Intelligence never exposes itself to undue or unnecessary physical risks, stupidity exposes itself—and pays the price. That, I think, is a brief summation of the reason back of safety education.

It is the part of intelligence to inculcate and foster a wholesome, reasoned, and controlled fear. Appreciation of risk and avoidance of exposure to risk are the part of the intelligent man. Time may have been when absolute fearlessness and blindness to danger were necessary. That must have been when man met blind and unknown dangers.

In this mechanical day such intrepidity is the part of stupidity. Hazards are largely predictable in the case of machine workers. The intelligent worker will, then, face the hazards, give them the thought, the caution, the fear that they merit and set his intelligence to the task of avoiding every possible risk. He will foster in every way his own training for safety, the safety of himself and of others.

Mechanical devices have been invented always with the idea of giving advantages to the intelligent—the intelligent, not the heedlessly brave.

Influences Reaction.

This is, perhaps, but one of the major changes in emotional pattern that the new education demands of us. Attitude, emotional set, undoubtedly influences our reactions to new training. There is, for example, the man who venerates precedent. His father was a good engineer, let us say, and he sees no need for improvement upon methods used in his father's day. This without consideration of the fact that engines and traffic conditions have changed mightily since his father's day.

Precedent is an excellent thing and worthy of consideration, but if it is antedated it may become an unsafe guide. Because an expedient has served for twenty years or thirty years does not prove its worth if conditions to-day are not what they were in the past. This sort of close-mindedness is the enemy to safety training. It is not intelligent; it does not evaluate risks.

Here a word may be apropos about the worker's prevalent distrust of the “armchair critic,” the laboratory worker, the dealer in theories. This is natural. The man who does, feels superior to the man who thinks or talks. But, if it is natural it is also dangerous.

Advancement always begins as an idea, a theory. The theory may be the outcome of actual work—often is. But it may be the outcome of abstract thinking. At any rate, scorn and incredulity are not always intelligent. They may blind one to risks and to opportunities. The “smart guy who knows nothing about the job of the engineer” may possibly see some phase of that job which is lost to the man actually busy at its performance.

Best Must be Good.

There is another mental attitude that essentially is inimical to safety training. It allows one to put the outcome of any project, any venture, on the knees of the gods, so to speak. It is the philosophy of “do your best and God will do the rest.” A relaxful philosophy, since it allows a broad loophole for escape from responsibility. The “do your best” is essential, and in these days of complicated living and frenzied moving it has to be mighty good. Anybody's best leaves an awful load for Providence.

And there is the matter of attitude towards responsibility to the public. In the matter of railroad employees, in particular, my own reaction is almost invariably with the trainman. The right of way is his; strength, force, and superiority are his. He ought to be respected and waited for. But he isn't. He is dealing, you see, with daredevil page 28 stupidity. (I speak of the usual case of collision). He is dealing with the man too brave to count the risk.

There devolves upon his intelligence, then, the task of protecting not only himself, his company's interests and the manifold interests of the many involved, but, in addition, the safety and well being of the man who will not safeguard himself. A big task, and one that will not permit him to overlook even seemingly small contributions to its furtherance.

Safety is Re-education.

Safety education is re-education to those who are already trained and on the job, and re-education is a most difficult undertaking. Not only is it hard to shed old habits; it is hard even to want to shed them.

But that is the road of progress. We lay down the good to advance to the better. Mechanical ability has been on a high level for the past decade or two. But the increased complexity of life demands that it become still higher.—J. U. Yarborough Ph.D., in the Santa Fe Railways Magazine.)