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210 Forging - Stamping - Heat Treating June, 1925
told me that there were occasional references to the
fact that large numbers of people died during the
work, but human life was valued so cheaply there was
probably no effort made to keep any individual account
of the persons killed.
I suppose there was another difficulty, owing to
the fact that memoranda of that day were made principally
on bricks, and I have no doubt that a card
index ol the accidents occurring (luring the building
of one pyramid would have made another pyramid!
•
Safety vs. Carelessness. The upper figure shows a snubbing
post on the loading dock to convey safely heavy low
trucks into a car. In the lower figure is shown a man
pulling a truck. If he should slip he must invariably suffer
injury, because the height of the load obstructs the
vision ow the men behind, who are pushing with heads
down.
Accidents occurring from "objects dropped," "objects
falling from piles," "caught between objects
handled," etc., all show the importance of personal
carefulness on the part of the worker and his overseer,
and will continue to be a problem for the safety
engineer so long as there are materials to handle and
persons to move them.
The Human Side of the Material-Handling
Problem.
So much for the statistical side of the materialhandling
problem; let us now look at the human side.
The definition of an engineer is a person by whom
"the mechanical properties of matter are made useful
to man in structures and machines." That sounds
rather cold and forbidding, and from the nature of
his work one might picture the engineer as having
that impersonal feeling towards others which was
shown by the negro minister who was baptizing his
Hock through the ice. He lost his grip on one of them
as he dipped him under, and merely remarked, as he
beckoned another victim forward. "The Lord giveth
and the Lord taketh away!"
However impersonal may be the attitude of the
mechanical, civil or electrical engineer toward the
material with which he works, the safety engineer has
a field that calls for the keenest human interest, because
he is dealing with men rather than materials;
his aim is to avoid human tragedy, rather than accomplish
mere utility. His real dynamic power as a safety
engineer will come from the knowledge that he is
geared up directly with that greatest problem of all
time, the accomplishment of human happiness.
The statistical divisions used in tabulating a large
number of accidents are necessarily so general and
lacking in detail as to lose most of their human interest
and even their engineering value. In order to fill
in some of the finer details of the picture I investigated
a group of the fatal accidents from handling"
material which have been reported to the Liberty
Mutual in the last four years. There were lo of these
cases, and the following information was gleaned
from our files covering their investigation and
adjustment.
Of the 16 deaths, seven, or nearly one-half, resulted
from septicaemia or blood poisoning, in some
cases supplemented by other diseases. (This is undoubtedly
a higher proportion than would be found
in a more general group of accidents, but it shows
how important septicaemia is as a cause of fatalities
in material handling.)
Six ot these cases were from slight cuts on the
hands, neglected until the injured person was so seriously
infected that he had no chance. Several of these
were of the kind that is so trying to the insurance
man, where the. injury was not reported at the time
it occurred, and decision of an important case hinges
upon whether the little scratch or cut was received at
the factory or alter the man went home.
Some of the causes given, were a scratch from a
nail in a shoe, a cut from the edge of linoleum, from
a pane of glass which was being set, from a nail in
a plank which was being handled, etc.
In one case, erysipelas developed, and in another
gangrene. This latter case occurred from a man
dropping a small machine part, weighing only about
a pound, on his foot, resulting in a slight injury which
later became gangrenous.
Case No. 215,225 is that of a little grandfather
from the Emerald Isle, 67 years of age. It was his
job to carry bags and barrels of rands (small pieces
of leather used in the heels of shoes) to the sorting
room and to storage. These packages were rather
heavy, weighing as much as 100 pounds each—and he
had to lift them up onto a bench or onto storage piles
as much as three to six feet from the floor.
Hardly a suitable job for a grandfather, we would
say!
However, this one was considered hale and hearty
and boasted that he had not seen a doctor for 40 years.
He had been handling barrels and bags in this'plant
for several years when one day, after placing a barrel
on the sorting table, he complained of a sudden
pain in his stomach.
He apparently had a premonition that it was serious,
for he turned to the sorter and said, "I guess
my days of work are about over." His words were
prophetic. He died next evening from an internal
hemorrhage.
The autopsy showed chronic ulcers of the stomach,
which, the surgeon said, had ruptured as a result of
the strain from lifting a heavy barrel