Part 6

4. Model workman’s compensation bills have been prepared and widely distributed. These bills are at present before the legislatures of six states. While they cover the whole subject, the committee urged an especially strong educational campaign for the recognition of three essential principles in compensation legislation, viz.: that a good workmen’s compensation law must encourage accident prevention; assure compensation, preferably by compulsory insurance, and cover all wage-workers. It also attempts to provide that doctors’ and lawyers’ fees shall not rob the injured.

Correspondence in connection with the campaign with legislators, lawyers, insurance men, employers and workmen amounted to an average of twenty-eight letters a day for the last year.

On the association’s suggestion, enlightened insurance officials have adopted resolutions providing for a limitation of business-getting expense in workmen’s compensation laws.

So much for compensation work. Toward a practical accident prevention campaign we have, however, devoted our greatest energies. Two experienced safety engineers have been placed at the service of members and so great has been the demand for their services that there are engagements for more than six months ahead at this time. As this service is charged for at a rate which makes it self-sustaining, this means something more than interest—it means enthusiasm on the part of employers in our accident prevention campaign.

The work of the safety engineers consists of inspection of factories and making special reports for improving existing conditions which manufacturers have almost uniformly acted upon; advice regarding safety devices, shop safety organization and other means of preventing work accidents; practical instructions to superintendents, foremen, engineers and workmen in regard to safety devices; and illustrated talks with lantern slides and motion pictures to workers, as well as employers, especially to local organizations of both. An important part of the campaign is the establishment of local safety organizations with the work in every plant inspected placed in the hands of some one person.

Numerous employers and business men have, as a result of our advice and practical work, engaged safety engineers for their factories. The campaign has so increased the demand for experts that the supply is inadequate and open letters have been written to engineering colleges urging them to establish a special course of training leading to the degree of “safety engineer.”

Local “safety revivals” have been conducted in many parts of the country, with some member of the committee present as the principal speaker. James Emery, my associate in this work, and I have spoken on the subject of accident prevention or workmen’s compensation on an average of once a week for the last three years. We have constantly agitated for safety museums.[6] A special effort has been made to get in touch with factory inspectors and to urge the keeping of statistics bearing upon accidents.

Footnote 6:

It is not betraying confidence when I call attention to a movement inaugurated by Congressman Robert C. Bremner of New Jersey and Lewis T. Bryant, labor commissioner of the same state, to establish a national safety museum at Washington. Letters and newspaper clippings indicate that President Wilson is in favor of such a museum and every voter of the country should get behind Congress to give such a matter prompt and favorable consideration. Every European nation has a number of such safety museums where can be found on exhibition safety devices for the protection of working men in every field, not only for accident but for sickness. A national safety museum in Washington would materially stimulate the safety movement and it would be a fitting monument to the spirit of the times.

The co-operation we have established with insurance companies, both stock and mutual, promises to be a most effective means of establishing a system for rating risks which, in the same manner as fire schedule rating, shall provide subtractions and additions of insurance rates contingent upon the accident prevention activities of each insurer. Many insurance companies are endeavoring to arrange for central inspection bureaus for rating good and bad risks.

A colored “safety” supplement has been established for _American Industries_, the official monthly magazine of the association. The interest of the members in this safety supplement is shown by the fact that 5,000 extra copies were ordered after the supplement’s first appearance. Another effective means of educating for safety is the use of motion pictures which have been prepared partly at the expense of the National Association of Manufacturers. These are distributed through regular motion picture channels all over the United States. Several thousand lantern slides are being used for educational lectures before the general public, interested organizations and college classes.

The safety campaign was one of the factors that led to the organization of the National Council for Industrial Safety, which had its first enthusiastic meeting four months ago. This new organization plans an annual gathering to take the form of a national “safety revival” and an international safety convention during the San Francisco exposition.

Every phase of the association’s work is being supervised by members of the committee who are divided into sub-committees. Although the committee’s efforts are a work of love, the members receiving no compensation whatever, the association’s activity for workmen’s compensation and accident prevention has cost approximately $50,000 during the last three years. The board of directors consider this money well spent and, judging by present sentiment, will not only continue, but increase their efforts in future. Our safety campaign is too young and too widely spread as yet to give accurate figures for results. Perhaps the best sign of its success is the mass of enthusiastic testimonials from association members to the value of our experts’ inspections and advice. The following partial figures will, however, at least give some idea of concrete results:

Two hundred and seventy-six members of the association have placed a special man in charge of their shop safety organization during the last year and a half.

Several dozen manufacturers claim to have reduced their accidents in a campaign of from one to two years from 10 per cent to 50 per cent.

In more than fifty cases the safety campaign has brought about a better appreciation of general efforts in the direction of sanitation and welfare work.

Twenty or more establishments have established sickness insurance in co-operation with their employes, as part of their safety campaign.

Old age and invalidity relief is being considered by several dozen large manufacturers now as part of the safety campaign.

A dozen or more mutual insurance and relief associations have been established among certain classes of manufacturers, such for instance, as laundries, millers, etc., and accident prevention is invariably one of the most important, permanent features of such mutual organizations.

In another year the association hopes to make a thorough survey of the 20,000 members originally addressed in the safety campaign. This will make it possible to show in figures the results of the association’s efforts along these lines.

My experience of many years with associations of manufacturers and business men convinces me that, regardless of popular impressions, the large majority of captains of industry believe that “the gauge of their success is the assistance they give others to succeed.” Unfortunately, the every-day grind of their work does not permit many well-intentioned business men to know much about social legislation and about the advantages of co-operation and good will. I have found them exceedingly anxious to secure information about these matters and to act in accordance with sound advice.

The following extract from one of the committee’s communications to the members indicates our sentiments:

“Remember that the most important factor in this endeavor is the right spirit. Without a spirit of progressiveness, without co-operation between the officers and members of organizations, without harmony and co-operation between yourself and your superintendents, foremen and workers, it is useless to attempt a campaign for safety. We manufacturers of the United States of America have a reputation for ability, energy and initiative all over the world, and we cannot, we must not, fail to make good.”

Let me say in conclusion that I do not share the prevailing pessimism as to the industrial outlook in the United States. I repeat that there has been an awakening in recent years. Social legislation has made rapid progress. We need to maintain and increase our attention to these matters. Employer, employe and the public need to get closer together and this can be best brought about by a thorough knowledge of industrial conditions and publicity without fear or favor to any class. If we each and every one strive to that end, then is being fulfilled Tennyson’s worthy charge to

“_Ring out the slowly dying cause And ancient forms of party strife, Ring in the nobler modes of life With sweeter manners, purer laws._

“_Ring in the valiant men and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand, Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the light that is to be._”

INDUSTRIAL SERVICE MOVEMENT OF THE Y. M. C. A.

FRED H. RINDGE, Jr., M. A.

INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT, INTERNATIONAL Y. M. C. A.

Six years ago at Yale was started the industrial service movement of the Young Men’s Christian Association. There are at present 3,500 students from 150 colleges throughout the country engaged in this service under the direction of city and student association branches. Engineering students particularly are enlisted in this volunteer service for industrial workers which presents an effective laboratory for practical work, backed by the training, encouragement and supervision of association officials whose co-operation is extended to the larger efforts for industrial and social betterment which students engage in after graduation.

Among the forty different lines of service are: teaching English, history, and citizenship to foreigners; teaching drawing, electricity, manual training, music and other subjects; conducting men’s and boys’ clubs and boy scout and big brothers work; giving noon shop talks in factories; giving instruction in hygiene and first aid, athletics, etc.; holding educational classes in labor unions; conducting socials, entertainments, observation trips and week-end camps; doing charity organization work; investigating working, living and recreative conditions, etc.

The idea is permeating the leading colleges and universities. The old Yale boat house is being used as a school for teaching English, civics, and hygiene to foreigners. Students at the University of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ames are holding classes for foreign men and boys in railroad box-cars. Men from Columbia, Harvard, Williams, Brown, Pennsylvania, and other colleges are conducting educational classes in labor unions, talking in shop meetings, and leading clubs of working boys. University of Wisconsin engineering students are instructing American mechanics and boiler makers in the round house, and convicts in the jail. Undergraduates of Amherst, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Princeton, Penn State and other institutions are doing deputation work in rural industrial communities. Men from Cornell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, McGill University, California and the University of Puget Sound are visiting the homes of immigrants and are teaching groups in boarding houses. Students of South Carolina, Furman, and other southern colleges, are doing extension work in cotton mill villages.

Students have made possible unusual community meetings. In New York city sixty classes in English and civics for foreigners have been taught by students, and on several occasions the members of these classes, representatives of sixteen nationalities, came together under their respective flags to hear a lecture on American citizenship, to tell what the work was doing for them, to sing their national songs and to unite in learning “America.” The Working boys’ clubs came together on one occasion to hear addresses by Ernest Thompson Seton and Dr. George J. Fisher. In Pittsburgh, a foreign singing contest was attended by several thousand people, and a huge American flag of silk was awarded to the winning group. In San Francisco a mass meeting and entertainment was attended by men of twenty-five nationalities.

In Tacoma last spring, the notable immigration conference, attended by several hundred delegates, including five state governors, a Canadian premier and representatives of capital and labor, was planned and promoted by the Y. M. C. A. immigration secretary and his student workers. The conference resulted in the formation of the Coast-wide Immigration League, to cope with the problems of Pacific immigration which will be aggravated on the opening of the Panama Canal. In April of this year a similar conference was held in San Francisco. The man who conceived and is promoting these conferences acquired his first experience in teaching foreigners English as a graduate student at college. It was this effort that determined his life work.

The interest that college men have in this service which brings no financial compensation is due to the natural sympathy that most students have for those less fortunate than themselves. To awaken that sympathy they need only to be shown a real and definite job to do and how to do it. They can also be shown that industrial service is not only an altruistic privilege and patriotic duty but also “blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” This service affords an experience which students need, for it enlarges a man’s vision, increases his sympathy with “the other half” and gives a knowledge of how to deal with men.

_Enlisting Students the Service_

The methods of enlisting students are interesting. Lectures on industrial conditions and needs and the college man’s responsibility are given before students by carefully selected employers, labor leaders, and social workers. Especially prepared literature is distributed, articles are written for student periodicals, and an industrial library installed in the college Y. M. C. A. building. Interested students meet weekly, often under expert leadership, for a discussion of industrial subjects. The student and city branches of the Y. M. C. A. join hands in the movement, and, in co-operation with churches, missions, social settlements, boys’ clubs, libraries, civic associations, factories, labor unions, foreign societies, etc., discover definite opportunities for industrial service where students can be useful. Experience has proved beyond a doubt that volunteer service can be conscientious and efficient. A settlement worker writes: “I don’t see how we could have done without the splendid work of those college men.” After a few men are put to work, others become interested through observation, and the movement naturally spreads.

In a three-day-campaign in New York, the industrial service movement was presented to selected classes of students at Columbia, New York University, and the College of the City of New York, with the result that 280 students signified their hearty interest and 125 were willing to undertake immediate work. In a single year 165 undergraduates engaged in industrial service in New York city, and the movement has become of such importance that a secretary gives all his time to it. This man was captain of his university football team two years ago and became interested at college. It is noticeable that generally the strongest and most popular students volunteer for service. A list of those at work from Yale includes varsity football, basketball, baseball, and track men, intercollegiate debaters, class and fraternity officers, and honor men. In many places the matter has been presented to the various fraternities and has met a most cordial response.

Recently at the University of Michigan the movement was presented to 1,200 students in two days, to employers of the city at a luncheon, to labor leaders at a dinner in the city Y. M. C. A., and to a special meeting of engineering professors. At Cornell University over 1,600 students were addressed, and 525 signed up as interested and willing to promote the ideas and ideals of the movement. One hundred and thirty men volunteered for definite service, and many are already teaching in the homes of foreigners, leading boys’ clubs, and doing other similar work. Others will teach this summer where they live and work. The movement was presented also at meetings of engineering professors and at a gathering of the Business Men’s Association. The city and student branches of the Y. M. C. A. are financing the scheme, and a strong student committee is heading the work in the university.

In practically every college the faculty heartily supports the scheme, and the sentiment of many professors was expressed when one said, “I hope every one of my students will make a place in his program for some volunteer altruistic service. They will have opportunity to do a great deal of good, but will gain far more than they can give.” Recently at the University of Iowa the movement was presented to a faculty meeting which had not been addressed by any outsider for nineteen years. A number of college faculties have met to discuss the movement, and to consider the re-adaptation of engineering courses to give more attention to the “human side of the engineering profession.” Already many engineering schools have courses in “management,” but professors feel increasingly that even these courses have too much of the “material” and not enough of the “human” element. Such instruction supplemented by personal friendly contact in service for industrial workers will do much to remove prejudices and promote mutual understanding between college men and workingmen.

_Appreciation of the Work_

Some quotations from letters written by working men show better than any other testimony how they feel about this work:

“I have not found words to thank the best friend I ever had on earth for all he has done for me. I am a better man.”

“I have learn some English, got better job, will be good American citizen. I am grateful forever.”

A foreign convict writes: “Now I got good chance to learn English to read and write because I got long time to do in this prison, and if I learn, that will help me when I get out from here. I no like to work all my life with pick and shovel.”

In the West a lumber company has provided a room where its foreign employes can learn English under student leadership. A newspaper clipping tells the story in these headlines: “Slavonians eager to acquire knowledge of English after back-breaking work in mill.”

That American working men are also open to friendliness of this kind is splendidly illustrated by an experience with a large labor union. When the students first spoke to the members of the union, the men naturally wondered and were suspicious of an ulterior motive. But when they went down to the union rooms two nights a week, often at considerable sacrifice, and taught mathematics, mechanics, and electricity, the men warmed up. As the students proved that they were not “snobs” but good fellows, the men unhesitatingly showed their appreciation. The work was so successful that it has been carried on for several years. The president of the union testifies that the wages of some of his men have been raised from $18 to $28 a week, as a result of the instruction given. A series of lectures has been given before 500 men in the union and the men have now asked the students to plan the entertainments for their social meetings. This latter request is particularly significant, as the class of entertainment formerly enjoyed was of very low grade. The work is spreading to unions in many other cities, and the students are getting an entirely different view of the rights of the workingman. In a number of instances the labor union, sometimes the Central Labor Union, has invited selected students to act as fraternal delegates, with full power to discuss and to introduce motions. This is a remarkable development, and in no case have the unions had cause to regret the step.

In one city the students discovered a Syrian who spoke six languages fluently, had been a school superintendent in his own country, but because he knew no English, was sweeping out a market for one dollar a day. The man was befriended, educated and has become a power for good among his countrymen.

An Italian lad lived in America four years before an American treated him as a friend. By that time he was so discouraged that he had several times attempted suicide. A college student met him on a street corner, invited him to an English class in one of the settlements, helped him, trained him for leadership, and he is now a social worker of remarkable ability among his people.

_Engineering Students Especially Interested_

Social workers in our colleges have in many instances found engineering students “too busy,” and as a rule not so open to the altruistic appeal as those in other departments of the universities. Yet, it is a fact that 70 per cent of the 3,000 men engaged in industrial service are engineers. The reason is obvious: A football captain (an engineer) said the other day:

“This industrial work is the livest thing that’s struck college since I’ve been here. It’s a real job and it’s practical. Everyone of us who goes into it is bound to acquire an experience in dealing with men, which the curriculum can’t give, and we need it!”

Indeed a prominent general manager, himself a college graduate, recently said to the writer:

“The college graduates in my employ are frequently a confounded nuisance. They come to us with a splendid knowledge of books, but when as foremen or superintendents, they get out into the shop, and deal with _working men_, they make a mess of it. A good part of my time is spent in straightening out difficulties and restoring harmony. They haven’t any real sympathy with men and don’t know how to handle them.”

Here then is a great need in the training of an engineer, which the industrial service movement is designed to meet. Engineering students are quick to see the point. As they teach English to foreigners or lead a club of working men they come to understand these men, not as a “class,” but as individuals. They get a friendly insight into their working and living conditions and a first-hand knowledge of how to deal with them intelligently and sympathetically. Thus one student writes:

“My class of Italians is the finest bunch of men I’ve ever come into contact with—bright, keen, appreciative to an embarrassing extent. They have done me more good than I can ever do them.”

Another says:

“My club of working men was the big thing needed to complete my college education. It taught me things I could have learned in no other way, and as an engineer, I am already deriving great benefit.”

It is also true that many a college man has been kept straight and acquired higher ideals because of the responsibility of some group of men or boys who were looking up to him. One such man, an engineer of promise, says: