Managing danger in the home environment, 1900-1940

The mid-1930s saw deaths from home accidents rise to unprecedented heights: in 1935 there were approximately 32,000; in 1936, 38,500 (the NSC calculated that about 4,000 deaths were due to extreme heat); and 32,000 in 1937. Numbers of deaths from home accidents were usually very close to those from automobile accidents. Yet, little concerted national attention was paid to home safety. Perceiving the vacuum, and seeing an opportunity to advance its organizational interests, in 1935 leaders of the Red Cross created a Home and Farm Accident Prevention Program. The program was to be based in the Red Cross's extensive network of local chapters and run by committees with wide community representation. The chapters were to focus on community education, home inspection and home service, and first aid instruction. Red Cross Vice Chairman James L. Fieser confidently predicted that by "attaining these objectives, the ultimate goal - the reduction of accidents - will be realized."(74)

The Red Cross strategy to combat home accidents involved great amounts of publicity and education, but little research.(75) A "nation-wide Home Inspection Campaign" launched the program, and over 26 million home inspection forms, as well as window cards, were distributed in the schools. Within several months after the program had begun, 2,500 of the 3,710 Red Cross chapters had appointed a Home and Farm Accident Prevention Chairmen. Radio programs and newspaper articles on safety were sponsored, and "action pictures," showing home accident injuries, were published in the newspapers.(76) In 1935, Red Cross officials persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to call a National Accident Conference, directed by Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper, with Red Cross Director Admiral Cary T. Grayson as the presiding officer and first speaker.(77)

Underlying the Red Cross strategy was a belief that people needed to be educated about risk in order to reduce accidents.(78) In his keynote address at the National Accident Conference in 1935, Grayson repeated the old behavioral argument - that the accident toll "was created and caused by people themselves, and the solution lay in self-education and self-discipline."(79) This strategy, as in earlier diagnoses of the home accident problem, of necessity involved the "homemaker" or the woman in the home. As Irma Gene Nevins, National Director of the Red Cross Accident Prevention Service wrote in 1947, "Prevention of accidents in the home is largely the responsibility of the homemaker - and much depends up-on [sic] her ability to keep the house in order and in good repair," as well as properly supervising children.(80) Thus, traditional ideas about home accident prevention involving changing people's behavior and women as home safety managers dominated the Red Cross strategy.

Through its widespread network of local chapters, the Red Cross distributed great quantities of accident prevention materials and sponsored many safety lectures and classes. But reports from the local chapters to the central headquarters indicated a widespread sense of frustration over lack of impact.(81) By the late 1930s, the Red Cross was faced with the decision either to get out of the home accident field or alter its basic strategy. The option chosen was to modify the accident program and to combine it with the organization's successful First Aid and Water Safety Program, an action taken on July 1, 1939. In 1941, the Red Cross began offering formal classes in accident prevention, awarding certificates upon completion in a manner similar to those provided in first aid and water safety.(82) This strategy appeared more satisfactory than the previous less structured approach, but Red Cross officials had been forced to realize that a victory over home accidents was, at best, slow and uncertain. Although it maintained its involvement in the home accident field, the Red Cross never dominated it in the manner that the leadership had originally expected.(83)