From Safety First to Reasonable Capitalism: Safety Movements and John R. Commons’s Twenty-Five Years Experience

This article aims to reveal a new narrative derived from John R. Commons’s experience between 1907 and 1932 by focusing on the safety movement of middle management “safety experts” that began spontaneously in large companies across the Midwest. This article confirmed that Commons discovered, inherited, practiced, and succeeded in implementing the method and the program that had been elaborated by the safety experts. By understanding the relationship between Commons and the safety experts, this article addressed two deficits of Commons’s twenty-year experimentation: the role of the state conciliator in the joint bargaining system and the method of creating a safety spirit and a program to foster willingness.