In the 1910s, the "Safety First" movement, which was an organized effort in accident prevention led by safety inspectors who were more commonly known as "safety men," extended all over the country. Safety men described their own activities as the spreading of the "Gospel of Safety" using a metaphor of the advent of Christianity. In this metaphoric story there was some reality because safety men as "unselfish disciples" preached the Gospel to the immigrant workmen and their families with a very strong evangelical spirit. So the safety movement assumed the form of a crusading movement coming not only in factories but in the schools and in the homes. The primary objective of this essay is to describe and document why industrial safety became a social movement far beyond the boundaries of the factories.

　　　It is interesting to note that the safety movement was an educational movement to indoctrinate immigrant workers with the habits of caution. Safety men approached them through a greater variety of educational program in the shop. But they gradually realized that workmen in the factories could be reached and influenced more effectively when safety effort was organized as a community activity. Safety men, therefore, began to make cooperative efforts with various community agencies outside of their factories, for example, visiting nurses, immigrant churches, and school teachers.

　　　Visiting nurses had been interested in immigrant families for their own purposes, so they willingly cooperated with safety men in order to educate wives and children of workmen's homes in cleanliness and morality, and especially in suitable standards of living. Immigrant churches and school teachers were also very enthusiastic about bringing safety ideas into immigrant homes. These outside agencies shared the same viewpoints of social control with safety men, and the latter made the former a disciples' helper to spread the gospel of safety to the immigrant workers and their families. Safety men believed that all of these community-wide collaborations indirectly but more effectively contributed to their ultimate goal of preventing accidents in industries.