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An accident is commonly held to be an event which occurs by chance; it may even be defined as such. Closer investigation of a random sample of factory accidents has give support to this view. Controversy over the preventability of accidents, and whether accidents serve the interests of false or true economy, is sufficient justification for attempting an economic interpretation of industrial accidents. An analogy between the accidental injury of an employee and the breakdown of a machine is the basis for the attempt.

In November 1968 an explosion in the "safe" No. 9 mine of the Consolidation Coal Company at Farmington, West Virgina, killed seventy-eight miners and produced a brief but potent public outcry for new federal safety legislation. In December 1907, ten miles from Farmington at Monongab, West Virgina, 361 miners died in an explosion in the "safe" Monongah No. 6 and No.8 mines of the Fairmont Coal Company. Participants in the coal-mining safety movement included miners, mine inspectors, scientists, journalists and government officials. All played important roles, but the coal-mine operators, more than any other group, defined the response of the Progressive years to the problem of safety in the coal mines and determined the perimeters of state, national, and private action. The national component of the Progressive movement was the logical product of a transformation of the coal industry which began in the 1850s and which, by 1900, had produced an intensely competitive bituminous industry with national coal and labor markets as well as scientific problems which transcended state boundaries. The movement failed to the extent that operators were divided and unable to transcend local frameworks and this, unfortunately, was the usual state of the industry.