impressed with Hamilton. After she finished her work with the Illinois commission he invited her to do a series of investigations in industrial health for the Bureau of Labor. Hamilton’s work with the commission launched her on a career in industrial medicine and she is regarded as the founder of the American branch of that discipline.151
Occupational health found a champion at the national level in the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), a lobbying and research group founded in 1906 by Richard T. Ely and John B. Andrews. The AALL soon focused most of its resources on eradicating occupational hazards, particularly those affecting health. Ely explained in 1909 that industrial health was a problem that appealed to all, even children, and that enforcement of laws on this would have the best chance of success in the courts. In the AALL’s legislative strategy, industrial health and safety laws were to secure a beachhead for the enactment of other labor legislation.152
An ideal vehicle for dramatizing occupational health existed in the match industry in the form of phosphorus necrosis. “Phossy jaw,” as it was known among the workers, was a horribly disfiguring disease that frequently attacked the teeth and jaw‑bones of workers handling white phosphorus in match factories. Particles that got into their mouths attacked decayed teeth and the disease worked progressively to the jawbone. It caused intense pain, enormous swelling in the face, and, in some cases, death. The main treatment was removal of the diseased tooth and bone. Some unfortunate victims lost their entire lower jawbones and were disfigured for life, though the men sometimes grew beards to try to disguise their handicap.153
In 1909 John Andrews undertook a campaign to eliminate phossy jaw. Beginning under the auspices of the AALL before later obtaining a contract with the U.S. Bureau of Labor, Andrews investigated 15 match factories across the country and isolated 100 cases of the disease. The Bureau, which had already put out several reports on occupational health after 1900, published the Andrews study in 1910, complete with photographs of the grotesquely distended faces of victims.154
After his report came out, Andrews led an unprecedented effort to lobby Congress to prohibit the use of white phosphorus in making matches. Phosphorus necrosis had long been recognized in Europe as an occupational disease and the poisonous white phosphorus had been banned in many countries. The U.S., which had refused to sign an international agreement on the toxic substance, was now pressured into action. In 1912 it passed the Esch Act which protected the 3,000 workers affected by placing a prohibitive tax on white phosphorus matches. The Diamond Match Co., which had a patent on a harmless substitute, generously waived its exclusive rights and made the substance available to all.155
With examples like the Andrews crusade against phossy jaw and the Illinois Commission on Occupational Disease pointing the way, the decade from 1910 to 1920 saw a transformation in the prevention of occupational disease. The American medical science profession turned to the subject with great interest. Specialists in physiological chemistry and other areas studied morbid effects of diseases on the body. Andrews’ victory over phossy jaw strengthened the growing belief that public concern over industrial disease could be kindled, economic roadblocks removed, and a coordinated effort by scientists and social activists achieved.156
Footnotes
- Carroll D. Wright, “Factory Legislation,” in Tenth Census of the United States, v. II, p. 41.
- Annual Report, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor (MBSL), 1870, 213-15; 1871, 470-71; 1873, 281; 1874, 111-154.
- MBSL 1882, 221-24
- MBSL 1875, 142-77; 1874, 155-59
- MBSL 1875, 67-112; 1884, 58-75.
- MBLS 1874, 43-48.
- MBSL 1872, 421-25; 1883, 73-74; 1871, 470-71; 1873, 281.
- Annual Report, Rhode Island Bureau of Industrial Statistics (RIBIS), 1887, 152; 1887, 40
- Annual Report, New York Bureau of Labor Statistics (NYBLS), 1899, 561-65, 588-639.
- NYBLS 1884, 183-89.
- NYBLS 1885, 169-70.
- NYBLS 1895, 20-21.
- NYBLS 1884, 197-99.
- Annual Report, New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industry (NJBSLI), 1889; 1890.
- NJBSLI 1894, 81-83; 1895.
- NJBSLI 1891, 175-77; 1892, 350; 1890, 367-70.
- Annual Report, Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics (PaBIS), 1891, 19-33.
- Melvin Dubofsky, “Organized Labor and the Immigrant in New York City, 1900-1918,” Labor History, Spring 1961, 183-184.
- PaBIS 1893, Part B, 4-5.
- Annual Report, Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics (OhioBLS), 1881, 102-105; 1883, 103.
- OhioBLS 1878, 18; 1886, 11-12.
- OhioBLS 1895, 33; 1893, 853.
- Annual Report, Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics (WisBLIS), 1897-1898, 210.
- WisBLIS 1901-1902, 671-75.
- WisBLIS 1901-1902, 740-41.
- WisBLIS 1901-1902, 707, 710-11, 696-97.
- Ezekiel H. Downey, History of Labor Legislation in Iowa, Iowa City, 1910, 104.
- Annual Report, Minnesota Bureau of Labor Statistics (MinnBLS), 1892, 104, 107-16.
- MBSL 1870, 197; 1875, 177-87; NYBLS 1899, 563; NJBLS 1890, 363-66; MBSL 1890-91, 5-10.
- Annual Report, Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics (ConnBLS) 1885, 85-91; Alba Edwards, The Labor Legislation of Connecticut, New York, 1907, 252-53.
- Wright, 41-48.
- Herbert Gutman, “Class, Status and Community Power in Nineteenth Century American Industrial Cities,” in his book, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, New York, 1976.
- John R. Commons et al., History of Labour in the United States, in 4 v., New York, 1946, (Commons, Labour), v. II, 97-98.
- ibid., 393-95.
- John R. Commons and John B. Andrews, Principles of Labor Legislation, New York, 1916, 208-24; Sarah S. Whittelsey, Massachusetts Labor Legislation, An Historical and Critical Study, Philadelphia, 1900, 70-71.
- Commons, Labour, I, 331; Commons and Andrews, 305-10.
- Commons and Andrews, 419-21; John R. Commons et al., eds., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, 10 vols., New York, 1958, (Commons, Doc.Hist.), v. 4, 223-24.
- Jonathan Grossman and Judson MacLaury, “The Creation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Monthly Labor Review, February 1975..
- John Mitchell, Organized Labor, Philadelphia, 1903, 144.
- Philip Taft, Organized Labor in American History, New York, 1964, 233-238.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No.12 (BLS Bul. 12), 563.
- E. Stagg Whitin, Factory Legislation in Maine, New York, 1908, 140-41.
- BLS Bul. 12, 551.
- BLS Bul.12, 552-53; Whittelsey, 21-23.
- Whittelsey, 112-25.
- Edwards, 252-56, 266-70, 313-15; BLS Bul. 12, 556.
- Gutman, 269-89; BLS Bul. 12, 554; NJBLS 1886, 239-41.
- Annual Report, New York Bureau of Factory Inspection (NY Fact. Insp.), 1886, 36-37; 1887, 6-7, 10-13, 42, 45; 1889, 72-73; BLS Bul. 12, 555-556.
- The Factory Inspector (TFI), Jan. 1904; J. Lynn Barnard, Factory Legislation and Administration in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1907, 55-57.
- TFI, Jan. 1904; Barnard, 58-60, 69-80, 111-12.
- TFI, July 1903; BLS Bul. 12, 555.
- BLS Bul. 12, 560; WisBLIS 1888, ix-x; 1898, 199; Gordon M. Haferbecker, Wisconsin Labor Laws, Madison, WI, 1958, 8-10.
- Martin Nemirow, The Origins and Early Enforcement of the 1891 Missouri Factory Inspection Act, unpublished Dept. of Labor monograph, 1976, 3-10, 33-34, 45-48, 72-76, 83; BLS Bul. 12, 560.
- Downey, 2-5.
- Downey, 95-96, 103-106.
- Earl R. Beckner, A History of Labor Legislation in Illinois, Chicago, 1929, 151-166, 227-28, 239, 245-46, 259-64, 506-507; Eugene Staley, History of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, Chicago, 1930, 33-34, 152-53.
- Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920, Madison, WI, 1975, 128, 136-37.
- Susan M. Kingsbury, ed., Labor Laws and their Enforcement, New York, 1911, 223-24; Whittelsey, 27-28, 35, 89.
- Edwards, 262-63, 296-99.
- RIBLS 1887, 17; 1888, l06.
- NJBLS 1901, 347-58.
- PaBIS 1887, E-23.
- Barnard, 125.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1888, 6-7.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1888, 6-7; 1887, 40-41.
- NYBLS 1884, 186-87.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1887, 42, 96-97, 117; 1888, 7, 81.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1888, 91.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1887, 41-42; 1889, 69-70.
- NY Fact. Insp. 1887, 32-33, 115.
- WisBLIS 1888-89, vi; 1885-86, 504-505, 522.
- WisBLIS 1885-86, 501-513; 1891-92, 22a; 1897-98, xi-xii; Haferbecker, 18.
- MinnBLS 1892, 35.
- MinnBLS 1892, 33-34.
- MinnBLS 1892, 39.
- Annual Report, Indiana Dept. of Factory Inspection (IFI) 1898, 5, 22, 115-19; 1900, 223-30; TFI, October 1903.
- IFI 1898, 6-8; 1903, 6-7.
- IFI 1897, 42, 45; 1898, 6.
- TFI, July 1903.
- TFI, July 1903.
- OhioBLS 1896, 15.
- Nemirow, 65, 105.
- TFI, Dec. 1902; Annual Convention, International Association of Factory Inspectors, 1888.
- Whitin, 91-92.
- Nemirow, 96-99.
- Leonard Hatch, “The Prevention of Accidents,” American Labor Legislation Review, June, 1911, l06.
- Frederick L. Hoffman, “Legal Protection from Injurious Dusts,” American Labor Legislation Review, June, 1911, 110-112.
- Kingsbury, 268-69.
- Hatch, 105-l06.
- Barnard, v-vi; Kingsbury, 224; TFI, Jan. 1905.
- Edwards, 296, 309-10.
- Commons and Andrews, 3-4, 327, 297.
- ibid., 349-51.
- ibid., 298-300.
- ibid., 331-38.
- Barnard, 112-13, 125, 165-66.
- Edwards, 259-60.
- Kingsbury, 270.
- Haferbecker, 18-19.
- Report of the Commission to Investigate the Inspection of Factories, Workshops, Mercantile Establishments and Other Buildings, Massachusetts, 1911 (Mass. Report), 11-13.
- Mass. Report, 18-23
- Mass. Report, 28-31, 56.
- Mass. Report, 53-54, 59.
- Mass. Report, 14, 21, 25-26, 56, 58.
- Mass. Report, 14-16, 55, 60.
- Mass. Report, 26, 56-57, 66-67.
- George Price, Hygiene and Public Health, Philadelphia, 1919, 1-2, 4.
- Price, 2-3.
- Price, 7-9.
- John and Irene Andrews, “Scientific Standards in Labor Legislation,” American Labor Legislation Review, June, 1911, 123, 130.
- ibid., 124.
- ibid., 126-27.
- Thomas J. Kerr, IV, “New York Factory Investigating Commission and the Progressives,” D.S.Sc. Diss., Syracuse University, 1965, 39-53; Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform; from Bryan to F. D. R., New York, 1955, 186-87; Commons and Andrews, 421-22.
- TFI, Oct. 1907.
- TFI, April 1905.
- TFI, July l904, April 1905, July 1903, Jan. 1905, Oct. l904.
- TFI, Oct. 1905.
- TFI, Jan. 1905.
- William B. Hard, “Making Steel and Killing Men,” Everybody’s Magazine, Nov., 1907; David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era, New York, 1969, 156, 158.
- Charles Rumford Walker, Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker, Boston, 1932, 87, 132-34.
- ibid., 40-41.
- Brody, 99-101.
- Crystal Eastman, ed., Work Accidents and the Law, New York, 1910, 5-7.
- ibid., 11-15, 119-31.
- ibid.,152
- ibid., 84-85, 103.
- ibid., 86, 93-95.
- Brody, 145, 156.
- Eastman, 245-46; Roy Lubove, “Workmen’s Compensation and the Prerogatives of Voluntarism,” Labor History, Fall 1967, 254.
- Commons and Andrews, 296; Kerr, 54-55.
- Lubove, 258.
- Commons and Andrews, 262, 384.
- Beckner, 438-39; Mitchell, 147-50; James Weinstein, “Big Business and the Origins of Workmen’s Compensation,” Labor History, Spring 1967, 159-60, 162-70.
- Weinstein, 162-70; Lubove, 266-67.
- U.S. Dept. of Labor, Growth of Labor Law in the United States, Washington, 1966, (Labor Law), 141; Lubove, 264-65; Beckner, 429-30.
- Commons and Andrews, 352, 430-36, 443-50; Kingsbury, 268-69; Andrews and Andrews, 128-29.
- Andrews and Andrews, 130.
- Labor Law, 183; l9ll Mass Rep, 39; Commons and Andrews, 328-30; Andrews and Andrews, 130-34; Haferbecker, 5-8,19-20.
- Labor Law, 183-84.
- Haferbecker, 10-11, 20-21; Commons and Andrews, 436, 443-50.
- Beyer, 245-46, 260-61; Brody, 166-67.
- John B. Andrews, Administrative Labor Legislation, New York, 1936, 10-11, 21, 24.
- Commons and Andrews, 300, 355; Robert Asher, “Radicalism and Reform: Workmen’s Compensation in Minnesota, 1910-1930,” Labor History, Winter 1973, 36; Lubove, 278; Nelson, 138-39.
- Angela N. Young, “Interpreting the Dangerous Trades,” Ph.D. Diss., Brown University, 1982, 1-20.
- Beckner, 272-73; Report, Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, 1911(Ill. Rep.), 13-14, 19; Alice Hamilton, Exploring the Dangerous Trades, Boston, 1943, 121.
- Hamilton, 55, 114-17, 3.
- Beckner, 272-78; Ill. Rep., 13-14; Hamilton, 3, 121.
- Hamilton, 121, 139; Ill. Rep., 273-78.
- Ill. Rep., 24.
- Beckner, 278-82; Ill. Rep., 165-71.
- Hamilton, 127-28.
- Young, 11-12.
- John B. Andrews, “Phosphorus Poisoning in the Match Industry in the United States,” BLS Bul. 86.
- Young, 12-13; Andrews, BLS Bul. 86.
- Commons and Andrews, 325-26; Andrews, BLS Bul. 86; Young, 13.
- Young, 1, 10-11.
- Kerr, 1-31; Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy, New York, 1977, 188-95.
- Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission (NY FIC), 1912, v. I, 11-16.
- Frances Perkins, People at Work, New York, 1934, 50.
- George Martin, Madam Secretary, Frances Perkins, Boston, 1976, 104, 88-90.
- NY FIC 1912, II, 5-10.
- NY FIC 1912, I, 21-26; 1913, II, 401-408; Kerr, 79-80.
- NY FIC 1913, II, 459, 462, 467-68.
- NY FIC 1913, II, 464-66, 468.
- NY FIC 1913, II, 467, 475-76.
- NY FIC 1912, I, 18; 1913, IV, 2313-2431.
- Kerr, 88, 94-118, 156-63.
- Kerr, 119-164; NY FIC 1912, I, 20.
Originally published by the United States Library of Congress to the public domain.
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