Western Electric News
Published Once a Month for the Employees
August, 1915
Volume IV, No. 6

We are the victims of a disaster so awful that the world has stood aghast at its horrors, even in this year of horrors. Of our fellow-workers five hundred have gone down to sudden death. Many are mourning for members of their families, and many for friends and acquaintances. Gloom hangs heavy over the Hawthorne works. Five hundred wage-earners are gone. There are aged and feeble parents left, who have not only lost their children, but who have lost in them all that has kept them from destitution. There are helpless children who have lost their natural protectors. So far as money can relieve distress much has been done and much will be done. The Company's Benefit Fund will provide for some, but that fund is held as a sacred trust and can only be disbursed in accordance with the strict regulations attached to it. The Company has made a special appropriation in order that the dead may be buried and the living assisted promptly and without restrictions. The citizens of Chicago in their generosity have given freely.

We are indebted to each and all of the many who helped us in our hour of trouble, and to each and all of them we acknowledge that obligation. The gratitude of us all and of the Company is particularly due to those among our own number who risked their own safety to save the lives of others. It is due to those who, with prompt efficiency, organized facilities for rescue work, for the issue of information to anxious and sorrowing relatives, and for furnishing prompt relief to the needy, and to those who with unselfish devotion have since by day and night worked ceaselessly for their fellow-workers.

In disaster there is always a lesson. For whom is the lesson? Working people are entitled to their pleasures and to the enjoyment of them in safety. The lesson is not for them. It is not that they should forego their innocent pleasures. Even after the event and looking backward we cannot see that those who made the arrangements left anything undone which should have been done, or that there was anything which they could have done better. The lesson is not for them. An official investigation is in progress. For some one there is a lesson. The lives of the innocent have been taken and they will have been taken in vain unless the lesson is heeded and hereafter there is safety where for our fellow-workers there was death.

H.B. Thayer
President
Western Electric Company