ABSTRACT
United States (US) corporations in the monopoly sector responded to the movement around occupational safety and health by setting up a business-controlled “compensation-safety establishment” which withheld the issue of working conditions from the public agenda until the late 1960s. The founding of the privately owned workers’ compensation system between 1910 and 1920 in most states gave minimal compensation to many workers disabled by work accidents. The political movement which created the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 has called increasing attention to the importance of preventing casualties. The rapid industrialization of the US produced a multitude of new dangers for workers. The fruits of fabulous productivity increases were being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, symbolized in 1901 by the organization of the US Steel Corporation, the nation’s first billion dollar business. US Steel’s experiments in safety and compensation would serve as models for the rest of the US.
