xx, 415 pages : 27 cm

In mines and mills and on railroads, work in America had become more dangerous than in any other advanced nation. Ninety years later, such numbers and events seem extraordinary. Although serious accidents do still occur, industrial jobs in the United States have become vastly and dramatically safer. In Safety First, Mark Aldrich offers the first full account of why the American workplace became so dangerous, and why it is now so much safer. Aldrich, an economist who once served as an OSHA investigator, first describes the increasing dangers of industrial work in late-nineteenth-century America as a result of technological change, careless work practices, and a legal system that minimized employers' responsibility for industrial accidents. He then explores the developments that led to improved safety - government regulation, corporate publicizing of safety measures, and legislation that raised the costs of accidents by requiring employers to pay workmen's compensation. At the heart of these changes, Aldrich contends, was the emergence of a safety ideology that stressed both worker and management responsibility for work accidents - a stunning reversal of earlier attitudes

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Perilous Business: The Beginnings of Railroad Work Safety, 1850-1900 -- 2. Needless Perils: Toward the Regulation of Coal Mine Safety, 1870-1910 -- 3. Manufacturing Dangers: The Development of the Work Safety Movement, 1880-1925 -- 4. A Management Responsibility: The Business of Manufacturing Safety, 1906-1939 -- 5. Combating Collisions and Other Horrors Railroad Safety, 1900-1939 -- 6. Less Blood on the Coal, More Despair in the Homes of the Miners: Safety in the Coal Fields, 1910-1940 -- 7. Conclusion: Economic Change and Work Safety, 1870-1939 -- App. 1. Steam Railroad Injury and Fatality Rates, 1880-1939 -- App. 2. Coal and Metal Mine Injury and Fatality Rates, 1870-1939 -- App. 3. Manufacturing and Economywide Injury and Fatality Rates, 1870-1939

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