The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-14
HALF \ THOUSAND
 MEN ARE KILLED Half Are Not Compensated for
 Loss of income FAMILIES BEAR BURDEN Report of the Plttsburs Survey as to the Industrial Accidents in the American Steel
 District.
FAMILIES BEAR BURDEN

in his inaugural address back up the re- port issued today by the Pittsburg survey on industrial accidents in the Pennsylva- mia steel district. This has been the first case of investigation made in America, has covered 526 deaths and nearly as many serious injury cases. and the massed facts brought out are startling in thelr. significance. What Is true of Pittsburg is probably true of other big industrial cen ters.
 When the mills are running full, half thousand men are killed each year in AL leghenyi county in the course of their work. In less than one-third of these deaths is there any indication in the cor oner's records that the accident could be attributed to the man killed In over half of the cases no dollar of compensation (above funeral expenses) was received from the employer to take the place of lost income. The wages of the men killed bore relation to the risks of their occupations Cover half of them were earning less than $15 a week. and in sharp contrast to the exceptional em- ployers who give generous, voluntary set dement's, the Carnegie relief fund.- a few
 
 one case in a hundred where large dam ages are secured under the master and servant law, the major part of the faml- lies of these dead workmen have been left in hard straits; four-year-old children have had to evade the child labor law and become bread winners; mothers of four, five and six children have had to leave their homes and go out to work and long list of deprivations and hard ships has been imposed upon the next generation.
 This is the gst of the findings as pub lished in the current issue of Charities and the Commons. The report is the work of Crystal Eastman, secretary of the New York branch of the American Asso- citation for Labor Legislation. The inves- tgation extended throughout a year, and thes taff has included electrical and me- chanical engineers, and Slovak, Russian, Bohemian and Italian interpreters for many of the men killed were foreigners. Miss Eastman is herself lawyer. The coroner's office, progressive superintend- ents, claim agents, attorneys, labor union officials and hospital superintend- ents have co-operated and there Is a growing disposition in Pittsburg to square with the charges of wholesale slaughter in the mills and get at the real facts.
 The problem is not a simple one, and to show this the report starts off with four types of cases. First the structural ironworker who was thrown to his death by rotten plank Here the employer had failed to have the scaffold inpected. In contrast is the case of an angle-shear- man who reached his hand over the pro- tective guards of a heavy wheel and got caught in the act. Here his own reck- lessness was to blame There is the sec l1Afr clerk who actually cleared $50 out of slight injury and the widow of Adam Ro- galas, laborer who was caught under tons of grain when the floor of a storage warehouse fell because the supports were inadequate. This Rogalas had wife and he had four children, agend 10, G, and ?; II but he had no savings. Mrs Rogalas got some washing to do; the city poor relief N gave her $6 worth of groceries month. |, She begged at the door of her Catholic | church Sundays; her sister, with fam fly of six, did what she could; an occa- sional s10 was advanced by her lawyer. In severe winter weather she was seen K with shoes so old that he feet were ex- |R posed Six months after the accident an- other child was born. Her case came to trial at the end of the Year and the court threw it out.
 These four cases put the two horns of the industrial accident dilemma as 1t
 
 Who pays the cost? The report is divided into two sections and gives the data col \ llected on each.
 l The old easy saying that 95 per cent of l work accidents are due to the careless Illness of workmen is the first thing to be flthrown into the scrap heap by this study Elof a years cases. Twentyeight per cent { are classed as inevftable-upon no one ] lean the blame be put; two big furnace Siexplosions, for instance in which an ex- bert jury exonerated everybody; an Ital- [ Han who was killed in trying to rescue E 5lcompanlon from gas; woman buried be- 3lneath pile of wire coils, when 1t fell, Hand the like of that.
 l The 32 per cent of cases attributed to 1.-the man killed Is not blanket indictment |jagainst the workman. In 9 cases the |Ivictim was green or could not under- Istand the warnings given in English ItThirteen were not men, but boys For |llnstance- | Two boys were killed in the Homestead I lyteel works while they were asleep Both . .Iaccidents happeped at 1:30 in the morn Hing. One boy was ''pull-up," 15 years 3told, who had been working eight hours of Ma thirteen hour night turn. He had Ilsew minutes to rest and went back of 1.-The furnace to lie down in wheelbarrow HIWhile sleeping there he was struck and Hlkil,ed by the extending arm of ladle INV hich the crane man was bringing back Hl.o the pit. The other was an eighteen NIyear-old .hook-on who, after seven HI1ours of his working night, climbed into |Il buggy and went to sleep. The crane Inan not knowing this lowered an iron |ll,ucket on the buggy and killed him. || Twelve deaths were due to dizziness |i,pileptic seizures while at work, and the | Ike; in only 8 cases was the man drunk |irhere are left then, S5 eases out of the #lvhole years death toll in which the work Itnan's "careiessness" was the cause Of His death. The report analyses these at *sength and finds only small share of |them due to bull-headed heedlessness, as 1.-The angle-shearman in the cases cited. In |Inost cases the carelessness is 'inatten- Lion due in part to long hours, heat, oise intense speed, or ''recklessness Which goes with the industry and with Hut which dangerous trades could not be IIarried on. IN Thirteen per cent of the accidents are Attributed to fellow workmen, and the Elements in these cases are about the | Ibme as in those where the victim was Himself to blame. Twelve per cent are |Iue to foremen. Cases where rules of .Iafety are not enforced, where materials |Iere not furnished the men when re- {uested (one miner crushed by fall of | Hate. had made a request for posts two | lays before), and where reported defects pere not repaired, are charged against | hem. 4f
 IThere are all kinds of foremen-fore-