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investigation. We found in this little place there was only one means of exit; that there was no method of putting out a fire at the lacquer ovens; that lacquer in itself was a highly explosive and hazardous material and that it was used there in open cans which were exposed all about the place; that the goods were put into the ovens to be baked; that the girls worked among paper and inflammable material everywhere; that there was no pattern of order; that there were no fire drills. There was no way of getting out of the building except by chance. There was one exit, one stairway. In this case luck was with them in that the stairway was where they could get to it and they didn't have to go past fire to reach it. That cut down the loss of life to a relatively small loss from what would have been a terrible loss if it had been in another part of the floor. This didn't create the commotion in the public mind that the fire the next year did.

There was another small fire where, I think, there was only one life lost. This was reported to us and I made the same kind of investigation there. We were still concerned with fire as a form of accident which might cause a catastrophe in factories, instead of individual, one-by-one accidents. We had been working on accidents to women in the unguarded machinery enterprises. That was in