Money for Safety

Twenty-five years ago the National Safety Council was one man with a stenographer, $1,400 and a motto, "Safety First." Last week, convening in Chicago for its Silver Jubilee convention, it was an organization with 5,000 members, an annual budget of $750,000, and importance enough to attract: 10,000 safety specialists from all corners of the U.S.

Proud was Founder William H. Cameron that the biggest single cause of accidental death, traffic, was being made safer at a rate that indicated a saving of 8,500 lives in 1938 under the 39,500 killed in 1937.

What had accomplished this was a far-flung campaign of education, legislation, research, highway engineering and traffic training undertaken by the National Safety Council and some two dozen other groups with the backing of the automotive industry through its Automotive Safety Foundation. President of this Foundation is Studebaker's 47-year-old President Paul Gray Hoffman.

Organized in June 1937, the Foundation has thus far spent $1,250,000, parceling out money to groups best equipped to administer its program. Chief contributor to the National Safety Council, which educates the public, the Foundation also helps the traffic engineering research of men like Yale's Miller McClintock, the personnel-training of Northwestern's Traffic Safety Institute, etc.

Result has been a steady decline in traffic fatalities, an accumulation of knowledge. Example: If the Foundation could keep old folks in Philadelphia from going to church at night, fatalities there might be cut 50%.

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