Seek First Aid.

The importance of having cuts and similar injuries attended to immediately after their occurrence cannot be too frequently stressed. Many employees regard such injuries as of insufficient gravity to trouble about having them dressed. Neglect of this kind and wounds of a seriously septic nature, are very closely related. Avoid the septic wound by not failing to have cuts and scratches cleaned and dressed. Safety First and First Aid go together.

* * *

The Safety First Conception.

In a recent leading article in the London “Times” under the titls “Mental Banisters,” some important observations are made concerning the old proverb that “accidents will happen in the best regulated households” and that safety first attempts to prevent them are the outcome of counsels of perfection rather than of common sense. “That accidents” said the writer “in the great majority of cases, need not happen, and that no household or factory can be called well regulated in which accidents are at all frequent… has been shown as the result of painstaking labours in many fields of industry… Whereas accident prevention in the past has been concerned almost exclusively with mechanical means of saving men and women from themselves—for example, the banister of a stair—the new accident prevention aims at a change of heart. It seeks to implant in the mind of each individual exposed to risk a clear and permanent conception of that risk and a clear and permanent idea as to how that risk may be avoided. The worker so trained possesses mental ‘banisters’ and ‘guards.’”

“Accidents,” he concludes, “are ‘robbers of industry’ by reason not only of their cruel effect on their victims but also by reason of their evil influence on the whole body of workers and on … total output. It is certainly true that a sense of safety is a factor making for happiness and health and efficiency, while a sense of danger—and every industrial accident gives rise to a sense of danger, however vague, in the minds of all those employed—militates against human welfare and human work.”

* * *

Accidents and the Motor.

“According to the National Safety First Association of Great Britain (says ‘The Red Cross Courier’—published by the American National Red Cross), the number of motor car fatalities has doubled, keeping almost exact pace with the increase in the number of motor vehicles. In the United States, according to our own National Safety Council, the increase of motor fatalities has approximated 50 per cent, of the increase in the number of motor cars. In other words, there are about 22,000,000 motor vehicles in the United States and there were 23,000 fatalities in 1926, or one plus a fraction fatality per 1,000 vehicles. In Great Britain there are slightly over 1,000,000 motor vehicles. There were 4,346 fatalities in 1926, or more than four fatalities per 1,000 vehicles.”

The “Courier” attributes the wide difference in the motor accident figures of the two countries to the earlier recognition in America of the problem of the automobile and the general adoption of preventive measures.

* * *

The A B C of Safety.

Mr. H. W. Clapp, Chairman, Railways Commissioners, Victoria, recently brought under the notice of Victorian railwaymen the following Safety First Slogans:—

The A.B.C. of Safety—always be careful.
Use, don't lose, your head.
It is everybody's business to be careful.
Be wreck-less, not reckless.
Get Safety into vour svstem.

* * *

Of all the sad surprises
There's nothing to compare,
With treading in the darkness
On a step that isn't there.

(L. & N.E. Magazine.)

page break