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Before the late nineteenth century, we know little about the safety of American workplaces because contemporaries cared little about it. The American system encouraged the use of labor-saving machines and processes, as a result, production methods that were both highly productive and often very dangerous. While many employees often tried to sue their employers, courts would usually deny liability if employers could show that the worker had assumed the risk, or had been injured by the actions of a fellow employee, or had himself been partly at fault. Public frustration led to Congress passing a number of regulations; most notably the worker's compensation laws, which stated that instead of requiring injured workers to sue for damages in court and prove the employer was negligent, the new law automatically compensated all injuries at a fixed rate, ultimately making injuries from the workplace much more expensive for employers.

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* The Jungle - Upton Sinclair (and its influences)

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* The Jungle - Upton Sinclair (and its influences)

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The Jungle is a book about the harsh reality of meatpacking plants, he describes diseased meat, mystery meats, and people falling into the processing machines, the sourcing of the meat was also questionable at best; it describes the treatment of workers and the methods that companies used to eliminate competition.

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a later goal that later was put into place was the ingredients list The USDA mandated that a list of ingredients must be placed on all products participating in interstate commerce due to consumer demand for accurate production information

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https://historycollection.com/10-tales-of-the-muckrakers-during-the-progressive-era/7/
https://consumerprotection.uslegal.com/consumer-rights-and-protection/advertising/

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Samuel Hopkins Adams

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the public was inundated with nostrums, tonics, pills, potions, and powders collectively known as patent medicines. Patent medicines were hawked by peddlers, sold in stores and apothecaries, and sometimes by doctors. As the magazine industry grew it became dependent on revenues, and patent medicines became one of the first products to be advertised nationally on a major scale. The products promised relief from everything which could be considered an ailment, with many of the products promising immediate relief from a multitude of problems.

Patent medicines were for the most part unregulated, their contents proprietary and their promises unverified. They were one of the first products to seek celebrity endorsements in their advertising, and one of the earliest to be compounded of ingredients which could be matched by most pharmacists, who could locally create a similar product far more cheaply than the national brand. Many of the medicines were potentially toxic, contained addictive ingredients, and could do more harm than good to the health of the consumer. Nearly all of the liquid tonics and nostrums contained some level of alcohol in their mixture, others contained opium and cocaine. Some contained all three.

Samuel Hopkins Adams produced a series of article for Collier's Magazine beginning in the autumn of 1905, which was titled The Great American Fraud. The series ran for eleven installments, with the first running that October announcing the intent of the series, and the exposure of the false claims of the manufacturers of patent medicines over the efficacy of their products. The series entailed some risk for the magazine as patent medicines were a major source of its revenue. In the introductory article Adams described products which were sold as medicines as "in reality practically cocktails." Adams primary motive was exposure of false advertising.

The ensuing series was sensational and gained a wide following as Adams meticulously examined numerous nationally known patent medicines, explaining the components from which they were made, and gaining the support of much of the temperance movement in condemning the products. Several patent medicines which advertised themselves as a cure for consumption, as tuberculosis was then called, were revealed to contain opium and alcohol. Nerve tonics for children were also found to contain opium and hashish, others contained a healthy dose of alcohol. None demonstrated any effectiveness against the illnesses they purported to cure.

The series was a forerunner of both the Pure Food and Drugs Act and to laws restricting what advertisers could and could not claim regarding the benefits of using their products. False claims in advertising became illegal, although the Supreme Court later found that the proscription against false claims applied to the ingredients of a product, but not the compounded product itself. The American Medical Association published the entire series in a book which sold more than half a million copies, but the patent medicine business continued relatively unscathed until regulation of the industry began after the First World War.

John Spargo

Born in Cornwall and raised for the most part in Wales, John Spargo was a Christian Socialist with strong Marxist leanings when he was invited to join in a lecture tour of the United States in 1900. Spargo was hoping to speak about the advantages of socialism on a tour which was to include numerous stops across the United States. When he arrived in America with his recent bride he was disconcerted to learn that the promised tour was for the most part an exaggeration of its planners. Spargo arrived in New York in the winter of 1901, taking odd jobs and charity to survive. A few lectures attended by members of the Socialist Party in New York brought a small income.

Spargo took to editing a local socialist news sheet, called The Comrade, which was published monthly in New York. This brought him some national recognition and he began to lecture on social change in venues around the country. At the national Socialist Party convention in 1904, Spargo opposed the creation of a single publication speaking for the Socialist Party, believing that multiple independent publications were more effective in generating healthy debate. His position was accepted by the convention, and his reputation as a leading socialist of the day was considerably enhanced. He was elected to the National Committee of the party in 1905.

The same year Spargo wrote the first of a series of books which addressed the issue of child labor in the United States and Great Britain, which he referred to as slavery. The first of these works was The Bitter Cry of the Children. In it Spargo graphically described the labor performed by young children, including the work both supporting and in coal mines. Spargo described the difficulty of the labor and the dangers of the mines, including the constant exposure to and inhalation of coal dust and its undoubted ill effects on health. "I could not do that work and live," he wrote, "but there were boys of ten and twelve years of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day."

Spargo followed this work with Underfed School Children in 1906, in which he argued for feeding students in public schools. Spargo pointed out that attempts to teach children who were distracted by the continuous pangs of hunger were futile, and presented the further argument that poorly nourished children were more likely to become sickly, making their education a waste of time since they would likely not survive long enough to make use of it by becoming productive members of society. Spargo continued the argument in The Common Sense of the Milk Question in 1908.

During the Second World War, amid rationing of many foods, public schools across the country began to implement many of Spargo's ideas. By the 1920s Spargo had abandoned many of his socialist leanings and become a member of the Republican Party. He became a leading historian in Vermont, concentrating on the history and lore of the small state. He faced declining health in the 1920s but recovered and became a leading expert on ceramics as practiced as a craft in Vermont. Spargo's work brought attention to the child labor laws of the time and the health of children living in poverty, albeit change came but slowly.

Charles Edward Russell

In his autobiography, Lincoln Steffens wrote of Charles Edward Russell, "He was the most earnest, emotional, and gifted of the muckrakersâ€¦His face looked as if he had suffered from the facts he saw and reported." Russell was one of the first to take on the Beef Trust which was later savaged by Sinclair's The Jungle. Russell's report on the Beef Trust revealed that although technology had significantly reduced the cost of beef production the members of the Beef Trust had manipulated prices and shipments to keep the cost of beef to the consumer artificially high, increasing their profits and political power through donations to officials.

Russell later did a similar expose on the nation's tobacco industry, in which tobacco farmers were exploited by the producers of cigars and the increasingly popular cigarettes. The expose also exposed the exploitation of laborers in the factories. Russell examined and reported on the scandalous operation of the state prison system in Georgia, in Everybody's Magazine, and in 1914 presented an article entitled How Business Controls News, which reported on how the large businesses and trusts controlled what was printed in newspapers and magazines.

Unlike most of the writers and reporters who were lumped together as muckrakers, most of whom despised the term and the way that it placed them all in a single category which could be dismissed out of hand, Russell was proud of the term. "Looking back," he wrote, "it seems to me clear that the muckraking magazine was the greatest single power that ever appeared in this country." As with many of the muckrakers, Russell was an avowed socialist claiming that among other things, socialism offered the "righting of the centuries of wrong the producers have suffered, the dawn of a genuine democracy, peace instead of warâ€¦"

During the muckraking period William Randolph Hearst owned Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Hearst employed Russell to produce several articles for his publication. Russell took on the rising American aristocracy among the wealthy elite in an article titled The Growth of Caste in America, and produced several series for Hearst, while simultaneously writing for other magazines and publications. Russell also produced numerous books, including his autobiography Bare Hands and Stone Walls in 1933. Russell was hugely popular during the muckraking period among the general readerships of the magazines, but reviled by the business and political interests he exposed.

In 1909 Russell became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in response to the preceding year's Springfield, Illinois race riots. Russell remained associated with the organization for the remainder of his life as a member of the board. He twice ran for Governor of New York, once for Senator from New York, and once for Mayor of New York, but his unabashed socialist views and party membership prevented him from winning election. In 1917 he supported the American entry into World War I, for which he was expelled from the Socialist Party which opposed the war. He died in Washington in 1941.

The Muckraker Era

The muckrakers did not have free reign throughout their era, as big businesses and the trusts had weapons at their disposal through which to silence them. Magazines provided the platform from which muckrakers reported their findings, and magazines needed advertising revenues to survive. Advertising boycotts by businesses affected by the articles and their adverse publicity led the businesses to apply leverage to the publications. Lawsuits were another weapon, as few magazines could match the financial assets of the trusts they reported on. The Progressive Era itself lost momentum after Theodore Roosevelt left office, another factor which affected the muckrakers.

McLure's Magazine was one of the earliest of the muckrakers, and when several of its most noted writers in the genre defected to form The American Magazine its impact was severely blunted. McLure's Magazine faded rapidly in the face of competition from Collier's, Cosmopolitan, The American Magazine, and several others and by 1911 the magazine was forced to sell to its creditors. It resumed publication as a women's magazine, and never again produced the hard hitting types of articles which it pioneered in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1929 McLure's Magazine ceased publication. Other magazines continued to present muckraking articles, though with less frequency.

The muckrakers are often connected with yellow journalism, an era which for the most part preceded them. Yellow journalism evolved in the late nineteenth century and involved the sensationalizing of stories for the purpose of expanding sales. Yellow journalism was unconcerned with supporting facts when presenting stories, and both exaggerated events and made them up out of whole cloth. The muckrakers were meticulous in the presentation of supporting facts in their reports, in part because of the frequent attacks upon them by the interests they targeted and the politicians the interests controlled. This led to even Sinclair's sensationalized novel The Jungle being deemed by investigators to be supported by facts in its description of the meatpacking industry.

The muckrakers enjoyed considerable success in raising public awareness of issues, to the point that reforms were enacted in diverse industries and in local and national political activity. Meatpacking, drug manufacturing and distribution, the dairy industry, mental health care, banking, the stock market, the railroads, the US Navy, child labor, prisons, police forces, and many more interests were subjected to reforms as awareness of the abuses they practiced was raised in the public mind. Many of these reforms were staunchly opposed by conservatives, who castigated them as socialism, but public pressure gradually eroded their power.

The muckrakers were the forerunners for the investigative journalists which followed. McLure's Magazine imposed standards on its writers which they took with them to other magazines and publications. These standards included an emphasis on accuracy and research into facts, rather than speculation. Although changes in the style of writing makes the work of most of the muckrakers seem flowery to the modern eye, very little of their work was disproved. The people of the United States were alarmed by the corruption which was exposed and the dangers it posed to them. That alarm was sounded by Roosevelt's "man with the muck rake".
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources: "The Woman Who Took on the Tycoon", by Gilbert King, Smithsonian Magazine, July 5, 2012 "Upton Sinclair's The Jungle", by Harold Bloom (ed), 2002 "The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens", by Lincoln Steffens, 1931 "Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer", by Janet B. Pascal, 2005 "Literature and Insurgency", by J.C. Underwood, 1914 "Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet: American Sea Power Comes of Age", by K. Wimmel, 1998 "Adams, Samuel Hopkins", entry by Samuel V. Kennedy, American National Biography Online, 2000 "John Spargo and American Socialism", by Markku Ruotsila, 2006 "The Pen is Mightier: The Muckraking Life of Charles Edward Russell", by Robert Miraldi, 2003 "Years of Conscience: The Muckrakers", by Harvey Swados, 1962

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10 Tales of the Muckrakers During the Progressive Era

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Samuel Hopkins Adams Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the public was inundated with nostrums, tonics, pills, potions, and powders collectively known as patent medicines. Patent medicines were hawked by peddlers, sold in stores and apothecaries, and sometimes by doctors. As the magazine industry grew it became dependent on revenues, and patent medicines became ...

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Ida Tarbell used her writing skills to expose several businessmen her most well-known work was when she exposed Rockefeller for his many illegal means in order to monopolize the oil industry.

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Monopolies were the process of the company's becoming greedy and eliminating any composition. This led to a large increase in a single company's prices since there was no competition. This also would not encourage the company to make their product better as there was nothing to be superior.

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The Sherman Act prevents any company from a composition free market (Monopoly). engaging the idea that in order for a product or service to increase in quality they must have a competitor. Evolving the american industry by pitting them against one another

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Muckrakers are American writers identified with pre-WWI reform and exposé literature. The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States. They played a vital role because they took on corporate monopolies and political machines, while trying to raise public awareness and anger at urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, prostitution, and child labor.

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The FDA can trace its origins to the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs act, This act, which the Bureau of Chemistry was charged to administer, prohibited the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs under penalty of seizure of the questionable products and/or prosecution of the responsible parties. While it did not evolve into the FDA until the 1930's, the law was created to protect consumers.

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The first act in a series of acts devoted to improving consumers' rights, its immediate effects were making it so that unlawful food and drugs would get seized

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* The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1906

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* The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1906

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Even today lots of people rely on the FDA to protect lots of produce and other food and drugs that the U.S. consumes. The FDA today watches drugs today as they advance allowing for a risk assessment in the future, not just a short time period.

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https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws

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Congress passed the first antitrust law, the Sherman Act, in 1890 as a "comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade." In 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act, which created the FTC, and the Clayton Act. With some revisions, these are the three core federal antitrust laws still in effect today.

The antitrust laws proscribe unlawful mergers and business practices in general terms, leaving courts to decide which ones are illegal based on the facts of each case. Courts have applied the antitrust laws to changing markets, from a time of horse and buggies to the present digital age. Yet for over 100 years, the antitrust laws have had the same basic objective: to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up.

Here is an overview of the three core federal antitrust laws.

The Sherman Act outlaws "every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade," and any "monopolization, attempted monopolization, or conspiracy or combination to monopolize." Long ago, the Supreme Court decided that the Sherman Act does not prohibit every restraint of trade, only those that are unreasonable. For instance, in some sense, an agreement between two individuals to form a partnership restrains trade, but may not do so unreasonably, and thus may be lawful under the antitrust laws. On the other hand, certain acts are considered so harmful to competition that they are almost always illegal. These include plain arrangements among competing individuals or businesses to fix prices, divide markets, or rig bids. These acts are " per se" violations of the Sherman Act; in other words, no defense or justification is allowed.

The penalties for violating the Sherman Act can be severe. Although most enforcement actions are civil, the Sherman Act is also a criminal law, and individuals and businesses that violate it may be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Criminal prosecutions are typically limited to intentional and clear violations such as when competitors fix prices or rig bids. The Sherman Act imposes criminal penalties of up to $100 million for a corporation and $1 million for an individual, along with up to 10 years in prison. Under federal law, the maximum fine may be increased to twice the amount the conspirators gained from the illegal acts or twice the money lost by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is over $100 million.

The Federal Trade Commission Act bans "unfair methods of competition" and "unfair or deceptive acts or practices." The Supreme Court has said that all violations of the Sherman Act also violate the FTC Act. Thus, although the FTC does not technically enforce the Sherman Act, it can bring cases under the FTC Act against the same kinds of activities that violate the Sherman Act. The FTC Act also reaches other practices that harm competition, but that may not fit neatly into categories of conduct formally prohibited by the Sherman Act. Only the FTC brings cases under the FTC Act.

The Clayton Act addresses specific practices that the Sherman Act does not clearly prohibit, such as mergers and interlocking directorates (that is, the same person making business decisions for competing companies). Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers and acquisitions where the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." As amended by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, the Clayton Act also bans certain discriminatory prices, services, and allowances in dealings between merchants. The Clayton Act was amended again in 1976 by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act to require companies planning large mergers or acquisitions to notify the government of their plans in advance. The Clayton Act also authorizes private parties to sue for triple damages when they have been harmed by conduct that violates either the Sherman or Clayton Act and to obtain a court order prohibiting the anticompetitive practice in the future.

In addition to these federal statutes, most states have antitrust laws that are enforced by state attorneys general or private plaintiffs. Many of these statutes are based on the federal antitrust laws.

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Congress passed the first antitrust law, the Sherman Act, in 1890 as a "comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade." In 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act, which created the FTC, and the Clayton Act.

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In 1906 the passing of the act would decree that the preparation of meat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can.

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Drugs that are highly addictive were commonly used by everybody including children, this was heavily supported by the way that the drugs were advertised to be used by kids for example if your baby is teething use cocaine, many other drugs that are now only given in small amounts over the counter would have been commonplace back then.

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Upton Sinclair was the author of the book The Jungle which discussed many problems seen in the meatpacking plants, he was also a political activist associated with the muckrakers, in 1934 he ran for governor of California as a democrat and lost.

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Because of the actions of the crusaders in modern time every food item sold has nutritional facts and ingredients lists.

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The purpose of the FTC and many more Government agencies like them is to protect consumers by stopping deceptive, fraudulent, or unfair practices by businesses, they also have the job of promoting competition and discouraging or eliminating monopolies.

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The Clayton Antin Trust act still has effects today, it prohibits anti-competitive mergers, predatory and discriminatory pricing, and other forms of unethical corporate behavior.

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https://he.utexas.edu/ntr-news-list/food-labels-history#:~:text=By%201966%2C%20the%20USDA%20mandated,demand%20for%20accurate%20production%20information.

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For many consumers, food labels are a primary source of information about the foods and products they eat. Because of this, it is important that these labels are trustworthy, and that companies are held accountable for the claims printed onto their products.

First, to understand the importance of food labels, let's look at why food labels were created. Originally, food labeling emerged as a safety precaution for consumers due to foodborne illness outbreaks in the 1850's. One of the most notable deaths related to food borne illness at this time was the death of President Zachary Taylor after consuming contaminated fruit and milk at a picnic. After this highly publicized death, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was created in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln which led to the creation of strict guidelines for food handling and processing. However, it would be 128 years before a recognizable nutritional facts panel was mandated on all food products.

Until the 1960's, most Americans prepared the majority of their meals at home, but with a shift in consumer demand for prepared products came a public demand for detailed production information. By 1966, the USDA mandated that a list of ingredients must be placed on all products participating in interstate commerce due to consumer demand for accurate production information.

In 1990, the USDA mandated that all food companies were required to make consistent claims and include a detailed, standardized nutrition facts panel on all products intended to be sold.

​With the mandate of ingredients on food products, many food companies also began to add health claims to their packaging; yet most of these claims were misleading or lacking thorough research. In 1973, the issue of false health claims reached the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that nutrition facts as mandatory on all foods boasting any health benefits such as low fat, reduced cholesterol, or heart healthy. Additionally, any food that made any claims about preventing or curing a specific disease were actually considered an illegal drug.

A few decades later in 1990, the FDA, through the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, mandated that all food companies were required to make consistent claims and include a detailed, standardized nutrition facts panel on all products intended to be sold. This panel would include information such as the amount of calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, and protein, as well as select vitamins and minerals and has become the familiar black-and-white table, iconic in today's foodscape.

Stay tuned for the next part of this series about anticipated changes coming to food labels.

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Factual Food Labels: A Closer Look at the History

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For many consumers, food labels are a primary source of information about the foods and products they eat. Because of this, it is important that these labels are trustworthy, and that companies are held accountable for the claims printed onto their products. First, to understand the importance of food labels, let's look at why food labels were created.

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https://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-workplace-safety-in-the-united-states-1880-1970/

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Mark Aldrich, Smith College

The dangers of work are usually measured by the number of injuries or fatalities occurring to a group of workers, usually over a period of one year. Over the past century such measures reveal a striking improvement in the safety of work in all the advanced countries. In part this has been the result of the gradual shift of jobs from relatively dangerous goods production such as farming, fishing, logging, mining, and manufacturing into such comparatively safe work as retail trade and services. But even the dangerous trades are now far safer than they were in 1900. To take but one example, mining today remains a comparatively risky activity. Its annual fatality rate is about nine for every one hundred thousand miners employed. A century ago in 1900 about three hundred out of every one hundred thousand miners were killed on the job each year.

The Nineteenth Century

Before the late nineteenth century we know little about the safety of American workplaces because contemporaries cared little about it. As a result, only fragmentary information exists prior to the 1880s. Pre-industrial laborers faced risks from animals and hand tools, ladders and stairs. Industrialization substituted steam engines for animals, machines for hand tools, and elevators for ladders. But whether these new technologies generally worsened the dangers of work is unclear. What is clear is that nowhere was the new work associated with the industrial revolution more dangerous than in America.

US Was Unusually Dangerous

Americans modified the path of industrialization that had been pioneered in Britain to fit the particular geographic and economic circumstances of the American continent. Reflecting the high wages and vast natural resources of a new continent, this American system encouraged use of labor saving machines and processes. These developments occurred within a legal and regulatory climate that diminished employer's interest in safety. As a result, Americans developed production methods that were both highly productive and often very dangerous.

Accidents Were "Cheap"

While workers injured on the job or their heirs might sue employers for damages, winning proved difficult. Where employers could show that the worker had assumed the risk, or had been injured by the actions of a fellow employee, or had himself been partly at fault, courts would usually deny liability. A number or surveys taken about 1900 showed that only about half of all workers fatally injured recovered anything and their average compensation only amounted to about half a year's pay. Because accidents were so cheap, American industrial methods developed with little reference to their safety.

Mining

Nowhere was the American system more dangerous than in early mining. In Britain, coal seams were deep and coal expensive. As a result, British mines used mining methods that recovered nearly all of the coal because they used waste rock to hold up the roof. British methods also concentrated the working, making supervision easy, and required little blasting. American coal deposits by contrast, were both vast and near the surface; they could be tapped cheaply using techniques known as "room and pillar" mining. Such methods used coal pillars and timber to hold up the roof, because timber and coal were cheap. Since miners worked in separate rooms, labor supervision was difficult and much blasting was required to bring down the coal. Miners themselves were by no means blameless; most were paid by the ton, and when safety interfered with production, safety often took a back seat. For such reasons, American methods yielded more coal per worker than did European techniques, but they were far more dangerous, and toward the end of the nineteenth century, the dangers worsened (see Table 1).
Table 1
British and American Mine Safety, 1890 -1904
(Fatality rates per Thousand Workers per Year)
Source: British data from Great Britain, General Report. Other data from Aldrich, Safety First.

Railroads

Nineteenth century American railroads were also comparatively dangerous to their workers - and their passengers as well - and for similar reasons. Vast North American distances and low population density turned American carriers into predominantly freight haulers - and freight was far more dangerous to workers than passenger traffic, for men had to go in between moving cars for coupling and uncoupling and ride the cars to work brakes. The thin traffic and high wages also forced American carriers to economize on both capital and labor. Accordingly, American carriers were poorly built and used few signals, both of which resulted in many derailments and collisions. Such conditions made American railroad work far more dangerous than that in Britain (see Table 2).
Table 2
Comparative Safety of British and American Railroad Workers, 1889 - 1901
(Fatality Rates per Thousand Workers per Year)
Source: Aldrich, Safety First, Table 1 and Great Britain Board of Trade, General Report.

Note: Death rates are per thousand employees.
a. Guards, brakemen, and shunters.
b. Deaths from falls from cars and striking overhead obstructions.

Manufacturing

American manufacturing also developed in a distinctively American fashion that substituted power and machinery for labor and manufactured products with interchangeable arts for ease in mass production. Whether American methods were less safe than those in Europe is unclear but by 1900 they were extraordinarily risky by modern standards, for machines and power sources were largely unguarded. And while competition encouraged factory managers to strive for ever-increased output, they showed little interest in improving safety.

Worker and Employer Responses

Workers and firms responded to these dangers in a number of ways. Some workers simply left jobs they felt were too dangerous, and risky jobs may have had to offer higher pay to attract workers. After the Civil War life and accident insurance companies expanded, and some workers purchased insurance or set aside savings to offset the income risks from death or injury. Some unions and fraternal organizations also offered their members insurance. Railroads and some mines also developed hospital and insurance plans to care for injured workers while many carriers provided jobs for all their injured men.

Improving safety, 1910-1939

Public efforts to improve safety date from the very beginnings of industrialization. States established railroad regulatory commissions as early as the 1840s. But while most of the commissions were intended to improve safety, they had few powers and were rarely able to exert much influence on working conditions. Similarly, the first state mining commission began in Pennsylvania in 1869, and other states soon followed. Yet most of the early commissions were ineffectual and as noted safety actually deteriorated after the Civil War. Factory commissions also dated from but most were understaffed and they too had little power.

Railroads

The most successful effort to improve work safety during the nineteenth century began on the railroads in the 1880s as a small band of railroad regulators, workers, and managers began to campaign for the development of better brakes and couplers for freight cars. In response George Westinghouse modified his passenger train air brake in about 1887 so it would work on long freights, while at roughly the same time Ely Janney developed an automatic car coupler. For the railroads such equipment meant not only better safety, but also higher productivity and after 1888 they began to deploy it. The process was given a boost in 1889-1890 when the newly-formed Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) published its first accident statistics. They demonstrated conclusively the extraordinary risks to trainmen from coupling and riding freight (Table 2). In 1893 Congress responded, passing the Safety Appliance Act, which mandated use of such equipment. It was the first federal law intended primarily to improve work safety, and by 1900 when the new equipment was widely diffused, risks to trainmen had fallen dramatically.

Federal Safety Regulation

In the years between 1900 and World War I, a rather strange band of Progressive reformers, muckraking journalists, businessmen, and labor unions pressed for changes in many areas of American life. These years saw the founding of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve System and much else. Work safety also became of increased public concern and the first important developments came once again on the railroads. Unions representing trainmen had been impressed by the safety appliance act of 1893 and after 1900 they campaigned for more of the same. In response Congress passed a host of regulations governing the safety of locomotives and freight cars. While most of these specific regulations were probably modestly beneficial, collectively their impact was small because unlike the rules governing automatic couplers and air brakes they addressed rather minor risks.

In 1910 Congress also established the Bureau of Mines in response to a series of disastrous and increasingly frequent explosions. The Bureau was to be a scientific, not a regulatory body and it was intended to discover and disseminate new knowledge on ways to improve mine safety.

Workers' Compensation Laws Enacted

Far more important were new laws that raised the cost of accidents to employers. In 1908 Congress passed a federal employers' liability law that applied to railroad workers in interstate commerce and sharply limited defenses an employee could claim. Worker fatalities that had once cost the railroads perhaps $200 now cost $2,000. Two years later in 1910, New York became the first state to pass a workmen's compensation law. This was a European idea. Instead of requiring injured workers to sue for damages in court and prove the employer was negligent, the new law automatically compensated all injuries at a fixed rate. Compensation appealed to businesses because it made costs more predictable and reduced labor strife. To reformers and unions it promised greater and more certain benefits. Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor had studied the effects of compensation in Germany. He was impressed with how it stimulated business interest in safety, he said. Between 1911 and 1921 forty-four states passed compensation laws.

Employers Become Interested in Safety

The sharp rise in accident costs that resulted from compensation laws and tighter employers' liability initiated the modern concern with work safety and initiated the long-term decline in work accidents and injuries. Large firms in railroading, mining, manufacturing and elsewhere suddenly became interested in safety. Companies began to guard machines and power sources while machinery makers developed safer designs. Managers began to look for hidden dangers at work, and to require that workers wear hard hats and safety glasses. They also set up safety departments run by engineers and safety committees that included both workers and managers. In 1913 companies founded the National Safety Council to pool information. Government agencies such as the Bureau of Mines and National Bureau of Standards provided scientific support while universities also researched safety problems for firms and industries

Accident Rates Begin to Fall Steadily

During the years between World War I and World War II the combination of higher accident costs along with the institutionalization of safety concerns in large firms began to show results. Railroad employee fatality rates declined steadily after 1910 and at some large companies such as DuPont and whole industries such as steel making (see Table 3) safety also improved dramatically. Largely independent changes in technology and labor markets also contributed to safety as well. The decline in labor turnover meant fewer new employees who were relatively likely to get hurt, while the spread of factory electrification not only improved lighting but reduced the dangers from power transmission as well. In coal mining the shift from underground work to strip mining also improved safety. Collectively these long-term forces reduced manufacturing injury rates about 38 percent between 1926 and 1939 (see Table 4).
Table 3
Steel Industry fatality and Injury rates, 1910-1939
(Rates are per million manhours)
Pattern of Improvement Was Uneven

Yet the pattern of improvement was uneven, both over time and among firms and industries. Safety still deteriorated in times of economic boon when factories mines and railroads were worked to the limit and labor turnover rose. Nor were small companies as successful in reducing risks, for they paid essentially the same compensation insurance premium irrespective of their accident rate, and so the new laws had little effect there. Underground coal mining accidents also showed only modest improvement. Safety was also expensive in coal and many firms were small and saw little payoff from a lower accident rate. The one source of danger that did decline was mine explosions, which diminished in response to technologies developed by the Bureau of Mines. Ironically, however, in 1940 six disastrous blasts that killed 276 men finally led to federal mine inspection in 1941.
Table 4
Work Injury Rates, Manufacturing and Coal Mining, 1926-1970
(Per Million Manhours)
.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, 1975), Series D-1029 and D-1031.

Postwar Trends, 1945-1970

The economic boon and associated labor turnover during World War II worsened work safety in nearly all areas of the economy, but after 1945 accidents again declined as long-term forces reasserted themselves (Table 4). In addition, after World War II newly powerful labor unions played an increasingly important role in work safety. In the 1960s however economic expansion again led to rising injury rates and the resulting political pressures led Congress to establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration in 1970. The continuing problem of mine explosions also led to the foundation of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) that same year. The work of these agencies had been controversial but on balance they have contributed to the continuing reductions in work injuries after 1970.

References and Further Reading

Aldrich, Mark. Safety First: Technology, Labor and Business in the Building of Work Safety, 1870-1939. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Aldrich, Mark. "Preventing 'The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine': the Bureau of Mines and the Campaign Against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940." Technology and Culture 36, no. 3 (1995): 483-518.

Aldrich, Mark. "The Peril of the Broken Rail: the Carriers, the Steel Companies, and Rail Technology, 1900-1945." Technology and Culture 40, no. 2 (1999): 263-291

Aldrich, Mark. "Train Wrecks to Typhoid Fever: The Development of Railroad Medicine Organizations, 1850 -World War I." Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 75, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 254-89.

Derickson Alan. "Participative Regulation of Hazardous Working Conditions: Safety Committees of the United Mine Workers of America," Labor Studies Journal 18, no. 2 (1993): 25-38.

Dix, Keith. Work Relations in the Coal Industry: The Hand Loading Era. Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press, 1977. The best discussion of coalmine work for this period.

Dix, Keith. What's a Coal Miner to Do? Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. The best discussion of coal mine labor during the era of mechanization.

Fairris, David. "From Exit to Voice in Shopfloor Governance: The Case of Company Unions." Business History Review 69, no. 4 (1995): 494-529.

Fairris, David. "Institutional Change in Shopfloor Governance and the Trajectory of Postwar Injury Rates in U.S. Manufacturing, 1946-1970." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 51, no. 2 (1998): 187-203.

Fishback, Price. Soft Coal Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. The best economic analysis of the labor market for coalmine workers.

Fishback, Price and Shawn Kantor. A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. The best discussions of how employers' liability rules worked.

Graebner, William. Coal Mining Safety in the Progressive Period. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1976.

Great Britain Board of Trade. General Report upon the Accidents that Have Occurred on Railways of the United Kingdom during the Year 1901. London, HMSO, 1902.

Great Britain Home Office Chief Inspector of Mines. General Report with Statistics for 1914, Part I. London: HMSO, 1915.

Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Humphrey, H. B. "Historical Summary of Coal-Mine Explosions in the United States - 1810-1958." United States Bureau of Mines Bulletin 586 (1960).

Kirkland, Edward. Men, Cities, and Transportation. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948, Discusses railroad regulation and safety in New England.

Lankton, Larry. Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death in Michigan Copper Mines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Long, Priscilla. Where the Sun Never Shines. New York: Paragon, 1989. Covers coal mine safety at the end of the nineteenth century.

Mendeloff, John. Regulating Safety: An Economic and Political Analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Policy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979. An accessible modern discussion of safety under OSHA.

National Academy of Sciences. Toward Safer Underground Coal Mines. Washington, DC: NAS, 1982.

Rogers, Donald. "From Common Law to Factory Laws: The Transformation of Workplace Safety Law in Wisconsin before Progressivism." American Journal of Legal History (1995): 177-213.

Root, Norman and Daley, Judy. "Are Women Safer Workers? A New Look at the Data." Monthly Labor Review 103, no. 9 (1980): 3-10.

Rosenberg, Nathan. Technology and American Economic Growth. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Analyzes the forces shaping American technology.

Rosner, David and Gerald Markowity, editors. Dying for Work. Blomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Shaw, Robert. Down Brakes: A History of Railroad Accidents, Safety Precautions, and Operating Practices in the United States of America. London: P. R. Macmillan. 1961.

Trachenberg, Alexander. The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824 - 1915. New York: International Publishers. 1942.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC, 1975.

Usselman, Steven. "Air Brakes for Freight Trains: Technological Innovation in the American Railroad Industry, 1869-1900." Business History Review 58 (1984): 30-50.

Viscusi, W. Kip. Risk By Choice: Regulating Health and Safety in the Workplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. The most readable treatment of modern safety issues by a leading scholar.

Wallace, Anthony. Saint Clair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Provides a superb discussion of early anthracite mining and safety.

Whaples, Robert and David Buffum. "Fraternalism, Paternalism, the Family and the Market: Insurance a Century Ago." Social Science History 15 (1991): 97-122.

White, John. The American Railroad Freight Car. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. The definitive history of freight car technology.

Whiteside, James. Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.

Wokutch, Richard. Worker Protection Japanese Style: Occupational Safety and Health in the Auto Industry. Ithaca, NY: ILR, 1992

Worrall, John, editor. Safety and the Work Force: Incentives and Disincentives in Workers' Compensation. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1983.

¹ Injuries or fatalities are expressed as rates. For example, if ten workers are injured out of 450 workers during a year, the rate would be .006666. For readability it might be expressed as 6.67 per thousand or 666.7 per hundred thousand workers. Rates may also be expressed per million workhours. Thus if the average work year is 2000 hours, ten injuries in 450 workers results in [10/450×2000]x1,000,000 = 11.1 injuries per million hours worked.

² For statistics on work injuries from 1922-1970 see U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics, Series 1029-1036. For earlier data are in Aldrich, Safety First, Appendix 1-3.

⁵ Dix, Work Relations, and his What's a Coal Miner to Do? Wallace, Saint Clair, is a superb discussion of early anthracite mining and safety. Long, Where the Sun, Fishback, Soft Coal, chapters 1, 2, and 7. Humphrey, "Historical Summary." Aldrich, Safety First, chapter 2.

¹¹ Details of these regulations may be found in Aldrich, Safety First, chapter 5.

¹⁵ Farris, "From Exit to Voice."

¹⁶ Aldrich, "'Needless Peril," and Humphrey

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History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970

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The dangers of work are usually measured by the number of injuries or fatalities occurring to a group of workers, usually over a period of one year. Over the past century such measures reveal a striking improvement in the safety of work in all the advanced countries.