FOR SAFETY'S SAKE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 138, 14 June 1930, Page 26

FOR SAFETY'S SAKE

AN OFFICIAL MUSEUM

SHOWING NEW DEVICES

Few people know that the Home Of« fice maintains a museum in Westminster, (says the "Manchester Guardian")- /• I "Museum" is rather an absurd name for it, for it is really a model factory, J or anthology of factories, containing alii the safety devices and welfare arrangements which the factory inspectorate like to see introduced into industry. Its justification is the. huge placard that meets you at the door stating that last year nearly a thousand people wore killed and over 153,000 injured in factory accidents. People who are chiefly wanted as visitors are managers and workpeople, for when all tho wheels of these clever machines are going round they can 6ee for themselves how the most dangerous processes can be made foolproof. For instance, these power-presses used ; for stamping out metal or cutting cardboard have attached a sort of safety arm which comes down and pushes the hand of the worker away from the danger zone—an invention that has enormously reduced the number of mutilated fingers. GREAT PROGRESS. Tho greatest progress in designing machines from the start or safety lines has been made in the cotton trade. It was certainly a revelation to the Londoners to-day to see the wonderfully complicated carding and weaving machines which have evolved from the old dangerously unguarded things which used to be responsible for so many casualties. Sir Gerald Bellhouse, the chief inspector of factories, has had much to say about the amaziDgly simple but effective devices which cut out a serious causo of accident by shifting the belting on machines mechanically. No workman need now climb a ladder and ao the dangerous' and highly expert trick of shifting belting by, hand.