Preventing Industrial Accidents

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On this page, you find some material that had to be edited out from the final manuscript of Preventing Industrial Accidents.

Biographies

Originally intended as endnotes for Chapter 2 and 3. Presented below in the order you find these gentlemen in the book.

Butler

Louis Fatio Butler was born in Hartford on 23 July 1871 as the son of an US army officer. He started working at The Travelers Insurance Company aged 19. He would spend his entire career with that company, working his way up, starting as a clerk in the railroad ticket insurance division. He then successively was assistant actuary of the company (1901), actuary of the accident department (1901), assistant secretary (1904), secretary (1907) and vice president (1912) of the company. On 8 November 1915, he was elected as the third president of The Travelers Insurance Company and The Travelers Indemnity Company, succeeding the late Sylvester C. Dunham. The Travelers prospered under Butler’s leadership and a new branch; The Travelers Fire Insurance Company was organised in October 1924 of which he also was the president. Butler was involved in the social life in Hartford, member of several clubs and interested in civic affairs. Besides leading The Travelers, Butler also was director of the First National Bank in Hartford and of the Travelers Bank & Trust Company. A father of four, he passed away on 23 October 1929. His funeral service at St. John’s Church was attended by Travelers agents and managers from all over the country.

(sources: Hartford Courant: 9 November 1915; 25 October 1929; 19 November 1929)

Granniss

Edward R. Granniss was born 1899 in New Haven, CT. He graduated from the University of Connecticut (1922) and Brown University (1924) as a Mechanical Engineer. After working for ten years for the Travelers, he worked for the National Safety Council and various other organisations. During the War he served as a Colonel and Director of the US Army’s safety program. After the war he returned to insurance working for Royal-Globe and had countless functions, among which President of the Washington ASSE. He retired in 1964. Over the years he would probably be Heinrich’s closest and most enduring collaborator. Granniss passed away 14 November 1990.

Ashe

According to his credentials in the book, Sydney Withmore Ashe was Chairman of the Committee on Safety and Health National Association of Corporation Schools, member of the Educational Committee, and secretary of the Foundry Section of the National Safety Council. Apparently, he was an experienced educator, Head of the Educational and Welfare Department of the Pittsfield Works of the General Electric Company and had previously written books on electric railways and electricity.

Beyer

David Stewart Beyer was a rather big name in the early safety movement. He was the manager of the Accident Prevention Department of the Massachusetts Employees Insurance Association (the name of this company was changed to Liberty Mutual in 1917). Formerly, he had been Chief Safety Inspector of the American Steel and Wire Company. He was active in various safety organisations, as the director of the Standardization Committee of the National Safety Council, chairman of the Standardization Committee of the Boston Safety Society, and member of the American Museum of Safety, to name but a few.

Beyer moved on to become the Vice-President and Chief Engineer of the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company of Boston. Fun trivia, he was married to opera singer Maria Conde who debuted in December 1917 in the Metropolitan Opera and dueted with none other than Caruso. She wrote poems and attended her husband on safety rallies, inspiring her to compose a verse titled Safety Last (published in Safety Engineering in 1919).

Cowee

George Alvin Cowee (1887-1975) was manager of the Bureau of Safety of the Utica Mutual Compensation Insurance Corporation. He would later become Vice President of the company. He was an active writer but would only write one book on safety. Besides this, Cowee published on geography (1911), insurance (1942) and banks and stock markets (1931, 1938, 1960).

Tolman

The main author, William Howe Tolman, was the director of the American Museum of Safety. The authors claimed that their book was the “only comprehensive work on safety that has yet appeared in the English language.” (Tolman & Kendall, 1913, p.ix) When compared to Van Schaack’s earlier text, one may indeed conclude that the latter was mainly about safeguarding certain situations, while Tolman and Kendall presented a larger picture.

Van Schaack

David van Schaack (1868-1929) was one of the pioneers of the early safety movement. He worked as director of the Bureau of Inspection and Accident Prevention of Aetna Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. He was one of the people who organised the National Safety Council, served twice as its president, and was active in the development of the national safety code program.

DeBlois

Lewis Amory DeBlois, born in Brownsville, Texas, on 3 October 1878, was a graduate from the Harvard School of Engineering, 1899 class, and had been organising the safety work in DuPont from 1907 onwards before becoming their first VP of Safety. He also was the co-founder and first president of the Delaware Safety Council in 1918 or 1919. The Delaware Safety Council was the brainchild of Irenee DuPont - the President and owner of DuPont - and DeBlois.

In 1920, he was chosen as vice president of the National Safety Council, and in 1923, he took over as the NSC’s president. After 22 years with the company, he resigned from DuPont to take a position in NYC in May 1926 as executive vice-president of the Greater New York Safety Council. In 1929, he became the Director of Safety Engineering Division of the National Bureau of Casualty and Underwriters in NYC. After that he faded out of sight. He passed away 26 February 1967 in his home in Sharon, Connecticut, aged 83.

Williams

Sidney J. Williams was an engineer with 20 years of experience as an industry executive, from the Wisconsin Industrial Commission, formerly chief engineer with the National Safety Council, and at the time of publishing the book Director of the Public Safety Division of the NSC. During Depression times, he would be the safety director of the Civil Works Administration.

Lange

Not much biographical information is available on Lange. From his writing it becomes clear that he had several years (possibly decades) of experience as a safety engineer under his belt. He has worked as a safety engineer for the Industrial Commission of Ohio, lectured to college engineering students about safety and before the publishing of this book, he made a three year trip to Europe to study industrial conditions. This delayed the release of his book, making it partly outdated before it was published.

Dow

Marcus Allen Dow was a notable figure in the early safety movement, working as a safety advisor in various organisations as the New York Central Lines. He was involved with the National Safety Council, including chairing the transportation section, and being its President in 1922-23. Before, he had been the first president of the New York Safety Council. His pioneering work included making safety movies for education, including Steve Hill’s Awakening (1914) which was the first safety film telling a dramatic story. His main interest seems to have been public safety and transport safety, which also is the subject of Stay Alive!

Fisher

Boyd Archer Fisher appears to have been management consultant. He was born in Iowa, studied at Harvard, graduating in 1910 with a BA degree in social science. He was involved in management training during World War I. Later, he was involved in setting up the US Rural Electrification Administration. During his career he was mostly involved in matters that today would fall largely under human resources with several papers and several books, including Industrial Loyalty (1918) and Mental Causes of Accidents (1922). In later life, he lived in Oregon.

Chase

The author, Stuart Chase (8 March 1888 - 16 November 1985) was an American economist, social theorist and writer. He wrote numerous books and pamphlets on a great variety of topics, including semantics, economy, and societal critique. With his 1932 book A New Deal he coined the term for President Roosevelt’s economic programs after the Great Depression. One of his critical works is a pamphlet on waste in the modern world which was rewritten and republished several times (1922, 1925, 1930 and 1931). Chase means a different kind of waste than other authors (including Taylor and Heinrich), or today’s LEAN systems. According to Chase, waste is a larger issue than mere production efficiency. In his opinion this is merely a mean to an end (namely, the increase of profit) while Chase’s aim is on another level. As he says, you can produce unnecessary or inferior - and thereby wasteful - products in a very efficient way. Neither does Chase apply the avoidance of waste in a reductionist way (i.e. optimizing a machine, process, or factory), but has a systems approach by observing the entire economic system as one.

Roos

Nestor Robert Roos (19 August 1925 — 20 February 2004) worked with Petersen at the University of Arizona where he was a Professor of Insurance and Director of Safety Management. Among his work, one finds the Governmental Risk Management Manual (1976) which he wrote with Joseph S. Gerber.