What Industrial Accidents Cost

In a recent interesting address on accident prevention, Mr. E. Hoult, of Messrs. Edgar Allan and Co., Ltd., Sheffield, England, stated that: “According to the Home Office returns of workmen's compensation for the last eight years, over 3,000,000 British workers had been sufficiently badly injured to be compensated, and over 22,000 had been killed. During that period compensation payments alone amounted to just under £50,000,000. Eminent statisticians have calculated that the gross total cost of accidents to industry is between three and five times the amount of compensation. Consequently, those eight years have cost the country some £200,000,000… It was obviously just as much a humanitarian as a business necessity to consider whether these figures could be improved.”