The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-07
Hot Air.
The Secretary of Labor Davis and His
Safety Talk"
By GRACE M. BURNHAM
Labor Research Association.

Speaking at one of the weekly radio adj
dresses of the National Safety Council, an
employers organization fighting against
compulsory safety regulation in industry,
Secretary of Labor Davis delivered bonn
bastc speech in which he attempted to hide
the high rate of deaths and accidents which
continue to increase in the United States
each year. At the same time he white
washed the employers and put the chief
blame for industrial accidents on the work
ers themselves. This is the third installment
of Comrade Burnham's artice.-Editor.)
No better tool for the employing interest,
could be found for secretary of labor than it:
present incumbent, who has been retained ir
office by three successive presidents and who
is now planning to run for governor of Penn
sylvana with car Hoover's kindly backing
"The general situation is improving" he says
the facts to the contrary. "Three per cent OF
all accidents cause major injuries and S8 per
cent minor injuries. The rest are incense
quential, but with them bring the narrowing
fear of what might have been. But these Gin
consequential injuries" alone cause yearly
loss of more than six million working weeks,
according to the leading writer on compensa-
ton statistics in the United States, E. H.
Downey.
Secretary Davis then goes on in true en-
pioyers' fashion to place the blame for &C per
cent of the accidents the workers them
selves. To faulty instruction he attributes 80
per cent of all accidents; % per cent he credits
to inattention; IL per cent to incompetency
of the worker II per cent to poor discipline;
and the remaining 81 per cent to unsafe prac-
tees and mechanical hazards.
rbo H.
indct him hypocritical tool of the en-
ploying class: "The more general use of the
English language, enabling more workers to
read safety bulletins, and the state of happi-
ness of mans home" To explain this last
absurdity he goes on: "Some men are cross in
the morning as well as are other members of
the family on occasion. -. The result is
that after silent breakfast the man rushes
off to work feeling depressed and careless,
and when in that condition accidents are more
likely to happen" Workers who have faced
punch presses and travelling cranes for 12-hour
shifts, day after day; child laborers in textile
mills and canneries who have hands and fin
gers crushed and torn; girls painting watch
dals with radium who have lived to watch
their bodies rot away until death is looked
forward to as blessing, should know how to
size up this apologist for the bosses.
Inc WORDS OF secretary DAVIS That the en-
poyee who is not mindful of the safety of his
fellow worker is menace to the very society
which gives him protection from every sOther
ill which might beset his life, while away from
his job" must be answered by showing the
workers that in no industrial country in the
world are they given as little protection as in
the United States. No insurance against I'M
employment no provision for old age; no
medical and hospital for themselves and
their families, except as charity outcasts."
But for the employing class there is ample
protection; freedom to work their employees
unlimited hours, at starvation wages; freedom
to speed them up until they drop from -ex.
haustion; freedom to drain from their used uD
bodies unlimited wealth.
The workers answer to this "Hot ARR pub
licity stunt of the National Safety Council
should be an aggressive and nationwide cam
paign for adequate protection nationally as
well as state by state with severe penalties,
including Jail sentences, for employers who
subject workers to hazards which result in pre-
ventable deaths and injuries. according to
safety experts, 80 per cent of the industrial
injuries which occur in the United States are
preventable.)
In such a campaign the secretary of labor
and most of his associates in state and city
labor departments will be lined up with the
corporations against the workers. Only the
complete destruction of capitalism, with
workers government in control, will give the
workers of the country real protection. Only
the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics has
established an adequate and effective system
Of labor protection for the working class.
(Conclusion)