The "Pittsburgh Survey," a detailed study of living and working conditions in Allegheny County, Pa., done in 1907-08, had a special impact on job safety and health. A highly successful "safety first" movement developed from this which spilled over to other industries and led to the creation of the National Safety Council in 1915. Steel formed a safety committee with instructions from the company president, Judge Elbert Gary, to cut the accident rate as much as possible. Safety programs in subsidiaries dated back to the 1890's. Steel, spurred by mounting accident tolls, had already begun to collect accident statistics. He urged the steel industry to use its technical knowledge to reduce this casualty rate. 3 Hard estimated that every year, out of a work force of 10,000 workers, 1,200 were killed or seriously injured. Hard, a muckraking journalist, published an article in Everybody's Magazine titled, "Making Steel and Killing Men," based on his firsthand investigations of a Chicago mill. This widely publicized tragedy shocked the Nation and led to the creation in 1910 of the U.S. In 1907, 362 coal miners were killed at Monongah, W. The Progressive Era and the growth of mass circulation newspapers and national magazines helped forge a national movement for workers' safety and health. State with strong safety and health laws tended to lose industry to those with less stringent ones, which made States competitive and limited their legislative efforts. Inspectors, who were often political appointees, were not always given the legal right to enter workplaces. Many legislatures failed to provide adequate funds for enforcement. The laws had to be amended often to cover new hazards. There were too many holes in the piecemeal system and numerous hazards were left uncontrolled. The labyrinth of State job safety and health legislation covered a wide range of workplace hazards but was badly flawed. By 1890, nine States provided for factory inspectors, 13 required machine guarding, and 21 made limited provision for health hazards. 2 Its passage prompted a flurry of State factory acts. It required guarding of belts, shafts, and gears, protection on elevators, and adequate fire exits. In 1870, the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor urged legislation to deal with "the peril to health from lack of ventilation." In 1877, Massachusetts passed the Nation's first factory inspection law.
These tragedies and the industrial accident statistics that State labor bureaus collected, spurred social reformers and the budding labor movement to call for State factory safety and health laws. The Massachusetts report of 1872 described some particularly grisly accidents.
The reports of State labor bureaus in the 1870's and 1880's were full of tragedies that too often struck the unwary or the unlucky.
In the factories that sprang up after the Civil War, chemicals, dusts, dangerous machines, and a confusing jumble of belts, pulleys, and gears confronted inexperienced, often very young workers. However, the roots of government regulation of workplace hazards date back to the late 19th century. 1 This act was the result of a hard fought legislative battle which began in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson unsuccessfully sought a similar measure. On December 29, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act, which gave the Federal Government the authority to set and enforce safety and health standards for most of the country's workers. Three decades ago Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to help protect the Nation's workers on the job, following a 3-year struggle.